Media Buying Briefing: How Sport Beach became a big Cannes Lions destination — and a business

It all started with a single slide. 

Sport Beach kicked off as Stagwell’s beachside activation at the 2023 Cannes Lions festival but has since grown into a standalone business unit in the challenger holding company as its popularity at Cannes Lions surged each year. 

Beth Sidhu, CEO of Sport Beach, and one of its earliest architects, recalled in an interview with Digiday that the idea of Sport Beach originated from a slide sent to her in the summer of 2022 by Evin Shutt, the Stagwell agency 72andSunny’s longtime CEO and partner, outlining a concept the agency’s founder Glenn Cole and chief growth officer Damaune Journey had worked up. 

Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for Digiday newsletters to get the latest on media, marketing and the future of TV.

,Read More

The AI search boom is fueling content budgets before media buys

AI search may be the industry’s latest shiny object, but most marketers aren’t spending heavily on AI search ads yet. Instead, those dollars are being routed to creators, content, agency services and tools to influence how their brands are cited in LLMs.

WPP forecasts AI search advertising will become the industry’s fastest growing channel. Many brands, however, seem more focused on earning visibility inside AI-generated answers instead of shelling out for paid placements — at least that’s the case for now as marketers still have questions about return on investment.

The writing is on the wall, just ask any publisher.

Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for Digiday newsletters to get the latest on media, marketing and the future of TV.

,Read More