Financial communications has thrived in the pandemic as companies scramble for help fending off shareholder activists, dealing with mergers and acquisitions, and creating SPACs, or special purpose acquisition companies.

Business Insider identified some of the top financial communications pros through a combination of original reporting, nominations, and publicly available information.

They come from established firms and startup agencies and range from bankruptcy specialists like FTI Consulting's Rachel Chesley, who has handled 22 Chapter 11 cases so far in 2020, to Joele Frank, who is known for helping firms fend off hostile takeovers.

They also include newcomers like Jessica Schaefer, who carved out a niche connecting financial services companies with influencers.

We chose people based on assignments they've handled, the caliber of their clients, revenue growth, and other factors.

Read on to see the full list, sorted alphabetically by last name.

SEE ALSO: Meet public relations' 27 most influential fixers at companies like Google, Johnson & Johnson, and Nike

Paul Caminiti, founding partner, Reevemark

Paul Caminiti founded the 15-person firm in 2018 with other Sard Verbinnen vets with a focus on public affairs and financial communications.

This past year, Caminiti has counseled prominent financial firms and corporations like Trian Partners and Chesapeake Energy, which resulted in several millions of dollars of revenue for the firm.

For Trian, Caminiti led the PR team supporting the activist investor group's campaign to merge Invesco and Janus Henderson. He also helped Chesapeake Energy with its $4 billion acquisition of WildHorse, commercial litigation issues, and Chapter 11 restructuring.

Rachel Chesley, managing director, FTI Consulting

Restructurings are up this year as the coronavirus pandemic stalls the economy, making Rachel Chesley a go-to for corporations trying to spin these maneuvers.

She's handled 22 Chapter 11 cases so far in 2020, as well as a number of out-of-court engagements.

For example, Chesley led PR strategy for LATAM Airlines' Chapter 11 filing, GNC's bankruptcy as it sold itself to Harbin Pharmaceutical and closed up to 1,200 stores, and news publisher McClatchy's highly publicized restructuring.

Andrew Cole, co-president, Sard Verbinnen & Co

Andrew Cole, who has been with the company since 1998, became co-president in 2016, and has helped it push nto analytics, corporate governance, digital, and government relations, which led to the firm's highest revenue ever last year with more than 600 clients.

In terms of client work, Cole has handled high-profile transactions in recent years like Takeda Pharmaceuticals' $62 billion acquisition of Shire and the Japanese pharmaceutical company's becoming listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Healthcare work has been a bright spot in the pandemic; Cole handled Moderna's IPO and is helping get the word out about its vaccine candidate.

Cole also worked with Providence Equity Partners on its long-term corporate positions and transaction announcements and helped eBay when it dropped PayPal.

Jonathan Doorley, partner of financial situations, Brunswick Group

Brunswick Group recruited Jonathan Doorley to revamp its mergers and acquisitions unit, filling in a void created when senior executives exited the agency.

With Doorley's help, Brunswick Group has regained some of its momentum. He advised 7-Eleven on its $21 billion acquisition of Speedway, LVMH on its $16 billion bid for Tiffany, and Xerox on its hostile bid for HP.

Previously, Doorley spent 10 years at Sard Verbinnen, rising to partner.

"[Doorley's] a young guy who has quickly ascended to the top of arguably the two most high-profile and powerful financial PR firms in the world," said a former colleague. "If that happens once, people can chalk it up to luck. But when it happens twice, you know it's based on real substance and talent."

Richard Dukas, chairman and CEO, Dukas Linden Public Relations

Under Dukas, Dukas Linden grew its revenue 17% in 2019 to $6.32 million, and despite the pandemic, the agency projects fourth-quarter billings will top the year-ago period.

Highlights this year included supporting Cathie Wood as the CEO of Ark Investment Management made the case for Tesla being a bull stock. Dukas Linden used its media chops to help Wood get coverage on CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, and more. During that time, Tesla went on a bull run that saw its stock increase 400%.

Dukas Linden has a dedicated broadcast group, which secures an average of 500 segments per year. Other clients include Raymond James, Neuberger Berman, and MetLife Investment Manager.

Joele Frank, managing partner, Joele Frank

Joele Frank has claimed a significant portion of the mergers and acquisitions and shareholder activism defense part of PR. 

Frank and her colleagues have defended companies against hostile takeovers by Carl Icahn more than 30 times, Starboard more than 40 times, and Pershing Square at least 10 times. She personally has been involved in more than 1,000 engagements, which also include crisis and litigation support.

In M&A, she's represented Teva Pharmaceuticals in its offer to acquire Mylan and its acquisition of Allergan Generics and Time Warner in its defense against 21st Century Fox. In 2020, she defended HP Inc. against Xerox's $34 billion unsolicited proposal and GrubHub's $7.3 billion acquisition of Just East Takeaway.com.

Frank also has a restructuring and bankruptcy practice and her firm claims to do investor and PR work for more than 40% of its clients.

Jonathan Gasthalter, managing partner, Gasthalter & Co.

Jonathan Gasthalter built Sard Verbinnen & Co.'s hedge fund practice, with clients like the $12 billion SAC Capital Advisors, and a reputation as an "iron-fisted gatekeeper," according to Institutional Investor.

After Sard Verbinnen sold a 40% stake to Golden Gate Capital, Gasthalter bucked against a noncompete clause and left to found his own agency, taking 25 of his clients and three Sard Verbinnen employees. Today, Gasthalter & Co. has 14 employees in New York and Chicago.

Bloomberg named Gasthalter & Co. one of the top PR advisers for activist investors in its annual review of activism advisers. Gasthalter & Co. worked on 24 engagements for the first half of 2020.

Gasthalter is well-known as a spokesperson for billionaires SAC Capital Advisors owner Steve Cohen, who has been trying to buy the New York Mets; and Jim Pallotta, who used to own a stake in the Boston Celtics.

Gasthalter's portfolio goes beyond activism. It helped Pivotal Investment Corp. when it merged with XL Fleet; and online casino company Rush Street Interactive in its merger with dMY technology group.

Steve Lipin, chairman and CEO, Gladstone Place Partners

Steve Lipin left Brunswick Group in 2017 to establish financial communications-focused Gladstone Place Partners and landed a plum account right off the bat, advising Walt Disney Corp. in its acquisition of a chunk of 21st Century Fox's assets.

More recently, Lipin has worked on several of investor Michael Klein's special purpose acquisition company deals like Churchill Capital Corp III's merger with MultiPlan as the healthcare data analytics company went public. Lipin also worked on Sycamore when it withdrew its bid for Victoria's Secret.

At Brunswick, Lipin worked on blockbuster M&A deals like InBev's acquisition of Anheuser-Busch, the merger of Kraft and Heinz, and Marriott's acquisition of Starwood.

Lipin, a former finance editor at The Wall Street Journal, has also defended the likes of Heinz and eBay against investor campaigns.

Greg Marose, cofounder and partner, Profile Advisors

Edelman vet Greg Marose cofounded a new crisis and financial communications boutique, Profile Advisors, in 2018.

He's advised clients involved in more than 50 activist campaigns, more than 30 distressed debt restructurings, and more than 30 litigation matters, helping boost the firm's annual revenues to about $3 million.

He's counseled a bondholder group handling debt restructuring for Puerto Rico, Leon Cooperman's Omega Advisors during the Sears bankruptcy, and shareholders of Marathon Petroleum in their campaign to push out the energy company's CEO and chairman.

After the pandemic shattered the capital markets, Marose helped investment funds communicate with uneasy investors.

This year, Profile has doubled its number of investor-side activism assignments to 16. It projects it will grow its number of bankruptcies and lawsuits by 50% this year.

Jennifer Prosek, CEO, Prosek Partners

In the years after the 2008 financial crisis, financial services companies have tried to win back the public trust that was damaged by practices like excessive compensation.

Jennifer Prosek built a business telling banks like Goldman Sachs they should advocate for themselves more, an approach that helped Prosek Partners vault to the forefront of financial communications and grow revenue on average 16% for the past three years.

Prosek has handled her share of crises as well. She advised Bridgewater Associates when the hedge fund settled a pay dispute with former co-CEO Eileen Murray. She also helped Steve Schwartzman, CEO of The Blackstone Group, on his book launch last year.

In recent years, Prosek has done more business around transactions like mergers and acquisitions after hiring Teneo and Finsbury vet Andy Merrill as a partner in 2015. 

Jessica Schaefer, CEO, Bevel

At Bevel, which she founded in 2017, Jessica Schaefer has carved out a niche helping finance and tech companies strike partnerships with celebrities and athletes.

For example, Schaefer helped fintech company Acorns promote a partnership with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, securing more than 125 articles and placements for Acorns on industry lists like WSJ's Top 25 Companies to Watch, Forbes' Fintech 50, and Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies.

Other clients have included financial firms like Greycroft, Point72 Ventures, and Torch Capital, as well as nonprofit Kiva, Dirty Lemon, and crypto trading firm Tagomi.

Alex Stanton, CEO, Stanton PR

For 10 years, Alex Stanton has helped spin the media for clients including Bain Capital, FFL Partners, and other prominent private equity groups seeking help in areas like deal and fundraising announcements, reputation, and crisis.

In 2019, he worked on 50 mergers and acquisitions including Anthem's acquisition of Beacon Health and Great Hill Partners' acquisition of G/O Media, according to the Observer. So far this year he's worked on financial restructurings for eight companies.

Previously, Stanton was co-owner of Dorf & Stanton Communications, which was sold to Shandwick and folded into Interpublic Group's Weber Shandwick.

Lex Suvanto, global managing director of financial communications and capital markets, Edelman

Lex Suvanto oversees a 150-person practice that grew revenue 33% year-over-year in 2019 and 20% year-over-year so far in 2020.

Under Suvanto, the unit worked on 66 mergers and acquisitions last year, which were collectively worth $82.7 billion in value, according to Mergermarket.

Suvanto helped Global Blue as the tourism shopping tax refund company sold itself to a special purpose acquisition company, advised Silver Lake through leadership changes and its investment strategy, and advised Applied Therapeutics after a fraudulent report circulated on social media and dragged down its stock price.

Jim Wilkinson, chairman and CEO, TrailRunner International

Since launching TrailRunner International in 2016, Jim Wilkinson has been the communications brains behind prominent IPOs like Dropbox, Spotify, and Levi's, growing revenue almost 50% so far this year.

Bain Capital has relied on Wilkinson since the early 2010s, and most recently using him as it moved to take Chinese data company ChinData public.

Previously, Wilkinson was head of communications at PepsiCo, head of international corporate affairs at Alibaba during its record-breaking IPO, and chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson during the financial crisis. The New York Times reported Wilkinson had a reputation as a "shrewd political adviser."

Dan Zacchei, president of special situations, Sloane & Company

In the past three years, Dan Zacchei has more than doubled Sloane & Company's revenue for its special situations group, handling friendly and hostile mergers, shareholder activism campaigns, restructurings, and crises — and helping the firm get ranked first by Bloomberg in total market cap of the engagements it handled.

As the pandemic slashes stock prices and investors grow wary of leadership at their portfolio companies, Zacchei is helping nearly a dozen clients prepare for shareholder activism and hostile takeovers.

They include Cubic Corp, which is defending itself against a hostile bid from Elliott Management; and Cannae Holdings and Senator Investment Group in their hostile bid for CoreLogic. He's also helping Revlon with litigation and debt issues.

Zacchei has been advising CVS Health since its $69 billion merger with Aetna, and Puerto Rico in its restructuring.

Accelerate by Isobar

Ad holding company Dentsu-owned digital agency network Isobar launched Accelerate a year ago after seeing more CMOs request in-housing help.

Isobar global chief client officer Sue McCusker said that Accelerate is not a product that Isobar sells, but a service it offers clients such as the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and Danish energy company OK.

For OK, it automated its marketing and helped it with personalized communications across its web, email, direct mail, app messaging and points-of-sale at gas stations.

Isobar said it doesn't break down Accelerate's revenue but said that specific areas of growth this year have included clients tapping its consulting practice and adopting some of its IP and media analytics tools for their in-house agencies. 

It's also recently expanded into production with a platform called Content Symphony that gives clients access to its network of 24 studios globally.

Aquent Studios

Aquent Studios was spun off from creative staffing firm Aquent in 1997, and draws from a talent database of nearly 2 million design, content, and experience professionals to develop in-housing solutions for clients, billing them for project-based work and managed services.

The independent consultancy has 700 employees who work with more than 30 brands including Microsoft, Starbucks, Snap, Liberty Mutual, Uber and Sephora. For Uber, it recently created a production studio for UberEats that went from creating content for 200 cities from 15 in less than 12 months.

It also has a project management software called RoboHead that it licenses to clients.

The firm claims more than $100 million in revenue per year and says that growth slowed down in 2020 to single-digits after four years of double-digit growth.

Blum Consulting

Blum Consulting is a 4-year-old boutique firm led by Alex Blum and Andrea Ruskin, who come from the creative production side of advertising.

While that makes creative execution, production, and archiving of creative assets its strengths, it says it can help clients with everything from strategy and messaging to technology issues and process challenges.

