High-profile investigations into financial conduct, GDPR rulings, surprising moves of big players in our industry, ecommerce and hybrid working all topped our most-read news article list this year.
The trio of suspended employees at GroupM’s addressable TV ad-buying agency Finecast involved a finance executive and an assistant as well as CEO Jakob Nielsen. Nielsen has since resigned from Finecast.
The entire system for getting user consent for data tracking in online advertising – including pop-ups asking for permission to use cookies, was to be ruled illegal by the Belgian Data Authority which sets precedent for the EU, according to campaigners.
Hearst’s UK CEO and president of Europe, James Wildman, stepped down and left the business in July. Simon Horne, who most recently served as a consultant to Hearst International, stepped in as interim CEO while the company searches for Wildman’s replacement.
Despite many publishers no longer reporting half-year circulation figures in the Summer, there was a lot of reader interest amid some interesting pandemic trends in magazine publishing. The move towards more flexible working appears to be reflected in more home interests being cultivated, leading to circulation increases for cookery and gardening titles.
“Viewability” should no longer be regarded as a meaningful measure of advertising effectiveness, Dentsu concluded in its latest research into online advertising effectiveness with Lumen.
ITV agreed terms to take a 13-year lease on Broadcast Centre in White City from the BBC, as it planned to bring all of its London based staff into one location for the first time.
We broke the news that Tim Pearson was departing as managing director of Sky Media UK. Pearson had only been at the company for six months after joining from Omnicom, where he was UK CEO for OMD Group.
Jerry Daykin left his position as EMEA senior media director at GSK for a new media opportunity with “truly global leadership” in November (another Mediatel News scoop).
ITV set up a service that allowed viewers of Love Island to discover and shop Boots items from its programmes directly on screen with plans to roll this out across other programmes later in the year.
Google took over an ad break for Taskmaster with the online behemoth creating mini-tasks for past and present contestants of the comedy show to promote its new Pixel Phone and Google Translate.
