A growing number of media leaders thinks so.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, cross-disciplinary media consultancy MediaLink CEO Michael Kassan says a content crunch is coming.

“In the real, real world, people are going to have to make some binary choices,” Kassan says. “Not everybody can add 10 subscription services to their monthly expense. They’re going to go where the content is going to be the most compelling.”

In other words, when the rubber hits the road, some consumers are going to take a hard left.

But the nature of what represents valuable content could change when there is a lot more time available to watch that content, Kassan believes. He thinks driverless cars could create more time for consumers to be in front of screens.

“Just think of the fact that the commute that most consumers have in their day jobs, you know, today,” he says. “All of a sudden you’re going to be handed back an hour, 45 minutes, two hours a day of commute time that normally they had their hands on the wheel. There’s going to be an increase in content consumption.”

To many, the idea that removing drivers’ autonomy in order to sit them, immobile, in front of more marketing messages may seem like a dystopian commercial fantasy.

But you only have had to ride in the back of a New York taxi to be a passenger exposed to TV news and local advertising on screens in the back of the cab.

Kassan says: “It’s a perfect storm that we as consumers I think can just revel in. I don’t know about you, but I’m always looking for my next binge. I’m always looking for that next new bit of content that can capture my attention.”

This video is from a series leading up to, and covering, the Xandr Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara.  This Beet.TV series is sponsored by Xandr.   Please visit this page to find more videos from the series. 

With just a few weeks to go before the annual ad industry shindig kicks off in June, it looks like Kassan has landed his catch.

“The original partners that we’ve announced already are Activision, NBC, Microsoft, Adobe, Tik Tok and a couple of more that are just about ready to be announced in these last few days as we’re leading up or last few weeks,” Kassan tells Beet.TV in this video interview.

In February 2017, Cannes Lions’ organizer, London-based Ascential, a B2B media company, announced it would acquire MediaLink, which has more than 120 people in multiple US offices, with each company remaining independent.

The new CLX strand is one of the first visible fruits of the tie-up. It aims to help get brands up close and personal with leading entertainment companies.

According to the festival’s announcement: “CLX participants can partake in a selection of curated roundtables that will provide compelling insightful learnings and ideas for the creation of successful content.”

Those roundtables, specifically, hosted by senior execs:

• The Art and Science of Building Beloved Stories – Activision Blizzard
• The Power of Creative Storytelling. The Power of Comedy in Storytelling. Tell Me a Story: How to Break through the Noise and Form a Real Connection – NBCUniversal
• Authenticity wins: TikTok’s Formula for Success. Everyone is a Creator: Unlocking the Power of UGC – TikTok

“And we’ve got Jeffery (Katzenberg) and Meg (Whitman) in tow to talk about Quibi and their launch of their mobile platform,” Kassan adds.

This video is part of the Beet.TV preview series titled “The Road to Cannes.”  The series is sponsored by 4INFO. Please visit this page for additional segments. 

At the NewFronts, strategic advisory firm MediaLink teamed with YouTube for a kickoff breakfast and discussion that included Tara Walpert Levy, VP of agency and brand solutions at Google and YouTube.

Referring to the ever-rising competition among streaming TV providers, Kassan observes, “there are peoples’ careers who depend on it and there are companies that are looking at it as their future, and there’s a lot of barbarians at the gates right now.”

He notes that after Disney announced Disney+, Wall Street’s reaction was to push the stock of the Walt Disney Co. “to an all-time high.” Similarly, WarnerMedia has “an amazing existing franchise with HBO and extending that and bringing Bob Greenblatt to the party I think is going to make a big statement,” Kassan adds in a reference to the recently appointed Chairman of WarnerMedia Entertainment.

He says Comcast and its NBCUniversal juggernaut “are certainly not to be counted out but very much in the middle of it. Not to underestimate YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix “and you just go on and on. You’ve got billions and billions of dollars being spent against the backdrop of creating content, and the consumer seems to have an insatiable appetite for that content.”

As for the prospects for advertising spending on television amid all the groundbreaking change, some question whether marketers that can’t spend money the way they traditionally have done “are just going to put that to their bottom line. We know that’s not the case because you still need to market your goods and services. I think it has to be reimagined. It’s not going to be the way it was, that’s for sure, but it will still exist and it will still thrive.”

Noting margin inadequacies at agencies and profit-and-loss challenges at marketers, it’s logical to take a close look at what can be done in-house, Kassan says in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Association of National Advertisers Masters of Marketing conference.