Blum wouldn't name clients, but said that it's working with a $93 billion global technology company and a fast-food chain in the US, and has seen a 50% net growth since its inception.

Some recent projects include helping a 150-person internal agency reorganize to handle an influx of new work and helping another client build a new agency.

Brunner

The Pittsburgh-based indie agency has been around for decades, but began helping its clients take media and production in-house in 2016, president Scott Morgan said.

Since then, it's helped clients in the financial services, healthcare and retail industries like Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield and Home Depot set up digital media and search marketing and production functions, embedding its employees as interim CMOs in some cases, Morgan said.

Brunner claims that its in-housing practice has grown by threefold over the past two years.

Cella

Established in 1985, Cella is a consultancy that has been helping clients with staffing, consulting, and managing creative and digital in-house agencies since 2009 under EVP of consulting and managed services Jackie Shaffer.

It established its first managed in-house agency in 2012 and serves companies like Merck, Walmart, Comcast, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Twitter with work like account and campaign management, analytics, creative and marketing technology.

The firm recently started offering embedded teams that fill in the gap between its staffing and managed services.

GroupM's Essence

Essence, part of WPP's media-buying arm GroupM, began consulting with clients on how to set up their own media operations in 2019 under Oscar Garza, who previously helped brands like EA build their agencies.

Essence helps familiarize companies with self-service media platforms and put the right talent, technology, and processes in place, Garza said.

After helping clients like NBCUniversal, GroupM is building a new division at the network level to help advertisers bring more media planning and buying work in-house.

Freedman

While creative production company Freedman has been involved in the production side of advertising since 1990, it recently started to help clients with creative and strategy services.

The firm says it can help brands like Fitbit produce content for variety of channels fast, solving the challenges that come with expanding to local markets around the world.

The independent firm claims it can help clients achieve up to 35% savings on global campaign costs. 

FRWD

Established in 2009, Bain & Company owned-FRWD is led by John Grudnowski and helps clients with marketing duties like data activation, marketing technology, analytics and insight, and advertising optimization.

FRWD claims to have worked with more than 50 major brands in 2020, largely in consumer products, retail and financial services, with its client base more than doubling year-over-year in the fourth quarter.

Jellyfish

French conglomerate Fimalac-owned Jellyfish is known as a digital agency, but in-housing has become up to 10% of its revenue in the past few years as it's has helped 35 brands like Lowes, Crate & Barrel, Disney+, and News Corp. take charge of their digital advertising, according to the company.

When Dick's Sporting Goods wanted to bring its programmatic media buying in-house, for example, it helped it create a strategy and train staff over a period of six months. 

LabMatik

Founded by Tom Triscari in 2015, the New York-based consultancy has economists, technologists, and management consultants focused on in-housing programmatic media buying operations. 

Led by CEO Matt Nally, LabMatik serves clients like Nestle, Disney, SAP, Constellation Brands, and Berkshire Hathaway, particularly as they prepare for Google's plans to phase out third-party cookies.

It claims to bring in $4 million in revenue annually and help clients cut costs anywhere from 20% to 60%.

MightyHive

MightyHive, part of former WPP founder Sir Martin Sorrell's ad conglomerate S4 Capital, has helped marketers including Bayer, Electrolux, Sprint, and Sony Pictures Entertainment set up online ad-buying operations.

The firm says it's expanded to help clients with data and creative services as cookie-based advertising is phased out and works with sister agency MediaMonks to help clients stand up their own content studios.

In-housing engagements form a significant portion of the firm's revenue, and it says it's closed several new engagements this year.

One case study published by the Harvard Business Review said it helped save Sprint $6 million in agency costs annually, which it diverted to drive online sales.

"It was no secret that the agency holding company model had its challenges, and the pandemic has certainly exacerbated those challenges,"MightyHive's CEO Pete Kim told Business Insider earlier.

Oliver

Marketing vet Simon Martin set up Oliver in 2004, promising it could make brands more efficient by taking their advertising in-house. Today, the You and Mr. Jones-owned firm has more than 3,000 employees in 46 countries and clients including Unilever, Adidas, Microsoft, 3M, WestJet and Bayer.

Oliver embeds team members with clients, auditing their processes, helping them create content and measure it. It helped Unilever set up U-Studios, its internal content arm, which helped bring down its costs by 30% in 2017.

While it declined to share its revenue, the firm claims to have grown its North America business 380% in the past three years, and most recently expanded to France under ex-Google strategic partnerships director Jean Neltner.

Pacific

The 8-year-old shop led by CEO Norman Brauns offers clients performance and brand marketing expertise including content, search-engine optimization, pay-per-click strategy and analytics.

It also has a keyword generator that automates SEO marketing and natural language generators and embeds SEO managers and supervisors with brands. 

Its clients include Expedia, Square and more recently, Realtor.com, and Columbia University.

Playbook

Playbook was spun off in 2019 from Forward — the in-house digital marketing agency at travel company lastminute.com.

The UK-based consultancy has more than 20 clients including Enel, Danone, and Rough Guides, helping them with product, marketing and branding strategy, and media planning and buying. For Cedat85, a speech-to-text technology company, it helped launch Cabolo, a new recording and transcription service.

Playbook says its annual gross revenue grew 40% in four years.

Serpico by Croud

Digital marketing agency Croud chief executive Luke Smith and chief strategy officer Ben Knight created Serpico as a standalone in-housing division in 2019.

The idea is that clients can plug into the agency's technology and global network of 2,400 on-demand digital experts to handle their digital media themselves.

Croud works with 90 clients including IWG, Vans, AXA IM, The North Face, AMC Networks, and Eventbrite. Serpico helped UK horse racing pool betting operator The Tote build a new marketing tech stack after being acquired.

It reported global revenues of £20m ($26.4m) in the last financial year, and said that Serpico's revenues have grown by 313% year- over-year in the 2020 financial year. 

Stiglin Consulting

Marta Stiglin launched Stiglin Consulting in 2005 after an agency and brand career that included doing marketing communications for Bose's consumer products.

Stiglin helps in-house agencies at clients including Deloitte to McDonald's with things like workflow audits, resource redesigns, management coaching, and-onsite training.

For McDonald's internal shop Agency 123, Stiglin helped it save as much as $6 million in production fees, said Joe Youssef, its senior director. 

Demand for companies seeking help with in-housing has shot up by as much as 20% during the pandemic, said Stiglin, also a founding member and a board member of the trade association In-House Agency Forum.

"Anytime there's any disruption to the economy, people figure out how to do more with less, and this time there's a real call for bringing digital competencies in-house," she said. "In-house agencies are now being called to put a CTO hat on."

The&Partnership

The&Partnership, an independent agency network which has WPP as a minority shareholder, has been helping clients with in-housing since 2008 by embedding creative, media and account management teams next to their internal marketing teams.

Off late, it's letting clients access its talent regardless of geography in the pandemic's work-from-home environment, so someone in South America can help clients in North America, for example.  

It's worked with The Wall Street Journal, Toyota, and The Royal Bank of Scotland. For the Journal, it embedded staffers with the publisher's marketers to help with strategic, creative, digital, design, event, and production needs. 

The network says it has grown over the past four years in a challenging ad landscape due to its in-housing work, which has grown 18% to 20% year-over-year over the past two years.

Tilt

Three-year-old creative and production firm Tilt specializes helping brands' in-house agencies and internal marketing departments with visual content.

Since it started by working with Walmart, it has grown into a 40-person company with clients such as Audi, Google, and HP under IPG and The Martin Agency vet Ron Carey. 

Last year, it worked with Audi's in-house creative agency KreativWerk to produce a teaser campaign for the Audi RS 6 Avant; and recently helped Walmart produce over 250 product images for its website in three months during the lockdown.  

The firm claims it saw top-line growth of 70% between 2018 and 2019, and projects revenue  between $10 million to $15 million in 2020. 

Wunderman Inside

Ad holding company WPP's digital agency, Wunderman (now WundermanThompson), launched Wunderman Inside in 2018 to help companies set up social media, CRM and e-commerce teams and the like, and it represents a growing part of WundermanThompson's business, said Melissa Dorko, Wunderman Thompson North America's chief growth officer.

Wunderman Inside places people from WundermanThompson inside clients' offices on a long-term basis. In the past, it's helped Best Buy build a division that now employs more than 100 people.

It's now working on projects for over 15 companies across North America, including Dell.

WBC In-House Advisors

WBC is a year-old consultancy that embeds its leadership within brands on a contractual basis, helping them revamp their content studios, organizational structures, strategy, and tools. 

Founder Wayne Barringer founded the firm after helping Boeing with its in-house content studio over the years, including when the company faced its 737 Max crisis in 2019.

It has worked with clients ranging from multinational brands to non-profits including SAP, MGM Resorts, Abbott Nutrition, and organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters among others, Barringer said.

Apple and Facebook traded barbs this week over which one of them exploits their users more.

Apple struck the first blow on Thursday in a letter addressed to nonprofits, including Human Rights Watch and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, saying it doesn't hoover up detailed user data to sell to third parties. Facebook takes a "very different approach," Apple said.

"Not only do they allow the grouping of users into smaller segments, they use detailed data about online browsing activity to target ads," Apple's Senior Director of Global Privacy Jane Hovarth wrote in the letter, which was first reported on by Bloomberg.

"Facebook executives have made clear their intent is to collect as much data as possible across both first and third party products to develop and monetize detailed profiles of their users, and this disregard for user privacy continues to expand to include more of their products." 

Facebook hit back hard in a statement sent to Business Insider, accusing Apple of abusing its dominance to benefit itself. 

It also accused Apple of sending the letter as a "distraction" from privacy concerns that emerged last week after a series of Mac computers had difficulties opening apps. Security researcher Jeffrey Paul claimed in a blog this was because macOS has started harvesting data from users.

"The truth is Apple has expanded its business into advertising and through its upcoming iOS 14 changes is trying to move the free internet into paid apps and services where they profit," Facebook said.

"As a result, they are using their dominant market position to self-preference their own data collection while making it nearly impossible for their competitors to use the same data. They claim it's about privacy, but it's about profit," the statement read.

"This is all part of a transformation of Apple's business away from innovative hardware products to data-driven software and media."

Apple's letter to the nonprofits was defending its decision to delay the rollout of a major new privacy feature that will mean iPhone users will have to explicitly choose to opt in to ad trackers, rather than have them quietly start following users by default when they download an app.

The feature had been slated to be pushed out to iPhones with iOS 14 in September, but after several developers including Facebook complained it would gut their advertising revenues, Apple delayed the rollout until early 2021 to give developers time to adapt.

The nonprofits criticized the postponed rollout earlier this year, saying it was leaving users exposed to targeted political advertising during the US election.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: What makes 'Parasite' so shocking is the twist that happens in a 10-minute sequence

Nielsen announced yesterday that it will begin rolling out a new identity resolution system in Q1 2021. The system will be a way to measure audiences across all media Nielsen tracks, including linear TV, addressable TV, and digital media. Such measurement options are becoming more important as third-party cookies are phased out and increasingly subject to privacy legislation.

Nielsen's system will create an identity graph that maps user profiles onto various identifiers associated with them—for example, their email address or phone number—rather than creating those user profiles using cookies or other trackers. These IDs will then be used to track that user's viewing across platforms to measure a show's ratings or an ad's viewership, for example.

ID graphs are a necessity for cross-channel measurement, and Nielsen relies on its proprietary panel-based data. ID graphs will power, among other things, the deduplication of audiences across media measured by Nielsen. This will provide marketers with a more accurate idea of how their media investments are performing.

According to September 2020 research from Advertiser Perceptions, marketers most commonly work with identity resolution services integrated within other services they use, including within ad tech (72% of advertisers and agencies surveyed) and within marketing tech (56%).

Want to read more stories like this one? Here's how you can gain access:

1. Join other Insider Intelligence clients who receive this Briefing, along with other Media, Advertising, & Marketing forecasts, briefings, charts, and research reports to their inboxes each day. >> Become a Client
2. Explore related topics more in depth. >> Browse Our Coverage

Current subscribers can access the entire Insider Intelligence content archive here.

Join the conversation about this story »

Tesla, famously or infamously, doesn't really spend any money on advertising. Contrast that with the traditional auto industry, which, for decades, has been among the biggest and most reliable ad spenders on the planet. In the "Mad Men" era, it was possible to devote an entire career to the Buick account and retire happily.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk isn't exactly anti-advertising; several years ago, on a quarterly earnings conference call, he even speculated that Tesla would eventually develop an ad budget, because that would support the media and media — journalism — needs support.

I'm not sure if he feels the same way these days, but he has certainly discovered the value of so-called "earned" media: the positive messaging around your products or services that satisfied customers offer on their own, without any prompting. Think of people posting Instagram photos of their Teslas, accompanied by rave reviews.

Other categories are "paid" and "owned." Paid is the old-school stuff: TV, print, radio, billboards, and now digital and social. It is what it sounds like; a company buys it, and these days, that often means giving money to Facebook or Google.

