It’s difficult to contextualize how marketers strategize for next year as this year’s books close without acknowledging these unprecedented times — or emotionally charged times — or whatever “brand-safe” language PR teams are pushing to say that the news cycle and unstable pricing policies have profoundly affected media buying.
Tim Ringel, global CEO of Meet the People, an agency collective, raised the issue on stage at Digiday’s Media Buying Summit in Phoenix last week, conceding that it was a year of “tariffs and all the great things the world has thrown at us.”
“One person – not to mention names – can post something on their own social network and the stock market collapses,” Ringel said. “And a day later it changes again. How do you operate in an environment like this as a brand? You have to be very careful.
“We see a direct correlation between the number of deals made in a week – days where the government is still there or nothing happens that destroys the world – or the government does something that could destroy the world. There is a direct correlation between these numbers.”
Both April, when Trump announced the suspension of certain tariffs, and August, when those tariffs took effect, were a “disaster,” said Ringel, who during the onstage discussion cited a client list of more than 250, including Nespresso, Google, IBM and Moet Hennessy. This customer list spans multiple categories, including FMCG, healthcare, and financial services.
FMCG and retail products are “much more exposed,” Ringel said. “Even in the fourth quarter, when you have to make the holidays your own, they are [marketers are] I’m still a little wary about it. In particular, CPG was optimistic about spending to offset pricing uncertainty.
During the Summit’s town hall event, in which agency attendees were asked to anonymously provide challenges they are seeing, only one submission was related to the busy news cycle: “rates and volatile market conditions.”
This is a critical time to move away from the news as publishers face traffic losses linked to both social media platforms and AI. But the topic of the news cycle, along with brand safety and the tools that could solve them, have all taken on new life under Chatham House rules. For someone who contributed to the conversation, the issue of tariffs fits perfectly into the theme of education.
“Every time someone talks about tariffs, you see a massive increase or decrease in performance,” one participant said, especially in categories like manufacturing.
They added that they had to educate customers about these trends and communicate them to sales teams. “It’s a huge problem to try to say, ‘Hey, these market issues are actually affecting performance, good or bad.’ But sales didn’t want to hear that. They just want to hear, “Hey, we want results,” which is the big problem.
“Data helps,” they added.
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