“Those are competing dynamics and I think it’s a chaotic moment and I think there is more that clients, marketers can do themselves. That doesn’t negate the need for an agency because the agency is that outside-in perspective that you can’t always get looking inside out,” says Kassan.

“You run the risk if you create an in-house agency at brand X, that your team is only focused on brand X and they don’t get the horizontal visibility and influence that you get if you’re working across many brands.”

Taking more functions in-house also impacts the recruitment of talent when creative or media practitioners decide whether they want to work on just one client or vertical category, according to Kassan. “Or do they want the variety is the spice of life approach where they get to work across a portfolio of clients?’

The ANA surveyed 412 of its members in August 2018, 52% of whom were at the director level or above. According to the survey, 78% of ANA members have some type of in-house operation compared to 42% 10 years ago.

Kassan believes that advances in technology and automation will continue to be driving force for marketers deciding to do more themselves. “Will that trend continue? Yes.”

He perceives more transparency in what people are talking about at the ANA conference, and not just pertaining to media buying and placement “but also transparency about the actual conversation. Marketers and agencies actually talking about what are the benefits and liabilities of going in house. I think it’s a good conversation and we’ll see a lot of movement in that regard.”

This series “Growing Brands and Driving Results,” was produced at the ANA Masters in Marketing ’18 conference in Orlando. The series is sponsored by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. Please find additional coverage here.

If the agenda for next year’s upcoming Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is anything to go by, it certainly is.

In a new addition to the advertising festival’s agenda, CLX (“Connect. Learn. Explore”), a new mini-event within the overall programme, will add a series of curated discussion sessions, helping brands to think like entertainment companies.

And co-organizer MediaLink CEO Michael Kassan is looking for entertainment companies to come in and help.

“We’re looking for an interesting group of foundational partners, somewhere in the range of eight or ten foundational partners, which will come from all sides of the industry, says Kassan in this video interview with Beet.TV.

In February 2017, Cannes Lions’ organizer, London-based Ascential, a B2B media company, announced it would acquire MediaLink, which has more than 120 people in multiple US offices, with each company remaining independent.

The new CLX strand is one of the first visible fruits of the tie-up. Invite-only for two out of four days, it seeks to help brands “get up close and personal with some of the world’s most inspiring and sought after entertainment experts” and “learn how the world’s most popular content gets made”.

Cannes Lions takes place in June 2019.

This interview was produced at the ANA Masters in Marketing ’18 conference in Orlando.

“We are in an absolute state of transformation. I’ll be kind, I used to say chaos. It’s controlled chaos,” Kassan says in this interview with Beet.TV at the annual DMEXCO conference, where MediaLink is a longtime attendee.

A year and a half after its acquisition by Assential plc, “it’s been a wonderful experience so far,” says Kassan. MediaLink opened a London office last year and “we’re very serious about our foray into Asia Pacific and China. They’re great partners and they’ve been a tremendous boost to MediaLink in terms of our ability to really create that global scale.”

Kassan considers DMEXCO to be “one of the best places to bring the adtech and martech communities together,” although not necessarily a venue where one can interact with lots of brand advertisers.

“One of the challenges of DMEXCO has always been there’s not a lot of brands here,” he explains. “There’s a lot of sellers. If you look around the show flow you see all the bold faced names that matter in martech and adtech.”

He harkens back to his opening day at law school and the prevailing expression, “Look to your left, look to your right one of those people won’t be here when you graduate.” Fortunately, whoever was sitting on his right or left “looked at me and I still made it, but there was truth in what they said.

“I think if you look to your left and look to your right, in 2019 there’ll be a few different players here. They may be merged or they may be purged. One of the two.”

This interview is part of a series titled Advertising Reimagined: The View from DMEXCO 2018, presented by Criteo. Please find more videos from the series here.

Not only will AT&T unveil the name and road map for its advanced advertising goals at the event in Santa Barbara, Kassan will get to explore how one of the newest video content startups intends to become relevant.

Kassan will moderate a discussion at Relevance between Jeffrey Katzenberg, who is Managing Partner of WndrCo and Chairman & Founder of mobile media startup NewTV, and Meg Whitman, the former CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and CEO of NewTV.

“What Jeffrey and Meg have cooked up, having just raised a billion dollars from all the key entertainment companies to launch NewTV, I think should be very exciting,” the CEO of MediaLink says in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent DMEXCO 2018 conference.

In the walkup to Relevance, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson has been emphasizing how the company’s traditional and newly acquired assets—including AppNexus and Time Warner—gives it lots of potential leverage in the advanced advertising space.