Owned is advertising that belongs to the advertiser and that they control. Tesla has sort of engaged in this practice. Think of the red Tesla Roadster that Musk's other company, SpaceX, put into orbit in 2018. Or, more recently, of astronauts headed for the International Space Station in a SpaceX capsule getting a ride to their rocket in a Tesla Model X.

Opting for more old-school advertising has been a topic at Tesla before, but without much success. It's easy to see why. Here are 10 times when Musk proved ads are pointless for Tesla:

FOLLOW US: On Facebook for more car and transportation content!

Musk sends his personal, red Tesla Roadster to the red planet.

The marketing stunt to end all marketing stunts. While General Motors might spend billions convincing people to buy Chevys, the company can't easily send Chevys into orbit.

The Falcon Heavy rocket that SpaceX launched in 2018 required a dummy payload, and Musk decided that a Tesla vehicle would be ideal. His very own red original Roadster, in fact.

The car, piloted by a space-suited "Starman," was released once the launch cleared Earth's gravity well, to the strains of David Bowie, with the words "Don't Panic" displayed on the car's infotainment screen — a reference to Douglas Adams' book "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," a Musk favorite. 

Tesla designs ventilators to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ford and General Motors teamed up with, respectively, GE Healthcare and a ventilators maker called Ventec soon after concerns emerged that an upwelling in COVID-19 patients would exhaust the limited US supply of ventilators. 

Tesla also jumped into the fray, with engineers repurposing auto parts to produce prototype ventilators that could be quickly manufactured.

Boring Company hats, raising $1 million for Musk's tunneling side project.

Musk got stuck in Los Angeles traffic a few years back and was so incensed that he started a tunneling concern, the Boring Company, to dig tunnels under congested freeways to speed up transit. 

The company raised a cool $1 million in 2018 by selling hats. Later, it raised more by selling flamethrowers.

None of this was directly about Tesla, but it continued to brand Musk as a daring, problem-solving, irreverent innovator.

Tesla's market capitalization booms relative to the competition.

Tesla's best free advertising comes from Wall Street and investors' obsession with the upstart automaker's growth story. Every single trading day is a potential Tesla promotion.

As such, Tesla is now financially far, far larger than GM, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles combined.

Musk and Grimes give their baby an unusual name.

Musk is a weird sort of geek celebrity, but he has been married (twice) to actress Talulah Riley, and recently had a son, named "X Æ A-12," with musician Grimes. The birth was widely covered.

All the while, Tesla was restarting its operations in China after a coronavirus shutdown and SpaceX was readying the first launch of astronauts to the International Space Station from American soil since the end of the Space Shuttle program.

Musk was too busy to think about advertising, so he just made news himself.

Musk talks to Joe Rogan and smokes some pot. Millions talk about nothing else for days.

Before Joe Rogan inked a $100-million deal with Spotify, he and Elon Musk broke YouTube with two hours of podcast in which Musk covered a lot of conversational ground and puffed on a large joint.

Not something that Henry Ford probably would have done, but it again bolstered Musk's renegade reputation among his vast fan base, many of whom are also huge Roganites.

Musk's 2015 Sorbonne speech, in which he called for a carbon tax.

Somewhat a fading memory now, but in 2015, Musk conjoined Tesla's mission to accelerate humanity's exit from the fossil-fuel era with a pre-Trumpian US commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement.

Musk called for a carbon tax back then, taking Tesla's guiding philosophy and marrying it to the imperative to fight global warming through massive government policy. In typical fashion, Musk showed that he — and Tesla — cared about far more than just selling cars.

But showing that they cared about more than selling cars ... helped Tesla sell a lot more cars. By the end of 2019, it had delivered almost 250,000.

Tesla merges with SolarCity and Musk introduces the Tesla Solar Roof.

As with the Sorbonne speech, Musk used the 2016 takeover of then-struggling SolarCity — he was chairman, and his cousins had started the company — to extend Tesla's green credentials. 

At an event in Los Angeles, Tesla revealed its Solar Roof, a high-end product that combined energy gathering with Tesla's already-existing electric-vehicle and energy-storage businesses.

It followed that if you wanted a Tesla roof, you'd consider a Tesla car and a Tesla battery pack. Synergy!

Musk takes the Steve Jobs presentation to a new level.

Tesla doesn't do Apple-like presentations — it does raucous, rock-concert-like product reveals that put the competition to shame. 

Musk is the emcee and ringmaster. He plays the role of 21st-century Thomas Edison to the max, firing up fans and getting the media to broadcast, comment on, and document the whole experience, all for the cost of an open bar and a great light show.

Musk is a real-life superhero.

Musk was the model for Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark character in the "Iron Man" movies, so every time the MCU took to the screen and Iron Man was included, Musk and Tesla benefited from reminders that the "real" Tony Stark was hard at work in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles, remaking the world.

In mid-March, even as it encouraged its full-time employees to work remotely, Facebook's largely contract-based content moderators were still required to be in the office. Amid public pressure, Facebook eventually sent them home as well, saying it would rely more heavily on artificial intelligence to police its platform in the interim.

Just days later, Facebook mistakenly blocked users from posting legitimate news articles about the coronavirus pandemic.

Facebook said the issue stemmed from a technical glitch in its automated spam filters, raising concerns over whether the company's AI was up to the task of accurately and quickly sorting through the incoming tsunami of coronavirus hoaxes, scam medical products, hate speech, and election-related misinformation in the months ahead. On a call with reporters the next day, CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed Facebook's pivot, hyping up the capabilities of its AI but also acknowledging that the company anticipated "some false positives" as a result of the new approach.

In the months since then, hundreds of advertisers claim they've gotten caught up in Facebook's AI dragnet despite not violating any policies, according to messages and screenshots viewed by Business Insider.

Because Facebook doesn't tell advertisers which specific policy they violated when it disables their accounts, it's difficult to know what proportion of those bans were actually the result of an error by Facebook — or how many additional errors have gone unreported. But in interviews with Business Insider, seven business owners and ad agencies said they've seen an uptick in bans that Facebook ultimately admitted were made in error.

"We know it can be frustrating to experience any type of business disruption, especially at such a critical time of the year. While we offer free support for all businesses, we regularly work to improve our tools and systems, and to make the support we offer easier to use and access. We apologize for any inconvenience recent disruptions may have caused," a Facebook spokesperson told Business Insider.

But those advertisers — all of whom run small or medium businesses, or run ads on behalf of them — told Business Insider that the slow, opaque, and inconsistent customer service Facebook provides to smaller advertisers has left them locked out of their accounts, sometimes for weeks or even months at a time, often costing them tens of thousands of dollars in revenue as they try to get erroneous bans reversed.

For those businesses, which often rely heavily on Facebook to reach customers, mistakes made by Facebook's AI are leaving them cut off from a key revenue source at the worse possible time: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the start of the holiday shopping season.

Facebook's errant AI police

Since March, there have been almost weekly reports of Facebook's "false negatives"— times it either failed to detect or refused to enforce what appeared to be clear policy violations, from calls for violence by President Donald Trump and white supremacists in Kenosha, Wisconsin, to conspiracies about COVID-19.

At the same time, Facebook kicked its AI into overdrive. The company reported that it removed 112 million organic posts in the first nine months of 2020, up more than 35% from the same period in 2019 (a spokesperson said there is no comparable report for ads). That's led to additional negative attention in recent months for wrongful action against users and advertisers that didn't violate its policies, the so-called "false positives" Zuckerberg warned about.

Days before the November 3 general election, a tech glitch "improperly" blocked political ads, affecting the campaigns of both Trump and then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Barely a week later, another tech glitch caused major issues for non-political advertisers as well, resulting in their ads not getting approved and accounts being disabled.

Some advertisers have had their accounts deactivated for weeks at a time, while others have had accounts disabled multiple times this year. And a majority said that Facebook typically provides little information about why it disabled their accounts while taking weeks to review their appeals, before ultimately admitting it banned them in error and restoring the accounts. Even in some cases where Facebook took action against specific ads, screenshots and messages viewed by Business Insider showed that the ads appeared to have nothing to do with the policy they were flagged for ostensibly violating.

One advertiser, who runs a dog products business that predominantly relies on Facebook to reach customers and requested anonymity out of fear for retaliation from Facebook, told Business Insider that his ad for a dog poster was slapped with a warning label after an independent fact checker determined it was in violation of Facebook's policy against false news.

He told Business Insider he managed to contact the fact checker, who acknowledged the error, and the ad was restored temporarily. But then, Facebook's algorithm subsequently blocked the ad again. Since advertisers can max out the number of appeals they file, he gave up on the ad to avoid broader repercussions for his account (Facebook said it doesn't penalize accounts if it's aware it made the error).

In one Facebook group, advertisers claimed Facebook's AI has also mistaken necklaces for adult toys and arcades for gambling content. In October, Facebook blocked an ad for onions after incorrectly determining that the ad violated its policy against nudity.

But in Facebook groups and in interviews with Business Insider, advertisers' complaints suggest that these erroneous bans are far more widespread than the one-off tech glitches Facebook has acknowledged after outcry from advertisers, politicians, or news media outlets.

On hold with customer support

A Facebook spokesperson told Business Insider that both the company's AI and human reviewers make mistakes, and that advertisers can appeal decisions.

But those appeals appear to be moving at a significantly slower pace during the pandemic. Facebook reported that appeals concerning organic posts had all but vanished — down 95% in the first nine months of 2020 compared to the same time period last year — adding that "due to a temporary reduction in our review capacity as a result of COVID-19, we could not always offer our users the option to appeal."

Facebook refused to disclose how many appeals it fielded concerning ads, but advertisers say they're encountering a similar bottleneck.

Simon Wagner, who runs an online women's jewelry business, has had his account mistakenly disabled by Facebook six times this year — in each case Facebook reversed its decision after he appealed, but in some cases that review process took more than a month. In the meantime, Wagner estimated that he has lost around $35,000 in revenue as a result of being unable run ads during those periods.

Wagner was among dozens of advertisers who reported waiting a month or more for Facebook to review an appeal, even though a customer support representative told him via chat that the process usually takes 24 to 48 hours, according to messages viewed by Business Insider.

All seven of the advertisers who spoke to Business Insider said this was because, as smaller spenders, they felt they (or their clients) received second-class customer support.

Larger advertisers who, according to AdAge, spend a minimum of $10,000 per month with Facebook, are eligible to receive a dedicated account representative to help them navigate issues, such as erroneous bans. Those who don't — which Facebook has increasingly touted as it faces growing antitrust scrutiny — only have access to chat support with a randomly assigned customer service agent.

"If you're not spending millions and don't have a rep or if you're not working with an agency that has access to a rep, you're basically going to be treated unfairly, and they don't give a s---," said the owner of the dog products business.

Agencies also in the dark

Many businesses enlist ad agencies to help them create, target, and run ads on Facebook, and when those ads get removed by Facebook, they often ask the agency what went wrong. But even people who run those agencies say they have no more access to information than their clients.

"You don't really have anything to get back to your client with, and I think it really kind of fundamentally starts to fracture some of the core tenets of that agency-client relationship," Eric Allred, CEO of El Dorado Digital, told Business Insider.

"With COVID and shipping times, and it just being a kind of a weird year ... it's extra challenging to have your main point of distribution turned off without really a satisfactory explanation," he said.

"They're just getting stricter and stricter and are banning accounts more often and providing no explanation, no real appeal process, no proper customer support," Jay Topp, the founder of the Australia-based agency Lion Social, told Business Insider.

"How are we supposed to build a business on a platform that doesn't give a f--- about us, that can just take everything in an instant without explanation, no accountability," he said, adding that his clients spend around $1 million annually on Facebook.

No overnight changes

Justin Brooke, the founder of Ad Skills, a provider of digital marketing courses with more than 11,000 members, told Business Insider that Facebook's apparent spike in account bans and decrease in customer support quality resembles similar growing pains he went through with Google nearly a decade ago, when it banned 214,000 accounts in 2015 in an attempt to purge "bad ads" from its rapidly growing platform.

"Investors don't like to hear that 214,000 advertisers are no longer spending money, and so Google has gotten way better over the years — they've got phone numbers, we can call great reps, we can email ... love working with Google today," he said.

But Brooke said those changes didn't happen overnight — it took until around 2018 for his experience with Google to become more positive. Similarly, he doesn't expect Facebook to act until enough advertisers leave or reduce spending on the platform to put a dent in the company's bottom line.

That could be awhile, given how Facebook has responded to past rifts with advertisers, and the fact that it has 10 million advertisers, meaning even a few hundred shifting some ad spend to Google or up-and-coming platforms like TikTok likely won't undercut sales (Facebook reported $21.5 billion in revenue last quarter, up 22% year-over-year).

In July, Zuckerberg told employees that Facebook was "not gonna change" its hate speech policies even after 500 advertisers — including major brands like Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Unilever, Verizon, Ford, and Ben & Jerry's— temporarily boycotted the platform. Many of those companies have since resumed advertising on Facebook, despite a lack of significant policy changes.

Facebook said it has long used AI (successfully, by its evaluation) and continually makes changes meant to improve its ad products and services, such as adding several thousand reviewers over the past year.

