The Campaign Podcast

Advertisers have been pulling investment from newsbrands and trusted journalism for years. The latest AA/Warc figures show that national and regional newsbrands, along with magazines, have suffered the steepest declines in adspend across all channels, while tech platforms continue to claim a growing share of the market.

However, the figures suggest this decline will slow in 2026, and this year's Media Week Awards was a successfu...

WPP, Publicis Groupe, Omnicom, Interpublic, Havas and Dentsu have hitherto been known to adland as the "big six". However, the past year has brought the announcement of a proposed merger between Omnicom and IPG, while Havas and Dentsu have become comparatively smaller.

So, the "big six" become the "big three", but is there another challenger? Accenture Song's latest results reported revenues of $20bn (£15bn) in the 12 months to ...

This episode of The Campaign Podcast explores whether marketers are using AI to do work traditionally done by their agencies and examines what clients are – and aren’t – doing with AI.

It comes as Campaign launches the Power 100, the list of the most powerful marketers in the UK. This year they were asked questions designed to tease out where they are on their AI journeys.

Presented by deputy editor Gemma Charles, guests on t...

Campaign published its Faces to Watch list for 2025 last month and also canvassed the cohort on a range of topics both on and off-the-record. From hybrid-working and salary through to the rise of AI and diversity, the Faces – all of whom have worked in adland for eight years or less – gave their views freely.

This episode not only dissects their thoughts but also offers the perspectives of adland leaders on the lot of their juni...

Neurodiversity exists in between 15 and 20% of UK adults, but recent All In data counts over half of adland’s UK workforce as neurodiverse, at 55%.

This week is dyslexia awareness week, and to mark the occasion this episode looks into neurodiversity in adland, and how the industry supports people with different ways of thinking, both internally and in the ads it produces. 

Hosted by Campaign's tech and multimedia editor,...

Ndidi Oteh, the new global chief executive of Accenture Song, was interview on stage by Campaign's editor-in-chief Gideon Spanier at Campaign Live in her first UK interview.

24 days into the new job, Oteh discussed navigating change and scale, plans to expand in media buying, and how the agency arm of consulting giant Accenture compares to the big holding companies. This episode features the full session from the event, wit...

Cars, airlines, FMCG brands and banks used to be some of the most desirables clients to have for an agency. Some clients are still more desirable to agencies than others, but is it based on size, market, sector or another factor? 

In this episode, Campaign's editorial team question if prestige sectors still exist and to what extent agencies actually choose their clients. Tech editor Lucy Shelley hosts the episode alongside ...

Podcast: What will the next 70 years of commercial TV look like?

This September, the UK celebrates 70 years of commercial TV since the launch of ITV on September 22 1955.

A lot has changed since the very first TV ads. Not only are they now in full colour but the very definition of TV has evolved and keeps on changing with the addition of new formats and introduction of new digital competitors.

In this episode, Campaign’s tech ...

Media platforms, including Meta, TikTok, X, Spotify, Pinterest and others, have been advancing their own AI capabilities to improve the advertising process of creating and serving ads to an audience. So where does this leave media and creative agencies?

Meta, has gone so far as to call itself a “one stop shop” for advertisers, by reportedly aiming to fully automate advertising, including the creation and targeting of ads, by the...

Omnicom and IPG have kept their cards close to their chests while nearing completion of the biggest acquisition in advertising history. 

Set to close in the second half of this year, the merger-acquisition has now secured 15 out of the 18 regulatory approvals required, including recently with UK watchdog the CMA, in early August. Under the terms of the all-share deal, Omnicom said at the start of August it was set to p...

Campaign releases an unpublished recording from the inaugural Campaign Live conference last year.

Unilever's former chief marketing officer Keith Weed and chief financial officer Graeme Pitkethly are interviewed on stage by Campaign’s editor-in-chief Gideon Spanier. They discuss how to keep the peace in the infamously tense CMO and CFO relationship that they said requires "mutual respect" from both sides. Weed says: "If yo...

It is the summer of women’s sport, or ‘simply sport’ as Campaign's deputy editor Gemma Charles put it, and records are being broken both on and off the pitch.

The Women’s Euro’s, which was viewed by 16.2 million people during the final, has been touted as the most commercially successful football tournament ever — women’s or men’s — with 30,000 more ads per day than last year’s men’s tournament. The women’s rugby world cup takes...

The long-term row between independent production companies and those that sit within holding companies has resurfaced in recent weeks over best practice when it comes to bidding and being selected for work. 

Production craft festival Ciclope ended its sponsorship contracts with holding companies, which began an online debate between the Advertising Producers Association and the IPA on LinkedIn. The APA’s chief executive Ste...

WPP announced this month that Microsoft executive Cindy Rose will succeed outgoing chief executive Mark Read. Rose is currently chief operating officer, global enterprise, at Microsoft and will be WPP’s third CEO and the first female leader of a major agency holding company. 

The announcement, which came sooner than expected, came one day after the holding company issued a shock profit warning to the stock market, and follo...

Three awards have been withdrawn from Cannes Lions 2025 over fabrication of case studies and concerns around their legitimacy. In the weeks that have followed Cannes Festival of Creativity, the integrity of advertising awards has been questioned and what was once widely accepted in advertising awards, has now been exposed.

DM9's “Efficient way to pay” was the most notable withdrawal as it won the Grand Prix in the Creative Data ...

As 2025's Pride Month comes to a close, Campaign reflects on how the global DEI rollback has impacted the way brands show up for LGBTQIA+ communities.

Gay Times' chief executive Tag Warner said the news outlet has lost £5m in ad revenue this year due to eight of its top ten advertisers pulling their contracts, and Thinkbox's head of marketing Chris Dunne, who is also chief executive of Outvertising, also commented on the noticea...

Campaign asked this year’s A List cohort to name their favourite TV ad ahead of the upcoming 70th anniversary of commercial television. Guinness “Surfer” by AMV BBDO came out top.

One trend that emerged from the choices was that many of the most popular ads were more than 25 years old. Armed with this finding, Campaign reporter Eszter Gurbicz wrote a feature exploring the industry’s love of old ads.

This episode of the Campai...

Campaign’s editors from around the world come together after the Lions festival for the final episode of the Campaign Cannes global podcast in partnership with Ocean Outdoor.

We review the festival and talk about the work that won, the big trends that emerged, the first year of Campaign House and the best parties.

Gideon Spanier (far left), the UK editor-in-chief of Campaign, hosts the podcast and is joined by Maisie McCabe, ...