“The AppNexus acquisition certainly underscores how serious he was. While at the same time disclosing an 83 billion-dollar purchase of Warner Media there was still room and some cash left on the table to do a one point six billion acquisition of AppNexus.

“I think it validates everything Randall said publicly and as well, candidly, in the trial that happened around the Department of Justice challenging the deal,” Kassan adds.

That’s a reference to AT&T’s public position that scale was its ultimate goal in its acquisition pursuits “and they certainly have put their money where their mouth is.”

Other highlights of the conference for Kassan will include hearing from Mad Men’s Matthew Weiner, whose latest effort is a series titled The Romanoffs, and former Huffington Post chief Ariana Huffington regarding her venture called Thrive Global.

This video is part of a series leading up to and documenting the AT&T Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara.   For more videos from the series, please visit this page. 

Auletta interviewed 450 people, some of whom became key narrative characters in his book because of their vast influence and positions of power. They include former WPP Group CEO Sir Martin Sorrell, MediaLink Chairman and CEO Michael Kassan and Carolyn Everson, VP of Global Marketing Solutions at Facebook. Auletta’s goal was to determine whether advertising is going through the same disruption that has impacted music, newspapers, magazines and television, he explains in this interview with Beet.TV at the annual DMS conference presented by LUMA Partners.

“And they are, I found. It’s a vital industry and yet it’s one under assault with grave consequences for the media,” Auletta says.

Under Auletta’s scrutiny, no entity that is dependent on advertising revenue is immune to seismic disruption.

“The reason I came to the title Frenamies is that if you’re an agency, you are suddenly faced by people who used to be your partners or customers who are suddenly your competitors,” he says.

He also cites marketers taking functions in-house that were formerly the province of agencies, “PR agencies increasingly becoming ad agencies,” consultancies shifting their focus to advertising, “Facebook and Google who were your customers are now dis-intermediating you and going directly to your clients” and media companies “increasingly are becoming ad agencies selling ads and dis-intermediating you as well.”

Some people have become power brokers across the entire advertising ecosystem, one example being Kassan, according to Auletta, whom he describes as being “everywhere I went.”

MediaLink’s clients range from major publishers to Facebook, Google and Microsoft, to brand marketers and agencies. “If you’re writing about politics, you’re interested in following the power brokers. Michael Kassan in the ad world is a power broker. I call him the connector.”

He describes CBS CEO Les Moonves as “probably the most successful modern television executive in modern history” who became a vehicle to help Auletta determine “can old media become new?”

Then there is the public, which represents a “threat to this whole industry” because of their ability and desire to avoid ads. Throw in data privacy concerns and Auletta’s book depicts a future rife with challenge.

“You’re in a seesaw here,” he explains. “The more the seesaw goes up in terms of data that we can target at you, the more privacy goes down. And if privacy goes up, then your ability to use data goes down. And that’s a conundrum that the advertising world faces and government faces.”

While neither anxiety nor frenemies are on the formal agenda at the upcoming Cannes International Festival of Creativity, they will be in abundance, according to Auletta.

“Everyone knows they’re being disrupted, they know that there are problems ahead. These are all anxieties that everyone shares, be they a client, a platform, a publisher or an agency. So I think in that sense it brings them together, and yet they’re all frenemies. So they can’t get too close.”

In recent months, many agency holding groups have reported revenue trending down and share prices have fallen, after challenges including the rise of brands buying direct from online platforms.

And the CEO of the world’s largest holding group resigned amid claims regarding use of company money, triggering a further stock slide.

Suddenly, everyone is asking whether the traditional ad agency holding group model – amassing many agencies in to a network to benefit from economies of scale – really works in an age when buyers can buy direct.

“It’s an important moment,” says MediaLink CEO Michael Kassan. “I don’t know that it’s truly a tipping point. But I think everybody’s re-imagining how the large holding companies are able to continue to thrive. They’ll survive, but (it’s about) how they’re able to continue to thrive.

“2018 is very much like 1859. In 1859, Charles Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities – clearly, for some, the best of times; for others, the worst of times.

U.S. agency revenue grew a sluggish 1.8 percent in 2017, according to Ad Age Datacenter – the slowest growth since the ad market emerged from recession in 2010.

And Kassan says the model is at a point of change – it just remains to be seen whether it is a moment of evolution.

“Interestingly enough, in 1859 another Charles, Charles Darwin, wrote On The Origin Of Species, which talked very clearly about the adaptability and the need to adapt to survive, and the survival of the fittest.