But even if Facebook never sufficiently addressed their concerns, smaller advertisers are typically even more dependent on the largest social-media platform on the internet, and more reluctant to shift their spending to other platforms than major brands.

"I can't really blame [my clients] for sitting there and being like: 'Okay, well we make, let's say, $100,000 on Facebook, but we make $25,000 on Snapchat or something, let's move all this spend over to Snapchat," Ameet Khabra, founder of Canada-based agency Hop Skip Media, told Business Insider.

Others echoed those concerns.

"[Facebook] is my main way of advertising and this is just so risky. Like it's a really, really risky platform to rely on, but it's also the most powerful, right? So it's kind of a love-hate relationship that we all have with Facebook," the dog products business owner said.

Still, Brooke said he has been increasingly urging his customers to switch to Google as more reports of glitches with Facebook emerge.

"Our Google courses are just the highest demand we have right now," Brooke said. "YouTube ads are just on fire right now."

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: We took a 1964 Louisiana literacy test and failed spectacularly

Introducing this year's rising stars of Madison Avenue.

These are early- and mid-career advertising professionals that are shaking things up at their companies and beyond, through everything from standout ads, campaigns that reach consumers in new ways, or data that helps their clients uncover new consumer insights.

Criteria and methodology

This is the third year Business Insider is recognizing rising talent in ad agencies across departments. (To see last year's list, head here.)

We considered people from a variety of roles and backgrounds, including media and creative, strategy, and entertainment marketing. They come from traditional ad agencies as well as consulting companies like Deloitte Digital and IBM iX.

The list is based on agency and peer nominations, awards and campaigns they have won, the influence they've had on their companies — particularly in light of the pandemic and focus on racial equality — and the potential they have to be industry leaders. 

Scroll on to see the 40 rising stars of Madison Avenue, listed alphabetically.

Suchi Ahuja, senior creative, B-Reel

Ahuja's knack for blending technology, consumer data, and cultural relevance in her work for clients like Hyundai and Rihanna's beauty brand Fenty has resulted in some of B-Reel's most compelling work this year.

Key projects were launching the Fenty website to life based on Rihanna's inclusive and gender-neutral values and Hyundai's "This is how you dare" campaign aimed at Gen Z.

Her current focuses include helping a major cannabis brand launch a holiday promotion with the aim of normalizing such products.

Martin Anderson, VP of experience strategy, Organic

In just a few short months, Anderson has revamped how Organic approaches customer experience for its clients — making sure each interaction customers have with the brand is a positive one.

He established a new process for designing websites and e-commerce experiences, work that contributed to Organic winning 14 new business pitches in the past 18 months — including one for a multibillion dollar B2B company's website redesign led by Anderson.

Raheal Aragawi, associate director of strategy, 1000Heads

Aragawi combines the art and science in advertising, helping brands like Google and Groupo Bimbo turn audience data and insights into eye-grabbing ads. She's grown 1000heads' roster by helping bring in Google Nest and Waymo as clients.

One of her biggest achievements is building the #teampixel program for Google, which uses influencers to promote its Pixel phone — nabbing a Shorty award along the way. 

She also came up with a new way to help clients evaluate potential co-branded partnerships.

Brynna Aylward, creative director, Gut

In less than a year at Gut, this award-winning ad pro has been the creative juice behind brands including Tim Hortons, Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Bud Light Seltzer and Headspace.

She convinced meditation app Headspace to run its first TV ad earlier this year around the "Headspace promise" to help Americans who lost their jobs in the pandemic. The campaign led to over 2.75 billion impressions and $30 million dollars in earned media value and has been expanded to the UK.

Aylward was also one of the creative leads behind Bud Light Seltzer's "Battle of the Best" e-sports tournament on Twitch where 16 top gamers competed to be the world's top gamer. It got nearly 10 million views overall and became the No. 1 brand stream in Twitch history.

Carly Blitz and Max Pollak, senior copywriter and senior art director, Big Fat Table

The creative duo has been at the IPG-owned agency for a little over a year, producing work like a Super Bowl spot featuring Tom Brady and a faux reality TV series for Hulu shot at Chrissy Teigen's house.

Their "Hulu Has Live Sports" campaign promoting its live-television service helped them win two silver Cannes lions, two silver Effies and two bronze One Show Pencils, in addition to boosting Hulu's Live subscribers by 41%.

They're also the brains behind a Hulu campaign using fake movie tiles that disguise discounts for fans to discover.

Katie Bullek, director of client strategy and service, January Digital

Bullek has been promoted three times in less than three years at January Digital, where she manages more than $30 million in annual ad spend for brands like David's Bridal and DryBar.

She also built the agency's connected TV offering, doing everything from vetting vendors, creating a pricing model, developing best practices, and leading training across the agency.

Her efforts have helped the agency grow billings by 15%.

Lori Cassorla, group director of video investments, MediaHub

Cassorla has been on a mission to bring more accountability and flexibility to TV ads for clients.

Her efforts resulted in a TV plan for Chipotle that led to a 1.4% sales lift and more flexible terms during the pandemic; and a  deal to bring more targeting to Royal Caribbean's TV ads using Xandr's Clypd's self-service ad tech platform.

Cassorla also led Chipotle in changing its ads to focus on delivery and online ordering messaging during the pandemic, helping contribute to a 216% increase in digital orders in the second quarter of this year.

Justin Clagette, brand strategist, Droga5

When brands grappled with how to respond to the police brutality protests this year, Clagette helped longtime Droga5 client Hennessy come up with its own response.

He took a campaign that Hennessy had planned featuring Maurice Ashley, the first Black grandmaster of chess, and made it into one that lauded his brilliance.

He's also championed diversity at the Accenture-owned agency by helping create a minority mentorship program and department task forces to promote the representation of minority employees.

Ali Cornford, business director, BBH New York

This rising star has been promoted twice in just two years, now reporting directly to the agency's president, Amani Duncan. 

Cornford heads Brighthouse Financial, BBH New York's biggest account, after leading campaigns for brands including Uber, Western Union and AMEX, and landing Marvel's Avengers and Google Small Business as clients.

Her Avengers campaign culminated in a global film campaign and an online film series titled "Superior Seminars" that was made on an expedited timeline of six weeks. She's currently in charge of a Black Friday effort by Google to support Black-owned businesses.

Jordan Cuddy, partner and managing director, Jam3

Cuddy helped start Jam3's Los Angeles outpost four years ago and since became the design and experience agency's first female partner, winning or growing work with eBay, Disney, Levi's, Facebook and Vizio.

She's raised the bar in using digital media to enhance real-world experiences — air-dropping Childish Gambino shoes at Coachella, creating a time-travel experience for Adidas, and designing an exclusive product drop for Levi's during its Levi's Haus Miami pop-up.

She's also helped the agency score awards from One Show and D&AD Pencils to Cannes Lions.

Jesse Dillow and Rikesh Lal, executive creative directors and junior partners, Camp + King

Dillow and Lal are the creative horsepower behind some of the San Francisco shop's core clients including Del Taco, RXBAR, and Nature's Path. They've also helped win and grow business with others like UGG, and YouTube, and Bacardi.

A digital tool they built for RE/MAX that let real estate agents create custom videos that resembled its national broadcast spot was used to create more than 250,000 videos.

They also helped Papa John's improve its public perception and sales after its 2018 founder scandal, using Shaquille O'Neal as a spokesman.

Mason Douglass, copywriter, Deutsch

This up-and-comer has helped a number of brand stalwarts appeal to a younger generation.

He helped rename 7-Eleven's famous Slurpees; refreshed Snapple's brand; and pitched ideas to make Barbie dolls more inclusive. 

Douglass also helped Deutsch LA establish its own voice and aesthetic when it separated from its sister agency Deutsch NY this year, and pushed for pronouns in the agency's email signatures to promote inclusion of transgender and non-binary employees.

Stacy-Ann Ellis, copywriter, Droga5

This former entertainment and culture journalist jumped to copywriting last year, putting her journalism background to work for brands including Reform Alliance, The New York Times, and Facebook.

For Reform Alliance's #AnswerTheirCall, she created a film, hotline, and a series of social videos drawing attention to incarcerated people during the pandemic.

She also expanded The New York Times' "Truth" campaign with "The Truth Can Change How We See The World," that promoted the Times' journalism.

Casey Feldman, manager, entertainment development, BBH LA

As a part of BBH LA's entertainment team, Feldman has grown the agency's creative firepower by expanding its work to TV and film projects.

His team has sold projects straddling advertising and entertainment during the pandemic, such as the digital series "Girls Room" in partnership with Dove and ATTN, which won the Tribeca X Award at this year's Tribeca Film Festival; and the documentary "Spirits in the Forest" for Depeche Mode.

Its latest documentary project with Raw TV taking a critical look at the Woodstock '99 music festival was recently sold to Netflix.

Claire Grinton, VP and head of experience, Essence

A brand strategist turned creative and media leader, Grinton has carved a niche in the area of contextual ad targeting, which is gaining steam as Apple and other ad platforms phase out third-party cookies. 

She helped develop Project Pegasus, a tool that uses algorithms to place contextually relevant advertising for Essence's clients, and is working on such deals for companies including Spotify and YouTube.

She also built Essence's London-based production studio this year.

Adrian Haldenby, director of data science, GALE

A self-taught data scientist, Haldenby joined the creative media consultancy in 2014 and helps translate data into actionable strategies for brands in sectors like politics, finance, and gaming.

This year, he boosted Gale's data platform Alchemy to help clients better understand consumer sentiment and buying propensity.

The improvement helped door company Pella get an incremental 85,000 leads to its showrooms; and freight trucking company Old Dominion target 1.8 million businesses and contacts.

Ben Hovaness, managing director of marketplace intelligence, Omnicom Media Group

Hovaness is helping brands take more control over their ads on social media platforms as the driver of Omnicom Media Group's Council on Accountability in Social Advertising.

The initiative came in response to the Facebook advertiser boycott this past summer, and got more than 70 brands to endorse a set of advertiser rights. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Snap, TikTok, and Reddit also agreed to steps to make their platforms more ad-friendly.

He's also helped clients during the pandemic, advising them on how to take advantage of declining ad rates on social media platforms.

Jordan Jackson, director of data marketing and science, The Marketing Arm

Jackson joined The Marketing Arm in the throes of the pandemic, just it was taking on the lead creative responsibilities for State Farm. 

In six months, she worked with its media agency OMD to help State Farm measure and test its ad creative from start to finish.

She's also behind the agency's efforts to apply diversity and inclusion measures to the process of how ads are developed.

Courtney Jones, business development manager and PR lead, 22Squared

Jones has an unusual role that straddles PR and business development.

She helped 22Squared win three new clients during the pandemic, including one with a major movie studio where she owned the relationship, assembled the team, and negotiated the scope of work.

She also led the project "Invisible Hate," where the agency launched a movement to remove Confederate monuments in conjunction with its client, the Atlanta NAACP. Up next: She's in charge of an internal mentorship program that launches in 2021.

Steph de Jongh, designer, Laundry Service

As the designer and art director for Laundry Service's new business team, de Jongh has produced campaigns for multiple clients and left her stamp on numerous new business wins.

This year, when the NBA G League Select Team gave top high school players in the country a new path to go pro, she came up with the visual identity of the team, designing the logo, jerseys, home court design, and launch video.

She was also part of a team that contributed to Campaign Zero's pro bono 8Can'tWait project for police reform, and her packaging design for a shoe box for Nike and Foot Locker won a Cannes Lion.

Anna Klembarova, associate strategy director, Deloitte Digital Heat

Klembarova's business and creative strategy chops have helped Heat land multiple agency-of-record wins this past year, from Bomb Pop to Halo Top. 

When the pandemic struck, she helped clients adjust their campaigns, content, commerce and product development strategies to suit the changing consumer reality.

She also established a new influencer practice at the Deloitte Digital-owned agency.

Maria Lee, associate creative director, Goodby Silverstein & Partners

Lee has been on the frontlines of helping clients adapt to the pandemic in creative ways.

For DJ-gaming platform FUSER, she created a livestreamed DJ event on Twitch, where six contestants competed with DJ Diplo, getting more than 577,000 unique viewers to vote for their favorites.

She also created Camp Tonsafun for the agency's biggest client Xfinity, which sought to entertain children stuck at home during the pandemic with a virtual camp featuring talent from NBC Universal, Team USA Olympics, Universal Pictures, and others.

Lee is also active in diversity efforts.

She co-leads GS&P's diversity and inclusion program and launched the agency's Asian Employee Resource Group. She also created the "First Responder Twitter bot" to respond to online racism against Asians. (The work was personal, with Lee's own brother facing racism as a frontline doctor.)

Sean Lynch, director of product strategy, Huge

In his five years at Huge, Lynch has worked on brands including United Airlines and Verizon. But his biggest contribution this year came in the form of a passion project he started to help one of the industries most disrupted by the pandemic.

When the pandemic closed down restaurants and bars, Lynch teamed up with PR pro Jenn Galdes to launch "Dining at a Distance" to let Chicago residents know that many of their favorite restaurants were still open for pickup and delivery.

