Canvas CEO Paul Woolmington on Tariff Uncertainty and Sports Culture vs. Sports Rights
Microsoft dispels some Gen Z stereotypes
As I’ve been writing about a lot of late, chief financial officers are suddenly sniffing around media plans more and more.
Between tariffs, economic uncertainty, the overall push toward tracking outcomes - and the efficiency promised by artificial intelligence, the bean counters appear to be eyeing marketing (and marketing budgets) more than ever.
Which puts media agencies in a tricky spot as they plan upfront buying, figure out staffing, and try to protect the power of old-fashioned branding.
“The early aggressive move around tariffs did create more uncertainty,” said Canvas CEO Paul Woolmington on the Next in Media podcast this week. "And that was before President Trump’s tariffs seemed to have been struck down by the courts, and then were temporarily back on. Maybe.
“I think the CFO stepped in, and what it did was create more caution moving into the marketplace,” Woolmington said. “So I think a lot of the deal-making [in this year’s upfronts] will be not just how much money, but also the flexibility.”
“We know that in economically uncertain times, flexibility can mean, ‘well, let's move to media that can be more immediately turned on, a little bit more at the bottom of the funnel.’”
While that’s a natural instinct for many marketers, the timing is somewhat ironic, given how much the recent upfronts focused on live sports, and/or creators - both of which are powerful audience and cultural drivers, but are not exactly the easiest things to track in terms of ROI.
“You don't have to be an economist to say, ‘okay, what are those harder-working, quote unquote, performance media?’” said Woolmington. “But I think that this is going to be a delicate balancing act to manage.”
“What every client is telling me is that they need a data storyteller who can walk into the room with the C-suite and explain to the C-suite complex algorithms and things like that in a communication. They have the EQ to be able to do that. They're able to actually work across the organization and down and up the organization.”
That doesn’t sound easy.
Interestingly, Woolmington noted that as much as every big media company and tech platform touted their sports rights, that market may not be as exclusive or cost-prohibitive as it once was.
“Sport used to be treated by the networks almost as a separate entity, but obviously it's their leverage, so to speak,” he said. “So they really integrated sport into the totality of their upfront…We have X numbers in live games.”
But nearly every streamer has sports rights (Canvas counted seven), as well as all the legacy media players. “In a buyer's market, in a softer marketplace, their leverage with sport is obviously [crucial]. But in the old days, the entry price was very high because there was a limited supply. There's so much more supply of sports generally. So your entry price can be different. You can have a long-term view on supporting a sport that you can develop.”
And, you can ‘get in sports’ not just by buying ads during games, but by getting closer to the whole Sports Creatorverse (for example, Mr. Beast recently posted a video featuring Neymar, Serena Williams, Steph Curry and Aaron Judge.) “A lot of what YouTube talked about is the associated creator economy that sits around sport,”he said. “And a lot of what we are looking at with clients is, ‘How do you activate fandoms pre and post game as opposed to in the game?’”
Check out the episode here:
Shopping Til You’re Absolutely Sure
While the past few years have seen the rise in social shopping it the US, and the idea that every young person using TikTok Shop is all about impulse purchases, new research from Microsoft appears to indicate that web shoppers, even Gen Z, are more grounded than we might expect.
In fact, the new report found that:
The average person consults 5.5 online resources when making a product decision
56% of people reported spending more time researching products before deciding to make purchases
That number jumps five points for Gen Z, which is perhaps less flighty its their reputation
Check out the full report here.