“I think that’s where we are today. I think if the agency holding companies can identify where the market is going and adapt to that, and loosen the yolk of infrastructure that’s around their neck, I think they will thrive. If they don’t, I think they’ll survive – but it could end up being a long drawn out, sort of melting ice cube if they don’t adapt.”

We spoke with him Monday at the MediaLink NewFronts breakfast hosted by YouTube.

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018.  The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB.   Please see additional videos from the series on this page.   

And so it is that Kassan possibly senses “a little bit of a change” in the throng of festivities now officially called the Digital Content Newfronts under the auspices of the Internet Advertising Bureau. It’s slightly unusual that some companies opted out of the NewFronts events this year.

“Maybe that is some indication that we’ve reached sort of a tipping point in the onslaught, the rolling thunder if you will of two solid weeks of presentation after presentation,” he says in this interview with Beet.TV.

What is new this year is a backdrop of negative headlines for some of the digital giants that have roamed the landscape with abandon for a time long. Kassan cites the “seemingly impregnable” Facebook, Google and YouTube and notes that Alphabet recently exceeded analyst financial expectations.

“Hard to say that they’re feeling any heat from the recent discussions around safe places for content,” Kassan observes. “But I think it’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out across the landscape of digital video this year.”

In a similar vein, he recalls how last fall Facebook was the subject of concern over some of its self-reported metrics. “I think they took the highest road, found what was ailing them and stood up with the advertisers and have made great progress in terms of third-party measurement and opening up a little crack in the walled gardens,” says Kassan.

Through it all, MediaLink itself continues to morph and expand in the wake of its recent sale to Ascential, which operates the Cannes Lions ad festival. Late last month, MediaLink announced the hiring of Dana Anderson, formerly SVP and CMO at Mondelēz International, to the position of CMO.

Additionally, MediaLink added an outpost in London, to be helmed by Vice Chairman Wenda Harris Millard as of June 1.

“One of the trades said we were invading Europe. I don’t know about that, but Wenda said she bought a pair of combat boots just to be ready. Here we come,” says Kassan.

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the IAB’s Digital Content NewFronts 2017. The series is sponsored by the IAB. For more videos from the #NewFronts, please visit this page.

In fact, CEO Michael Kassan says the company plays kind of a “therapist” function for agencies and brands at risk of a bitter – and unwarranted – break-up.

Speaking about the so-called Pitchapalooza of 2015, when an estimated $25bn in brands’ agency accounts was up for grabs in a record year of contract review, Kassan tells Beet.TV in this video interview: “You don’t go all the way to review all the time. Maybe you just need a therapy session.

“(If) you have a rough patch with your partner in your personal life, you don’t automatically separate or get a divorce. Many times, you go see a therapist to work through it.”

Early in February, London-based Ascential, a B2B media company, announced it would acquire MediaLink, which has more than 120 people in multiple US offices, with each company remaining independent.

But Ascential said: “MediaLink will continue to build on its relationship with Cannes Lions and start new ones with other Ascential products where appropriate.”

And Kassan sees the synergy. He tells Beet.TV: “They operate many festivals – Money2020 … – through WGSN, an enormous amount of information services, trend analysis and what-not. The opportunity for MediaLink … is interesting for further enhancement.”

We interviewed him during Mobile World Congress at a MediaLink-hosted reception.

If that’s not enough, there also will be disruption, the kind that is sweeping the video and television business and which MediaLink Chairman and CEO Michael Kassan will discuss on stage with media executive Barry Diller.

“We will have many other programs that focus on sensation,” Millard says in an interview with Beet.tv. “Lots of client meetings, lots of panels and our own immersive experiences.”

Among other challenges, MediaLink clients are “trying to get their arms around” the ever-changing video sector, according to Millard.

“It does seem very overwhelming with all the opportunities, but they are opportunities and markers are decidedly interested in being where their audiences are,” says Millard. “It’s almost an imperative for them to play in this new video environment and to figure out what works for them.”

Experiences and sensations involving virtual and augmented reality will be a particular focus at CES, even though “only a small sliver” of consumers has been exposed to these technologies, according to Millard.

“Like many things in this world, the East Coast and West Coast have a little bit of a lead in terms of what’s new,” says Millard. “I think the rest of the country in this particular case is probably not very up to speed on VR or AR.”

Nonetheless, she thinks it’s important for marketers to understand such emerging technologies.

“I think CES at large is a great opportunity for us not to necessarily focus on the technology itself buy the change in consumer behavior that’s facilitated by technology,” Millard adds. “And then look at the implications for our business and the potential applications.”