Within a week, the initiative spread across the US, and still operates in cities including Atlanta, Baltimore, and Cincinnati.

Kristin Maverick, VP, social and influencer marketing, 360i

The pandemic scrambled many marketers' plans, but Maverick helped clients keep Mondelez, Kroger, DSW, and 7 Eleven culturally relevant.

When COVID-19 shuttered schools nationwide, Maverick's team got DJ Steve Aoki to host a virtual livestream prom for Chips Ahoy that got 250,000 people tuning in on social media.

For Kroger, she helped launch "Chefbot," a tool that used image recognition to recommend personalized recipes based on pictures of people's fridges.

She's also helped brands like Sour Patch Kids, Oreo, DSW, and Shiseido get on TikTok, helping Sour Patch Kids get more than 700,000 followers and 30 million views.

Jill Metcalf, SVP of client operations, Essence

Metcalf joined GroupM's Essence in 2014 after more than a decade at IBM and Deloitte working for business and government clients.

She's credited with growing Essence's business with Google, its biggest client; and helping the agency keep all its clients through the downturn by briefing them and adapting their media plans to the new reality.

Her next goal is to make sure operational improvements like those stick after the pandemic ends.

Liane Nadeau, SVP and head of precision media & investments, Digitas

Nadeau oversees audience-based buying for Digitas clients in financial services, retail, footwear, fitness, and education sectors with a team of 75-plus.

This year, she restructured the agency's 300-person media services and built two tools that have led to new revenue streams: video and display-ad buying tool Precision, and TRGR, which adjusts media campaigns based on data.

She also helped Digitas win business including Sephora, growing client spending 300% year-over-year. 

Vicky Nikolova, research, analytics & insights manager, RPA

At a time when marketers are demanding more information than ever on how their campaigns are performing, Nikolova has helped clients get faster access to data.

She helped La-Z-Boy see how dealers are performing across video, paid social, and search advertising by national and local market, while she created a dashboard for Pocky to track its marketing efforts.

Prior to RPA, she spent more than two years at Mindshare working on clients such as Dyson and Kimberly-Clark.

John Petty, head of social, Wieden + Kennedy

Petty has been changing up how Wieden + Kennedy's clients use social media by integrating cultural moments into branded storytelling, versus creating ad campaigns that tap into culture.

He did this by setting up Bodega, a new social creative team this year, that's resulted in attention-getting campaigns like the McDonald's-Travis Scott partnership and Bud Light seeking a "chief meme officer."

He's also taken the lead on developing the agency's relationships with HBCUs and helped it craft a declaration of where it stands on Black Lives Matter.

Jason Pierce, creative director, CPB

Pierce leads CPB's creative duties on Infiniti and has also produced work for brands including 1800 Tequila and Goose Island Beer Co. in his five years at the Boulder-based agency. 

Most notably, he created a platform called Infiniti Now to promote online sales for Infiniti when the pandemic prevented people from visiting showrooms.

Visitors could see a virtual test-drive for the Infiniti QX50 with "Hamilton" star Daveed Diggs, which showed the car from multiple angles as he drove it around Los Angeles.

Stefane Rosa, group account director, DAVID Miami

Rosa is the one calling the shots behind some of DAVID Miami's most high-profile accounts, including Burger King, Budweiser, and Coca-Cola.

This includes delivering attention-grabbing campaigns for Burger King like "Moldy Whopper,""McMansions," and "BK BOT," and Coca-Cola's "Try Not to Hear This," which capitalized on the ASMR trend using print as the medium.

She was also behind Budweiser's "One Team" campaign to do blood drives in empty stadiums at the start of the pandemic.

Parent ad holding company WPP recognized her as a member of the 2019 Class of 30 Under 30, a development program for female leaders.

Wren Sieber, associate creative director, Quirk Creative

Sieber started as an art director, but her mandate has expanded over the past year to include directing commercial spots for the Brooklyn-based agency.

She directed multiple spots for brands including Real Techniques, Trade Coffee and Tula Skincare in 2020, including Tula's first TV campaign, which led to a sixfold increase in sales year-over-year.

Sieber also pivoted to remote-directed shoots, saving two important pieces of business for Quirk; and helping the agency maintain its growth this year in the pandemic.

Samira Shahabuddin, strategy director, TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles

In her three years at TBWA\Chiat\Day, Shahabuddin has worked on strategy for some of the agency's most-high profile Los Angeles clients like Quickbooks and TikTok.

She helped shift Intuit's QuickBooks perception from a B2B accounting software to a suite of tools for small businesses with campaigns like "Backing You" featuring Danny DeVito and "Happy Business" with "Ghostbusters'" Annie Potts and "Cobra Kai's" Martin Kove. 

Most recently, she led the strategy that helped TikTok for Business sell brands on the platform though the tagline "Don't Make Ads, Make TikToks."

Shawn Shahani, director of insights, Wild Card

Shahani built the entertainment marketing agency's audience research and strategy arm, which helps companies such as Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and Disney understand who their audiences are.

He developed the agency's approach to experiential marketing that treats everything about a brand as a form of marketing, and expanded it to gaming — helping the agency attract new clients beyond entertainment, such as Adidas, EA, and Microsoft.

Will Stokvis, manager, data science, Razorfish

Stokvis applies his background in behavioral economics and consumer psychology in helping clients solve business challenges using data — skills that were particularly crucial in the pandemic.

Among other clients, he helped a travel and hospitality giant figure out how to spend its marketing dollars based on where coronavirus cases were rising and easing globally.

Rania Svoronou, design lead, IBM iX

Svoronou blends design and technology to help the consulting company's clients in a user-centric way.

She helped boost the Recording Academy's editorial team cover the Grammys by designing a platform that uses artificial intelligence to comb through 18 million pieces of content to provide real-time data. She also helped win a design project for a major American multinational oil and gas company.

She's currently seeking patents around ways companies can work remotely and form teams using AI and virtual and augmented reality.

Monica Torres, director of recruiting, TBWA/Chiat/Day New York

Torres has helped make the agency's recruitment processes more objective amid the nationwide racial reckoning, trying to rid the interview process of bias and underscoring intentionality in hiring.

As a result of her efforts, 92% of the agency's 2020 summer interns came from diverse backgrounds and all of them got job offers. It also committed to filling all its open positions with diverse talent in July — resulting in the hires of 43 employees from underrepresented groups.

She also revived "Youngbloods," a creative residency that helps BIPOC talent get training and mentorship from the agency's creative leaders.

Anna Vlajkovic, VP and group strategy director, MullenLowe

As companies were walloped by the pandemic, Vlajkovic developed a guide that broke down all marketing challenges they could face and different ways they could respond.

This guide informed some of the agency's key output, such Corona's La Vida Mas Fina campaign, which encouraged people to find fulfillment by changing their perspectives.

She also helped the agency win new clients including Whole Foods, Grey Goose, and Corona over the past year, and is currently working on how to help the agency prevent recruiting and hiring biases.

Kate Wolff, CEO, Lupine Creative

Wolff launched her own shop this past February after a career at agencies including DDB, TBWA\Chiat\Day, and Omelet working on clients such as HBO, Google, and Pizza Hut.

A highlight of her work was for HBO's Pride campaign this past summer. The campaign brought together an array of LGBTQIA+ virtual content including playlists, coloring books, and performances by Janelle Monae, Kim Petras, Todrick Hall — and reached 1.37 billion impressions and 6,795 visitor profiles.

She's also known as one of the people who voiced concerns about Theranos' advertising claims during her time at its agency, TBWA\Chiat\Day, as told by John Carreyou in the book "Bad Blood."

Introducing 2020's rising stars of Madison Avenue.

In a year when the pandemic is upending all aspects of advertising, these early- and mid-career up-and-comers are rising to their companies' and clients' challenges by creating standout ads, building campaigns that reach consumers in new ways, or using data to uncover new insights.

They span a variety of roles and backgrounds, including media and creative, strategy, and entertainment marketing. They come from traditional ad agencies as well as consulting companies like Deloitte Digital and IBM iX.

Subscribe to see the full list: Meet the 40 rising stars of Madison Avenue who are revolutionizing advertising in 2020.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why electric planes haven't taken off yet

Facebook, Google, and the wider tech world are bracing for new European rules that target the way they show political ads to users, and how they handle disinformation.

The European Democracy Action Plan is expected to be published this week and is set to lay out the EU's position on elections, democracy, and media freedom and how they are impacted by technology and social media.

The action plan isn't a set of new laws, but more of a blueprint that will contribute to the shaping of future European legislation – a process that could take years.

Vera Jourova is the European Commission's vice president for values and transparency and tasked with drawing up the blueprint. The Czech-born politician will need to demonstrate that the EU respects freedom of speech while bringing the tech platforms to heel.

"I always say that California law does not apply in Europe," Jourova told Business Insider during a virtual onstage interview on December 2 at Web Summit. "We have our own rules, which are also stemming from our history and our legal traditions."

Those traditions, where Europe takes a stricter view on hate speech, butt up against the US First Amendment and the conventionally laissez-faire way the US tech platforms have monitored their platforms to date.

Jourova continued: "When I was in California several years ago, I spoke to the managers of Big Tech companies who are still convinced that they are only the pipes, that they have nothing to do with the content, or they have nothing to do with impact on society. That's over.

"It was a big step forward when we agreed with Google, Twitter, Facebook, with several others that there must be decency, there must be security guaranteed to all groups in society."

Arguing that the current model, where tech platforms regulate disinformation on their own platforms, no longer works, she said: "We cannot continue just on the basis of gentleman's agreements with big tech."

Jourova has this year met with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, YouTube boss Susan Wojcicki, and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel.

Asked which firm she found most receptive to proposals to regulate the way they work more closely, she said: "I don't want to do any ranking ... But at the same time, I have to say the time of the unregulated wild west is over. We are preparing the regulation, and in a permanent consultation with the big players ... We want this to be an inclusive process."

According to Politico and The Financial Times, the action plan contains specific proposals to curb targeted political ads. These are online ads that are only visible to a highly specific audience, and the technique is how the Trump campaign reportedly tried to dissuade Black voters from voting in 2016.

Dr. Tom Dobber, an expert in political communication at the University of Amsterdam, previously told Business Insider's Isobel Asher Hamilton that microtargeted online ads had scope to be manipulated.

"There are clear downsides as well as upsides, e.g. sending relevant information to inactive citizens might activate them," he said. "Microtargeting can increase turnout. These are generally good things. But there is clear potential for manipulation and also potential for the amplification of disinformation."

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Epidemiologists debunk 13 coronavirus myths

This year, digital will make up more than half (51%) of total US ad spending for the first time, according to new GroupM estimates.

The company expects digital advertising (excluding political advertising) to grow 5% this year, following 17% growth last year. (By comparison, our estimates put 2020 US digital ad spending growth at 7.5%, down from 19.2% last year.) GroupM said that digital advertising has been a "bright spot" for advertisers in a difficult year, particularly when stay-at-home orders meant that consumers were spending more time online than before.

Google, Facebook, and Amazon were the biggest winners, as reflected in their successful Q3 earnings reports. Google's worldwide ad revenues were up 6.5% YoY for search, 8.9% for Network Members, and 32.4% for YouTube; Facebook's ad revenues were up more than 20%; and Amazon's ad revenues increased 51%. We estimate that the triopoly will account for nearly two-thirds of total US digital ad spending this year.

GroupM attributed increased digital ad spend to small businesses that had to focus on digital ads to increase ecommerce sales. As Brian Wieser, global president of business intelligence at GroupM, put it, "The resilience of small businesses has been nothing short of breathtaking, as we see in the numbers from Facebook and Google." He added that they're "much more digitally present, and … probably spending more on advertising."

Going forward, digital's share of ad spending will grow. GroupM estimates that digital will account for 55% next year, and our forecasts show that its share is consistently growing—54.7% in 2019, 61.3% in 2020, and 63.5% in 2021.

The pandemic has stressed to brands the importance of reaching consumers where they're spending the most time—and digital has been particularly important for direct-response options, as well as burgeoning social commerce applications.

Ad sellers have been steadily rolling out new features for marketers: Snapchat has long been investing in performance advertising—which has paid off; its vice president of sales said in October that direct response helped bolster its ad revenues during the pandemic. On the social commerce front, TikTok was reportedly testing a "shop now" button for influencers in April, and Facebook launched its Shops feature in May.

Want to read more stories like this one? Here's how you can gain access:

1. Join other Insider Intelligence clients who receive this Briefing, along with other Media, Advertising, & Marketing forecasts, briefings, charts, and research reports to their inboxes each day. >> Become a Client
2. Explore related topics more in depth. >> Browse Our Coverage

Current subscribers can access the entire Insider Intelligence content archive here.

Join the conversation about this story »

Not long ago, private equity firms used to view investing in public relations agencies and software companies as a volatile industry.

Recently, that's changed.

Marketing M&A, which includes PR and PR software, grew 2% in 2019 while overall M&A declined 7%, investment bank JEGI reported, highlighted by deals like Platinum Equity's acquisition of Cision and CVC Capital Partners' acquisition of Teneo.

