Dust off that blazer and start practicing your small talk. This week, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) kicks off the industry’s annual dog-and-pony-show season with the NewFronts, where digital platforms like Meta, LinkedIn, Snap, TikTok, Tubi, and YouTube show off their snazzy new toys ahead of traditional studios and broadcasters.

Marketing Brew spoke with Cintia Gabilan, SVP of the IAB’s centers of excellence and industry initiatives, about what it’s like throwing an advertising party during so much economic uncertainty and how that might interfere with negotiations.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

We’re teetering on a global recession, and advertisers are obviously not immune. What conversations do you expect to dominate the NewFronts this year?

I think NewFronts will be different this year. I think it’s going to come with opportunities, as it always does, but also with a little bit of pressure.

Economic uncertainty is definitely on everybody’s mind. Given the rising cost of energy, the new tariffs, there is a lot of US household debt—the cost of doing business in video advertising isn’t just about media budgets anymore…Buyers, brands, and agencies are trying to make every single dollar work as hard as possible and are pushing partners [into] more measurement and transparency, so they see exactly what is going on and happening to every single dollar they invest.

Forecasters are anticipating a less robust ad economy. How do you see that impacting negotiations between buyers and platforms?

Because of this rising cost of doing business, I think people might expect higher CPMs…I think sellers will see more aggressive negotiation behavior from brands because, again, they are rethinking where and how to spend…I was telling someone on my team today that all this video innovation and AI are pushing the industry forward, but in a way, the economic uncertainty is pulling back a little bit, so we will see that dance during the event, for sure.

Continue reading here.—RB

Tariffs and broader economic uncertainty are throwing marketing plans into disarray and threatening to derail ad spending. Agencies are hard at work trying to keep clients on track.

As tariff rates and regulations seem to change nearly by the minute, and as the economic picture becomes increasingly hazy, agency executives say they are working on pivoting marketing for clients of various verticals that are facing economic pressure. While many clients aren’t making major changes to their marketing budgets quite yet, execs said they are working to help clients keep the marketing spend work for them in the event of continued tariff uncertainty or a recession.

“As soon as a recession starts to hit, people want to pull their money back almost immediately,” Stephanie Spicer, president of the agency Luquire, told Marketing Brew. “Marketing is like investing in the stock market…As soon as a downturn hits, your immediate reaction is, ‘I want to take all the money out of the stock market,’ but you know that the right thing to do is to keep it in there. It’s the same thing for brand marketing. You’re really investing in the long term.”

Read more here.—JS

Female teens’ annual beauty spending grew 10% year over year to a peak of $374, but how and where they’re spending could be shifting, according to Piper Sandler’s semi-annual Taking Stock With Teens survey.

The survey, polling 6,455 teens across 43 states, found that Sephora remained in the top spot as a beauty destination for female teens, while Ulta and Target lost share. The gap between Ulta and Sephora grew from 9 percentage points in the fall to 12 percentage points in the spring, per Piper Sandler, with Sephora gaining 2 percentage points of share since the fall. Target fell to the fourth-ranked spot, surpassed by Bath & Body Works, which made it into the top 10 for the first time in over six years.

• Piper Sandler noted that the combined share of Ulta and Target represent 33% of female shoppers’ vote, down 7 percentage points from its last survey and 8 percentage points year over year.

TikTok entered the top 10 for teen female shoppers for the first time. Amazon slipped one spot to No. 5, but for male teens, Amazon ranked as the top beauty destination, with 29% mindshare.

Store front: Teens still prefer to shop in stores, and opt for specialty retailers as their top channel for beauty purchases, though mass, department, and drug stores slipped 3 percentage points in share of channels. Brick-and-mortar stores remain essential for first-time purchases, while teens go online for replenishment, Piper Sandler noted.

Continue reading on Retail Brew.—EC

Executive moves across the industry.

• PepsiCo tapped former Heineken CMO Jonnie Cahill to serve as its international foods CMO.
• X’s global head of content, talent, and brand sales, Brett Weitz, is departing the company.
• Kohl’s fired CEO Ashley Buchanan after an outside investigation found he steered the company to “conduct business with a vendor founded by an individual with whom Mr. Buchanan has a personal relationship.”