With virtual reality alone Millard sees “quite extraordinary” opportunities, citing sectors like education, health and entertainment.

“Exactly what that is and how we reach the mass audiences that so many marketers need, that’s all to come,” she says.

This interview is part of our series “The Road to CES,” a lead-up series in advance of CES 2017. The series is presented by FreeWheel. Please find more videos from the series here.

“We just completed advising AT&T … a month ago …on the largest single review in history, I believe, because it was a combination of media and creative,” says the CEO of cross-disciplinary media consultancy MediaLink.

“The unique thing … it was a truly integrated model of BBDO, Hearts & Science, all within the Omnicom family, but the message that AT&T (had) … was to put data at the center, have that data layer informing creative decisioning and media decisioning.”

AT&T’s decision to consolidate affects a media spending budget estimated at $2bn. Omnicom reportedly beat out WPP, Grey and MEC.

Kassan, whose firm offers agency reviews, executive search, trade marketing and financial due diligence, thinks that is a big deal for Omnicom, but could be even bigger for the industry as a whole.

“If Omnicom get it right, there’s your new model,” he tells Beet.TV. “It’s a new bundle (of agency services).”

In the 1990s, there was a movement in agencies to unbundle integrated offers in to individual parts, Kassan recalls. But he calls the new AT&T and McDonalds accounts, in which DDB has created a standalone agency dedicated to the burger chain, “a precursor to what’s going to happen”.

Why is creative getting plugged back in to the mothership? Because that’s where advertisers’ greatest necessity is coming from – and that’s where competitive pressures are emerging.

As more publishers begin to build in-house content studios to service their advertisers with brand content, creative agencies are coming under pressure to prove their worth, Kassan says – but they can demonstrate value by aligning with media-buying siblings.

This interview was taped at DMEXCO ’16. It is part of a video series of industry leaders.  The series is sponsored by Videology.   For more Beet.TV coverage of DMEXCO, please visit this page.

We spoke with him on Sunday at the IAB’s annual leadership meeting.

With most of the reviews are over and there have been notable winners and losers, but the net share of business hasn’t  changed much, says Michael Kassan, Chairman & CEO of powerhouse media consultancy MediaLink.

MediaLink has participated in the reviews on behalf of several major brands.

While there hasn’t been big shift in share, the expectations of brands of their agencies are changing quickly, he says in this interview with Beet.TV

We spoke with him at the MediaLink opening night party at CES.

Beet.TV coverage of CES 2016 is sponsored by Adobe.

MediaLink will showcase a number of adtech companies in its large suite at the Carlton in a program called the Daily Dose, a daily seminar held at the Carlton.

This video is part of a series The Road to Cannes, our lead-up to the Cannes Lions Festival presented by Coull.  Please visit this page for additional segments.

“Partnership is what makes this world go around,” according to CEO Michael Kassan. “You need people who are growing toward the same goals. One shop does not fit all anymore. You have to find people to work with.

“The best partnership out there is … the idea and the technology. The idea is central, but if you can understand how to get those ideas in to the mainstream faster using technology … when precision is so available … you need that partnership.”

Kassan is so enamored with the transformational potential of partnerships, MediaLink recently hosted the Partnership Awards at the 4As’ (American Association of Advertising Agencies) Transformation 2015 event in Austin. Winners included triumvirates of Motorola, Razorfish and Wired, and Nissan, OMD and Amazon.com.

Kassan was interviewed by Beet.TV at the 4As’ (American Association of Advertising Agencies) Transformation 2015 event in Austin, Texas. Our coverage is sponsored by Videology. Please find more coverage from the conference here.

We spoke with him during the Festival onboard the AT&T Adworks yacht.

You can find more videos from the Cannes Festival here.

We spoke with him just after the MediaLink kick-off breakfast for the NewFronts.

“CES allows important conversations between marketers and manufacturers, which can help in delivering the new technology. This year at CES there are some 10,000 marketers,” he says. “Consumers are using these devices to transact their day to day business.”

For instance, marketers can tap into wearable watch technology, such as a Nike Fuel Band or Samsung S Band, to deliver better ads based on where a consumer is and what he or she is doing, he says. “That data is critical to marketers.”

We spoke with him last week at the AOL booth at the DMEXCO conference.

We spoke with Kassan this week about his efforts on behalf of media and technology clients ranging from Conde Nast to Machinima.  Kassan’s firm, which consults to the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, arranged to have News Corp published a full edition of the New York Post, titled the Cannes edition which was given out on the show floor.