Financial buyers represented 14% of buyers of these firms for the past few years, up from 11% in 2016, said the report.

"It's a growth industry, and they're beginning to see that more and more," said Art Stevens, a mergers and acquisitions specialist that advises on PR agency deals. "They see firms doing rollups and becoming a $100 million business overnight that are 20% profitable at least."

Stevens cited roll-up vehicles like communications firm W2O Group, which more than tripled its revenue to a projected $350 million in 2020 since taking on investors in 2016.

Firms like financial communications agency ICR have also shown that PR can be a stable business. David Tayeh, head of private equity of North America at Investcorp, which acquired a stake in ICR in 2018, said the agency was attractive because of its diversified revenue streams, consistent year-over-year growth rate, and high cash flow.

"There's a level of stickiness that is generally underappreciated in the industry, with contractually recurring or recurring revenue that have proven quite resilient," Tayeh said.

Investcorp is betting ICR is only scratching the surface of its potential as the agency builds out data analytics services and benefits from crisis work as clients seek help defending themselves against social and financial activists, Tayeh said.

Stevens said the coronavirus pandemic hasn't dampened private equity interest in PR and predicts 2021 will bring a flurry of new deals.

Business Insider identified eight firms that have invested in PR agencies and software companies, using publicly available information and original reporting.

Clayton, Dubilier & Rice LLC

Clayton, Dubilier & Rice acquired healthcare marketing and communications holding company Huntsworth in March 2020 for $719 million, betting on strong growth in healthcare, according to Reuters.

Through its healthcare division, Huntsworth owns prominent healthcare communications companies like Evoke and Medistrava Consulting. Its PR division, whose operating profit grew 38% in 2019, contains Grayling, Red, and Citigate Dewe Rogerson, Quiller, and The Creative Engagement Group.

Since the CD&R deal in March, Huntsworth acquired communications and training consultancy Cormis, now part of its 400-person The Creative Engagement Group; and the 800-person medical communications company Nucleus Global.

CVC Capital Partners

PE firm CVC Capital Partners acquired a majority stake in PR powerhouse Teneo in 2019 in a deal that valued it at more than $700 million. Started in 1981, CVC has $109.1 billion in assets under management.

CVC bought out another private equity firm, BC Partners, which acquired a minority stake in Teneo in 2015. Teneo was founded in 2011 by former Clinton advisers Declan Kelly and Doug Band.

With BC's backing, Teneo has more than tripled its headcount to 800 people and acquired a slew of PR firms and other kinds of professional services companies, allowing it to enter new businesses like investment banking and executive recruiting.

Golden Gate Capital

Golden Gate Capital acquired a 40% stake in Sard Verbinnen & Co in 2016, becoming one of the most talked-about deals in the PR industry after several partners refused to accept the terms and exited the agency.

However, a source familiar with Golden Gate said Sard's headcount and revenues are up more than 50% since taking on the investment. It's also opened new offices in Hong Kong and Washington, DC.

With Golden Gate's cash, Sard Verbinnen acquired Oakhill Communications in 2020, cementing its presence as a communications and public affairs powerhouse in the UK and Europe. It also built out its research division by acquiring Arc Research.

The firm launched a governance group called SGA, led by the former head of ISS special situations, as well as a public affairs practice led by chairman Bruce Haynes and vice chair Miriam Sapiro, former acting US trade representative for President Barack Obama.

Investcorp

In March 2018, Investcorp acquired an undisclosed stake in financial communications agency ICR. David Tayeh, head of private equity of North America at Investcorp, and principal Warren Knapp lead the ICR account.

Investcorp's investment helped ICR grow its headcount from about 180 people to 250, launch a governance advisory practice, and acquire Westwicke Partners, a specialist in healthcare investor relations.

CEO Tom Ryan told Business Insider he expects ICR to grow revenue in the area of 15% in 2020. Based on revenue figures it provided to ProvokeMedia, that would put its annual revenue at around $100 million.

New Mountain Capital

New Mountain Capital, with more than $25 billion in assets under management, bought an undisclosed stake in W2O Group in 2019, fueling the healthcare PR agency's skyrocketing growth.

The 1,500-person W2O has more than tripled its revenues and headcount since 2016 and expects to grow revenue 50% to more than $350 million in 2020, CEO Jim Weiss said.

Since the New Mountain deal, W2O has made seven acquisitions in influencer and entertainment marketing and social media analytics, including Arcus Medica, ISO.health, Radius Digital Science, 21Grams, Symplur, Discern Health, and Starpower.

W2O has also used the proceeds of the New Mountain sale to build out its technology platforms and data analytics capabilities, Weiss said.

W2O's previous backer was MountainGate Capital.

Platinum Equity

Platinum Equity, a firm with more than $19 billion in assets under management, acquired software giant Cision in early 2020 in a deal valued at $2.7 billion.

Since then, Cision has attempted to merge with its biggest competitor, Meltwater, which the Department of Justice investigated for antitrust concerns. It's also tried selling its largest acquisition Trendkite, which it bought for $225 million.

Under Platinum Equity, Cision hired a new CEO, Abel Clark; and released new features and products like a relationship management solution to help PR pros reach 1.1 billion influencers and journalists in its database and an analytics dashboard and interactive reports.

With that deal, Platinum bought out Cision's previous owner, GTCR, and took the world's largest PR software company private after trading on the New York Stock Exchange for less than 3 years.

Stagwell Group

Mark Penn founded Stagwell Group in 2015 with a $250 million private equity investment led by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

Stagwell and MDC Partners, an ad holding company that Penn also leads, have acquired or invested in a range of PR firms, including corporate heavyweights like Sloane & Company, political firms like SKDKnickerbocker, technology focused firms like Allison + Partners, and Finn Partners.

Stagwell Group is also investing in PR technology, launching an AI tool called PRrophet through MDC subsidiary KWT and an influencer marketing platform called Koalifyed, which is being used by Procter & Gamble.

In June 2020, Stagwell announced it was trying to merge with MDC.

Vista Credit Partners

Vista Credit Partners, the credit-investing arm of Vista Equity Partners, gave PR software giant Meltwater a $175 million cash infusion in March 2019.

Meltwater said the recapitalization allowed it to invest in its products after acquiring a string of companies like social analytics and engagement company Sysomos.

Most recently, Meltwater became a publicly traded company through an IPO on Euronext stock exchange that raised $395 million to pay down debt and pursue revenue growth by acquiring customers and through mergers and acquisitions.

Instagram is Facebook's crown jewel.

The photo and video-sharing app has exploded since Facebook acquired it for $1 billion in 2012. It offers perks and benefits like free food and long paid leave programs. Its New York headquarters features a gelato bar, library, and made-for-Instagram backdrops.

The hiring process is also highly competitive. According to LinkedIn data, Instagram has more than 14,000 employees, and while hiring activity can vary widely by time of year, only 80 open roles across 18 teams were publicly posted at the time of this writing — though it should be noted that those may not reflect all openings.

At the time of publication, sales and marketing roles were particularly in demand, with six postings for directors of consumer product marketing up.

Instagram declined to comment or make a recruiting employee available for an interview for this story, but Business Insider spoke with a handful of former employees about what it takes to get through the interview process and land a job at Instagram. The former employees worked in creative, marketing, and community roles for several years. All of the former employees left the company within the past two years.

Having a referral goes a long way at getting a job at Instagram

Instagram uses outside recruitment firms like ProUnlimited along with internal recruiters to find potential hires.

But getting a referral can give candidates a leg up. 25% of more than 6,000 reviewers on Facebook's Glassdoor page said that they got an interview at Instagram from a referral while 29% said they came through recruiters. Another 29% said they got an interview by applying for a job online. To compare, 12% of Amazon interviews came from a referral and 52% of interviews came from applying online, according to Glassdoor.

Getting a job at Instagram requires candidates to "know your networks and do the work," said Taj Alavi, who was Instagram's head of global brand marketing from 2015 to 2018. 

Some candidates have found creative ways to get a hiring manager's attention without a referral. Shelly Xu, a former creative at Instagram and Facebook who is now the founder of fashion brand Shelly Xu Design, wrote a letter to Facebook's chief creative officer about why she was a fit for a creative role and tried to hand deliver it to Instagram's New York office before running into security issues. 

While she didn't get the job, Facebook contacted her two years later about another job that she accepted — and referenced her letter.

"I didn't know anyone at Instagram or Facebook, so I felt like I had to do something that was riskier that would help me stand out," she said.

Christen Nino De Guzman, a former contracted community manager on the marketing team in San Francisco, applied through an agency, which she said helped her get a foot in the door. She was hired as a temporary contractor in 2017 and worked there for two years, initially as a product community manager, and then worked on teen and brand programs. 

Know Instagram's features

Hiring managers look for candidates who understand Instagram's products as well as its competitors like TikTok and Snap. A former Instagram recruiter from 2016-2019 recommended candidates understand the problems the company is facing and come with solutions to those problems. 

Alavi said in applying, she needed to understand how Instagram's young audience uses social media.

"I'm not 25 or 18 anymore — the best marketers can think outside of themselves," she said. "You're not supposed to be an expert but you should be able to connect the dots between the product and audience."

Nino De Guzman said when she applied, Instagram was focused on expanding its resources towards diversity and inclusion, anti-bullying, and safety tools. In the interview, she made sure to bring these up.

"One thing I tried to do is talk about how impactful, as a whole, Facebook and Instagram had been in defining what community is online," she added.

Prepare for rounds of interviews

Candidates go through a series of interviews at Instagram and meet with multiple people, sometimes including the person who currently holds the job.

Pre-pandemic, candidates would usually be invited to an on-site interview on one day, since applicants may be coming from different cities, with three to five interviews scheduled that day, the former Instagram recruiter said.

Two sources said that some candidates are asked to make a small presentation about themselves to show writing and problem-solving skills. Some also said that they were asked to complete an imaginary brief — akin to Facebook's longtime hackathon events where engineers spend days tackling a single problem — using Facebook and Instagram products.

Questions during the interview process can range from asking how someone would solve a problem to how they would work with other departments or how to improve one of Facebook's features.

Most of the questions Instagram asked Nino de Guzman during the interviews were specific to the role she was applying for, such as her experience working with creators. Her entire on-site interview process took about two to three hours, during which she spoke to four to five employees. She was asked standard questions such as why she wants to work at Instagram.

Alavi said she had to show during her Instagram interview how she could hit the ground running.

"This is not a 90-day ramp up job," she said. "They want to know that they're in with someone that they have chemistry with. You need to know that you're in it together because you have a lot to accomplish."

Andy Challenger, SVP at recruiting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said that tech companies like Instagram will often ask questions based on something the company is currently working on. The purpose is to see how candidates respond to questions that they likely had not rehearsed answers for beforehand. 

"They don't want new hires that can figure out the questions in advance," he said. "It's not always about getting to a correct answer — they're just looking to see how you approach a difficult question and how you solve it."

Here are some examples of typical interview questions, according to Facebook's Glassdoor page:

• What is your favorite Facebook product? How would you improve it?
• [I was] given a hypothetical product, asked to define the target market, identifying needs, [and] mission of the product.
• If you were the product manager for Facebook Marketplace, how would you define success?  
• Describe a situation where you had to deal with conflict. 
• How would you diagnose a 15% drop in engagement on Instagram?

Be open to other opportunities

Former employees recommend that candidates apply for any position that they are interested in — even if they don't meet all the qualifications.

Hiring managers are interested in seeing how candidates creatively solve problems and are passionate about working at Instagram. In some cases, Instagram will even tweak roles for specific candidates, said Alavi.

"What I was really applying for was to be at Instagram," she said. "The skill sets I had made it a bigger role than the one I was interviewing for. The lesson is: go after what you love to do — not the title."

The Business Insider Global Trends Festival will take place on the 19th-23rd of October. Join us for a virtual conference of ideas featuring live, on demand content, workshops, and key speakers from around the world. Find out more.

SEE ALSO: How to get hired at strategic consulting firms, where junior staffers can start out making $95,000

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A cleaning expert reveals her 3-step method for cleaning your entire home quickly

• The in-housing trend in advertising has sped up in the pandemic, with some brands doing more of their ad-buying and creative production in-house.
• With the economy in disarray, marketers have been turning to their internal agencies as they scramble to remain visible to consumers and maintain more control over their customer data and messaging while preserving capital.
• In-house agencies are not only taking on more responsibilities but getting more efficient and sophisticated in the process.

• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

When COVID-19 started spreading throughout the world, Anheuser-Busch's in-house agency, Draftline, went to work.

The agency began monitoring its social media to quickly shift its marketing to a message that was suited to the pandemic, producing more than 500 digital ads in the first week alone.

"The past several months have highlighted the need to bring some creative and analytics in-house – something that's incredibly useful when quick pivots are needed," Spencer Gordon, VP of digital at Anheuser-Busch told Business Insider. "This has resulted in a much more agile marketing process, and rapidly increased the total creative output that we need."

Anheuser-Busch is not the only one. A number of brands have been doing more of their ad-buying and creative production capabilities in-house over the past few years — a trend that's sped up amid the pandemic.

According to an Association of National Advertisers (ANA) member survey, 92% of 196 respondents adjusted their creative messaging after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic in March, and 55% said they relied on their in-house agencies to adjust their campaigns since March. Forty-two percent cited another "internal team," while only 26% said an "external agency."

With the economy in disarray, marketers have been scrambling to remain visible while preserving capital. They also want more control over their customer data and messaging, making their agencies more dispensable than ever. 

More brands are setting up in-house agencies

Companies such as Oliver and MightyHive, which help brands set up in-housing operations, said incoming requests have increased since the pandemic started. Pete Kim, MightyHive's CEO, said it's already had as many conversations with marketers about in-housing this year as it did in all of 2019. 

Read More: Meet 20 firms helping big brands like Sprint and Unilever take their advertising in-house

The pandemic has accelerated the speed at which companies need to get their message out, said Andrew McKechnie, SVP and chief creative officer of Verizon. He said that the 175-person agency enabled Verizon to quickly update the creative to ensure a uniform message across all its channels.

"It would be difficult to do that if our core channels were fragmented with different agencies," he said. "It made my job of communicating clearly to our customers a lot more efficient."

In-housing has also picked up as the pandemic has led many brands to cut back their already-squeezed budgets, said Oliver CEO Simon Martin. 

"Every single client today is focused on leveraging existing assets, whether it's refreshing, repurposing or creating content without big shoots," he said. "In-house agencies have great access to those assets and can move fast on them."

Draftline has helped Anheuser-Busch keep up with the creative work demanded by the company's huge volume of brands in its portfolio and growing media channels they advertise on, said Gordon.

"There has been an exponential increase in the amount of creative work needed to sustain the business," he said. "In-housing has helped us keep up with the increases."

In-house agencies are getting more sophisticated

More than 78% of ANA members reported having some form of an in-house agency in 2018, and continue to bring more aspects of their marketing in-house. Verizon also has teams focused on customer experience and media and activation in-house, McKechnie said. Procter & Gamble has built up its media functions in-house and recently bypassed its agencies to commit ad dollars in this year's upfronts.

Some in-house agencies have been taking on more responsibilities and getting more efficient and sophisticated.

According to an ANA case study, Cisco's in-house agency The Hatch is expected to produce 70% of its creative work this year, up from 20% in 2017.

Read more: P&G is taking more of its ad buying in-house in a loss for advertising giant Omnicom

Some marketers have said doing advertising work in-house is more efficient. Aflac has saved upwards of $16 million in agency fees with its agency; Hershey claims to have saved $4 million in agency fees; and Sprint has saved $6 million in agency costs annually, according to MightyHive, which has Sprint as a client. 

Internal agencies have also gotten more specialized over time, according to the ANA, handling everything from SEO and influencer marketing to marketing analytics and programmatic strategy as well as media, creative, and data duties.

Draftline has combined creative with data and analytics to produce localized campaigns and personalized ones at scale, said Anheuser Busch's Gordon. In a mark of its success, the agency is opening its first regional office in Miami, he said during a Digiday+ webinar in May. 

More in-housing means more bad news for ad agencies

Brands turning to in-housing is more bad news for ad agencies, who are already reeling from clients slashing their budgets amid the pandemic. And the biggest reasons for companies doing more work internally — the ability to change campaigns fast and at lower cost — are more prominent than ever.

"It was no secret that the agency holding company model had its challenges, and the pandemic has certainly exacerbated those challenges," said MightyHive's Kim.

Agencies for their part insist there's still a place for their work, though. Ad agencies — especially smaller independent shops who adapt to a project or consultation-based model — will see a comeback when the dust settles post pandemic, said Barry Lowenthal, CEO of The Media Kitchen.

"The agency business will look very different in that agencies are not going to make money on buying tonnage anymore or coming up with giant campaigns that run all year," he said. "But there will always be clients who are entrepreneurial and need help with paving the path forward."

Brands including Anheuser-Busch also continue to use agencies for several functions like strategy, creative and TV spots. Plus, internal agencies themselves have funding constraints. Over half of respondents in a recent study by the trade association In-House Agency Forum said they weren't adequately funded. 

"We're repurposing dollars the way that we would need to to make sure that we can exist and be supportive, but it has not interrupted or interfered with our agency fees or our production dollars," said Anheuser Busch's Gordon. 

Still, even if in-house teams continue to work in conjunction with agencies, there is no denying that the percentage of work is rising for in-house agencies and declining for external agencies, said the ANA's Group EVP Bill Duggan.

SEE ALSO: Aflac says it saved $16 million in advertising over three years by using its own staff, even as some in-house shops hit a wall

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How waste is dealt with on the world's largest cruise ship

A blistering investigation into Facebook's ad business published by BuzzFeed News on Thursday revealed in new detail how the company prioritizes making money over enforcing its own rules intended to protect users from scammers and hackers.

According to BuzzFeed News, Facebook continues to knowingly allow — and profit from — fraudulent advertisers, and the company's ad business is "built with the same lax controls and outsourcing of critical moderation work" that has allowed disinformation, hate speech, and harassment to proliferate on its platform.

Facebook employs thousands of third-party contractors, through companies like Accenture, BCforward, and Cognizant, to review both user-generated content and ads placed on its platform to ensure they comply with Facebook's extensive policies.

But an Accenture employee who manages 45 reviewers for Facebook told them to ignore patterns of fraud and hacked accounts as long as "Facebook gets paid" with legitimate payment methods so that it isn't on the hook for issuing refunds, BuzzFeed News reported, adding that the manager justified allowing hackers to run ads via hacked accounts because it was a win-win — more revenue for Facebook and a larger audience for the hacker.

A Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that the company invests heavily in keeping bad ads off its platform, and disagreed with the idea that it has profited from bad ads, but declined to comment about how it handles the money it makes from ads that violate its rules.

"We have every incentive — financial and otherwise — to prevent abuse and make the ads experience on Facebook a positive one. To suggest otherwise fundamentally misunderstands our business model and mission," the spokesperson told BuzzFeed News.

Facebook did not respond to a request from Business Insider for comment on this story, and Accenture did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Facebook's ad business brought in $21.2 billion in revenue in the third quarter. But as BuzzFeed News and others have previously reported, some of that revenue has come from shady and at times dangerous advertisers, including pro-violence white supremacists, scam artists, anti-vaxxers, and hawkers of COVID-19 disinformation.

Read more:The battle between Facebook and Apple over privacy is about more than just ads — it's about the future of how we interact with tech

Facebook has repeatedly pledged to crack down on bad actors on its platforms, but dozens of reports in recent months have exposed instances where Facebook's inability to enforce its own policies accurately, consistently, efficiently, or even at all have halted progress toward those goals.

Here are a few of the major revelations from the investigation:

• Facebook banned political advertisers from creating new ads in the week before the US elections in November to head off misinformation. But before that deadline, it told moderators to prioritize selling ads over looking for rule-breaking ones and to reactivate accounts that broke its rules whenever possible, according to the report. (Facebook told BuzzFeed News the shift in focus was meant to help advertisers get their message out ahead of the ban.)
• TikTok precursor Musical.ly had placed ads featuring young girls dancing provocatively. But when Facebook employees raised concerns that Facebook's algorithm was targeting the ads primarily toward middle-aged men, the company restricted their access to data about the ads, implied that it dismissed their concerns because Musical.ly was a big spender, and let the ads run for a year and a half, the report said. (Facebook told BuzzFeed News it created a policy against suggesting sexualized interactions — though it was never announced anywhere public.)
• An internal Facebook review found that, of thousands of ads placed by Chinese advertisers, 30% violated at least one of Facebook's policies, and employees said the company looks the other way even though issues with China-based advertisers are well-known. (Facebook told BuzzFeed News it has a dedicated "business integrity" team in Asia and doesn't ignore violations by China-based advertisers.)

Read the full BuzzFeed News story here »

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: What makes 'Parasite' so shocking is the twist that happens in a 10-minute sequence

Not even Santa Claus is immune from the coronavirus, according to an NHS Charities Together ad showing him being rushed into a hospital at death's door.

The advertisement, called "The Gift," begins with an older man with a white beard being ushered into an National Health Service (NHS) emergency room. He's on a hospital bed. NHS staff hovers over him, shining a light into his face. He's being given oxygen. By the end of the 90-second spot, he's recovered. After leaving the hospital, an NHS staffer figures out his true identity: Jolly Old St. Nicholas. 

After the ad appeared late last week, it was removed from the NHS Charities Together YouTube account and others that had posted it. As of Sunday, "The Gift" had been scrubbed from almost everywhere.

In a statement, NHS Charities Together apologized to kids who had seen the ad, but also said that it "isn't aimed at children and hasn't been shown on TV." The charity said it had at first received positive feedback, but chatter on social media quickly turned sour. 

"We worked closely with the team behind the ad to make sure it was produced responsibly and it was cleared for use by the relevant regulatory authority. However, we are sorry to the parents of any young children who have been upset by watching the ad and to the young children themselves, they were not the intended audience for it," the charity said in a statement on Saturday. 

By midday Sunday, the only version available on YouTube seemed to be from a children's talent agency, which said it had been involved in making the spot. That version was also removed Sunday afternoon. 

Comments left on the video before it was removed ranged from confused to outraged.

The top comment read: "Absolutely disgusting. Total misstep. As if kids have not been through enough. Shame shame shame on you!"

The spot was produced by Iris, a digital media agency, according to a brief posted on Campaign Live, a site that collects information about advertisements. Ads of the World said "The Gift" was NHS Charities Together's first Christmas campaign. 

Actual NHS staffers were invited to be in the film, according to The Drum. 

In a statement, NHS Charities Together said: "We created our Christmas campaign to highlight the ongoing commitment and hard work of NHS staff and volunteers to keep us safe and well in what has been and continues to be a really challenging time for the NHS."

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Epidemiologists debunk 13 coronavirus myths

Programmatic ad spending will be CA$3.61 billion ($2.72 billion) in Canada this year, making up 82.1% of digital display spending. By value, that accounts for 42.7% of all digital ad transactions and more than a quarter (25.3%) of total media advertising.

Prior to the pandemic, we had forecast growth of 17.4% in programmatic spending this year, but with advertising budgets massively curtailed in H1 2020, we now expect growth to be just 0.6%. Next year will be a rebound year, with 16.8% growth.

Programmatic direct, the primary method for placing ads in social media sites including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, will account for almost three-quarters (74.0%) of all programmatic spending in 2020. The remainder of programmatic transactions are done via real-time bidding (RTB), using private marketplaces (PMPs) or open exchanges to manage auctions.

PMP strength in Canada is being reinforced by conditions brought about by the pandemic. PMP's share of RTB has traditionally been higher in Canada—in 2020, its share will be 54.0% in the country, compared with 51.1% in the US. Using private exchanges is easier in Canada than in larger markets like the US because there are fewer publishers, and direct dealing is simpler and more established. We expect open exchange's loss of share of RTB will accelerate, as the industry worldwide has been shifting open exchange buys to PMPs and programmatic direct to gain more transparency in biddable transactions.

Strength in mobile and video formats in 2020 will keep overall market growth in positive territory. Programmatic spending on mobile ads will grow by 6.1% this year and programmatic video spend will be up 14.4%, as these ad formats prove especially effective for in-stream consumption in social media. These formats have gained traction for branding campaigns in Canada, in many cases at the expense of budgets earmarked for awareness ads in traditional media.

Want to read more stories like this one? Here's how you can gain access:

1. Join other Insider Intelligence clients who receive this Briefing, along with other Media, Advertising, & Marketing forecasts, briefings, charts, and research reports to their inboxes each day. >> Become a Client
2. Explore related topics more in depth. >> Browse Our Coverage

Current subscribers can access the entire Insider Intelligence content archive here.

Join the conversation about this story »

Apple shot back at Facebook after the social media giant launched attack ads against the latest iOS update.

In Tuesday's iOS 14.3 update, Apple introduced a feature called "App Tracking Transparency." This labels apps in the App Store, telling users what data those apps collect and whether it's used to track them for advertising.

Facebook took out full-page newspaper ads on Wednesday attacking the update and accusing Apple of harming small businesses, who it said rely on targeted online advertising.

Facebook claimed in its ads to be "standing up to Apple for small businesses."

An Apple spokesperson told Business Insider the company was "standing up for our users."

"Users should know when their data is being collected and shared across other apps and websites — and they should have the choice to allow that or not," the spokesperson said.

"App Tracking Transparency in iOS 14 does not require Facebook to change its approach to tracking users and creating targeted advertising, it simply requires they give users a choice," the spokesperson added.

Read more:Apple is poised to rewrite its privacy rules for advertisers — here's what's at stake for all the players

Apple's spokesperson also denied that the company harms small businesses, and pointed to an announcement the company made in November that it would cut App Store payment fees in half for small developers, from 30% to 15%, starting next year.

Apple and Facebook have been tangled in a fight over Apple's new privacy updates since the summer. Tuesday's update is only the first half of big changes — the second part is due to roll out early 2021, and will actively ask users to opt in to being tracked for advertising.

This feature was originally supposed to launch in September, but was delayed after developers including Facebook said it would gut their ad revenue.

The two tech giants have attacked each other ferociously over the feature. In a November letter to privacy-focused nonprofit groups, Apple accused Facebook of hoovering up as "much data as possible" to monetize their products while showing a "disregard for user privacy."

Facebook retaliated by accusing Apple of trying to leverage its market position to give itself an unfair advantage in collecting user data. "They claim it's about privacy, but it's about profit," a Facebook spokesperson told Business Insider at the time.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: July 15 is Tax Day — here's what it's like to do your own taxes for the very first time

APCO Worldwide is launching a new unit to chase tech clients and hired former Oracle communications head Bob Winslow to lead it.

The unit, called Tech Issues Intelligence, is pitching itself as an arm that can help tech companies understand and respond to policy and regulatory issues and technology changes in general, said North American President Kelly Williamson.

APCO, which recorded about $142 million in revenue in 2019, is known for its work in public affairs and corporate reputation and competes with the likes of Edelman and Brunswick Group.

The move comes as governments around the world are focusing on technology's impact when it comes to issues like antitrust concerns, cybersecurity, and data privacy. 

"Our job is to make sure we anticipate what's coming next, decipher the information today — so policy and implications on reputation — and help them understand it and communicate through it," Williamson said.

Williamson said the unit would have around 40 full-time APCO employees and another 20 part-time and full-time consultants from the firm's International Advisory Council, which includes Susan Molinari, formerly VP of public policy at Google; and Pamela Passman, who was corporate VP and deputy general counsel at Microsoft.

The hiring of Winslow and rollout of the unit comes a few months after APCO secured an investment from Erie Street, which is a strategic investment and operational advisory firm, in February 2020.

A spokesperson for Erie Street declined to disclose the terms of the deal but told Business Insider the investment was made to help APCO "grow organically and inorganically and create value in today's volatile environment."

According to its website, APCO works for tech companies like eBay, retailers like Gap, and foreign government entities like Abu Dhabi's Masdar, a state-owned energy company that's trying to build a clean energy city.

APCO said it finished flat this year despite a pullback in spending and hired 38 employees, for a total headcount of 809.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why Pikes Peak is the most dangerous racetrack in America

Stephanie Clifford's blockbuster story about Martin Shkreli's relationship with a former Bloomberg journalist raised countless questions when it dropped on Sunday night. 

One of the top queries: Why they hell was everyone reading the article being bombarded with ads for bottomless pajamas? 

Many readers reported seeing ad after ad for butt-flap PJs made by fashion brand IVRose. The ad is meant to promote the Plain Functional Buttoned Flap Adults Pajamas, priced at $26.99 (with a wealth of discounts available if you buy more than one pair). 

I was among the many people who was confronted with the ad when I was reading the story in Elle on Sunday. As I saw others reveal that they had also been served the butt-flap PJ ad, I decided it was time to dive deeper into the world of ass-less pajamas.

Read more: Hooters and Twin Peaks are defying the casual dining sales free fall. Their CEOs explain how the breastaurant chains weathered the pandemic, and are set to thrive in 2021.

Why was everyone getting the same ad in the Elle article? Why had this ad started popping up elsewhere around the internet more recently? And, who is even selling these bizarre nightclothes? 

After talking with six experts in advertising, retail, and ecommerce, I was able to mostly solve the case of the butt-flap pajama ad. The butt-flap PJs managed to take over the internet through a combination of wonky brand safety measures, a few marketing strategies including provocative sexual imagery, and a good amount of luck. 

"It may just be a happy accident for them, or it may be part of some sort of a strategy — one doesn't know," Greg Sterling, the vice president of Insights at online marketing company Uberall, said. "But, it's pretty hard to engineer a viral ad." 

Here are the answers to the biggest questions raised by these absurd ass-less PJs. 

How did this ad takeover Elle's bombshell Shkreli story?

The first thing I tried to figure out was how this ad ended up in the middle of the Elle article in the first place. With so many people pouring over the article, an unknown fashion brand could not be the only brand trying to advertise, right? 

According to the co-founder of Check My Ads Nandini Jammi, brand safety company DoubleVerify had marked the article as "unsafe." This is supposed to keep ads from appearing on offensive content itself. But, Jammi said, these companies often flag articles that simply report on matters that could be offensive. As a result, Jammi theorized, brands that work with brand safety companies had their ads pulled from the article, leaving an opening for IVRose. 

"Most of the big brands have effectively forfeited their place on this article," Jammi told me. "That opens up the way for brands or advertisers who have less of a risk threshold. They're okay with their ads being on potentially unsafe sites, because they would rather just get a higher volume out."

"They kind of flood the market, " Jammi added. "When the bigger brands don't want to be on a site, they get the same real estate for a lower cost." 

Sterling said that this ad was likely "next in line" after the higher-quality ads were blocked.  

"It's not completely the bottom of the barrel, but it is sort of trending toward that," Sterling said. 

Greg March, the CEO of the media agency Noble People, said that the Elle article was emblematic of the way online media companies sell ads. Bigger stories create more ad units to sell, with media companies quickly running out of premium buyers for news — leaving just the programmatic low bidders.

"Advertisers allocate their media budgets way before they know what the news is gonna be," March said. "So when a story hits most advertisers aren't set up to say 'I want my ad on that story.'" 

So, that solves the question of why the Elle article was filled with ads for butt-flap pajamas instead of major, well-known brands. But, why was it only the pajamas? 

Why am I personally seeing this ad?

This question is also puzzling experts. Typically, it would be strange for every single person to get served the same online ad, as usually such marketing is based on people's past behavior online. 

"It is quite unusual as most online ads are based on cookies or tracking so they are targeted," GlobalData managing director Neil Saunders told me in an email.

The vast number of people seeing the ad makes it seem as if there is no targeting in place. However, Dr. Krzysztof Franaszek, founder of ad tracking and targeting company Adalytics, said that is not actually the case.

IVRose uses 18 ad trackers, sets nine third-party cookies, and uses adtech services from companies including TikTok-owner Bytedance, Twitter, Facebook, and Google, Franaszek wrote in an Adalytics blog post on Monday. Franaszek also noted that new Chrome profiles and people who clear all third party cookies do not see the Ivrose onesie ad, even on the Elle website. 

"It is therefore likely that Google or some other ad tech company is classifying the elle.com article as being related to Adult content or subjects, and is targeting users who visit articles like this one with adult like content, including the Ivrose ad," Franaszek wrote. 

If you saw the IVRose ad, Franaszek told me, you likely did something online that made Google or some other tech company believe you're seeking out "adult" content. It seems to be very broad targeting, Sterling said — but, it is targeting all the same.  

Why won't the PJ butt-flap ad leave me alone? 

The PJ ad seems to have taken over the internet because of a mix of IVRose's broad targeting strategy and the ad itself being more memorable than most. 

The butt cheek peeking out of the PJs grabs people's attention. And, with people on Twitter discussing the ad, it is more likely to register the next time you see it. 

"The reality is we all [see] the same weird ads all the time but they don't capture our attention like this one — which personifies the issue," according to Conor Ryan, the co-founder of the social media advertising platform StitcherAds. "It's a classic symptom of the spray and pray aspects of display advertising."

There's another reason that Franaszek says that it feels like the PJ ad is everywhere: IVRose's retargeting strategy. 

"Ivrose uses remarketing services from Google — if you visit their website, you will drastically increase your chances of seeing one of their ads," Franaszek wrote in the blog post. 

Remarketing, also called retargeting, is a popular strategy in online advertising that shows you the same item over and over again, or repeatedly shows you items related to past online behavior. It can be incredibly effective, or incredibly annoying, depending on if you want to actually buy the item. 

To sum it all up: the PJ ad seems to be everywhere because it is memorable, and because if you see it once you are more likely to see it again. Still, multiple experts told me, the only way to really know why that butt-flap PJ ad is everywhere is by asking the brand behind the ad. 

Who is the mastermind behind the ad? 

Unfortunately, IVRose was not willing to reveal its secrets. I reached out to IVRose's Facebook page on Sunday evening, saying I was a writer for Business Insider who wanted to know more about the strategy behind the PJ ads. 

I received the response: "sorry, we can't help you." 

This was followed by an apparently automated message: "Thank you for your enquiry! We will close the conversation now, you are welcome to contact us again anytime. Bye!" 

IVRose appears to be one of a number of nearly identical fast-fashion brands, owned by the same company — Shanghai Jigao Information Technology Co., Ltd., according to the brand's Facebook page. Other brands, such as ChicMe and Joyshoetique, are selling the same clothing items, with the same model, at the same price point. 

If you get fast-fashion ads on social media or websites, this probably sounds like a familiar story. 

"These are what I would call 'opportunity brands' that have a very short life span," StitcherAds' Ryan said. "They can setup the 'business' in a week and tear it down just as quickly. They are not trying to establish a long term brand. They are trying to rapidly sell low-quality products at really high margins." 

According to Saunders, IVRose is likely one of many brands that are backed by a Chinese manufacturer, aiming to cash in on selling directly to consumers. 

"Digital advertising plays a key role in drumming up demand as most of these brands are not well known by consumers and have no physical presence," Saunders said. 

Are these PJs even real? 

Looking at IVRose's site after a day of talking to experts, I was struck by a new question — even if I bought these butt-flap PJs, would they ever arrive? 

The wonky wine glass on IVRose's front page made me concerned about just how much PhotoShop was going on. And, as Vice reported on Monday, the photo used to sell the PJs appears to be a slightly altered photo from the website of lingerie brand Yandy. 

Saunders told me there is probably nothing fake about IVRose. It is possible that the company shares a supplier with Yandy — or that the site will send a different onesie entirely. BuzzFeed reported in 2016 that it was common for fashion brands with opaque backgrounds to steal pictures online to sell clothing that frequently failed to live up to expectations. 

"Consumers should be conscious that the products may not be of the best quality and that making returns may be difficult," Saunders said. 

However, after 24 hours of obsessing over this butt-flap PJ, that was a risk I was willing to take. Reviewers on IVRose's website seem to be enjoying the onesies that they purchased, with 336 reviewers giving it a four-and-a-half star rating.

I decided that the only way I would really know what was up with the ass-less pajamas was if I purchased them myself. So, I ordered a pair of medium pajamas. And, I'm not the only one — one of my colleagues asked if I could order her a pair as well, and Jammi told me she was also eyeing the price of the PJs. 

"It feels like whoever's running their marketing is a secret genius to me," Jammi said. 

Patrick Coffee contributed reporting to this article. 

SEE ALSO: Hooters and Twin Peaks are defying the casual dining sales free fall. Their CEOs explain how the breastaurant chains weathered the pandemic, and are set to thrive in 2021.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why thoroughbred horse semen is the world's most expensive liquid

Facebook and Google agreed to help each other out if a deal struck between them came under the antitrust microscope, according an unredacted draft lawsuit seen by the Wall Street Journal.

The draft lawsuit seen by the Journal is a version of the heavily-redacted antitrust suit that was filed against Google by state attorneys general last week, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

While it was already known the suit alleges Google and Facebook struck a deal, the revelation they agreed to team up against antitrust scrutiny is new. 

Per the Journal, the companies agreed to "cooperate and assist each other in responding to any Antitrust Action" if their deal ever came under regulatory scrutiny.

The lawsuit alleges Facebook and Google struck an illegal deal over advertising space. Specifically, it alleges that Facebook baited Google into striking a deal to give it preferential treatment by threatening to get into an area of digital advertising called "header bidding," which Google perceived as a threat to its own ads business.

The unredacted draft seen by the Journal contained more details about the lead-up to that deal, including an internal Google presentation from 2016 about the threat posed by companies like Facebook which said "to stop these guys from doing HB [header bidding] we probably need to consider something more aggressive."

Also included was an internal Google communication from November 2017 which mentioned a potential "partnership" with Facebook said the company's aim was to "collaborate when necessary to maintain status quo."

From Facebook's side of things, the unredacted lawsuit contained an email sent from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg to CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other top-level executives, saying: "This is a big deal strategically."

Google disputed the lawsuit's characterization of its relationship with Facebook in a statement to Business Insider.

"AG Paxton's ad tech claims are inaccurate. We don't manipulate the auction and Facebook's participation in Open Bidding doesn't prevent the company from participating in header bidding or any other similar auction," a Google spokesperson said, adding that any implications of secrecy are inaccurate.

"We've been public about this partnership for years," the spokesperson said, directing Business Insider to a brief PR announcement about Google's Open Bidding ad tech integrating with Facebook's advertising service Facebook Audience Network from December 2018.

"Facebook Audience Network (FAN) is one of over 25 companies participating in our Open Bidding program. There's nothing exclusive about their involvement and they don't receive data that is not similarly made available to other buyers," Google's spokesperson said.

Facebook was not immediately available for comment when contacted by Business Insider.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This incredible animation shows how deep the ocean really is