Silicon Valley moves into Madison Avenue
As digital advertising soars, Yahoo, Twitter and Google are among major tech companies moving their advertising divisions to New York City.
Adriene Hill: Today marks the start of New York’s Advertising Week,
where some new marketing powerhouses will headline events. Google, Facebook and Yahoo are seen as Silicon Valley phenoms. As digital advertising soars, Madison Avenue is becoming a second home.
Sally Herships has more.
Sally Herships: Yahoo’s new offices in Times Square have white leather couches, purple lights and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking midtown Manhattan.
Wayne Powers: This is really more a lofty look, which is more like an agency on Madison Avenue.
Wayne Powers runs Yahoo’s North American ad sales. He says raising Yahoo’s profile in New York’s advertising market is critical. Yahoo moved into its new space about six weeks ago. Twitter is shopping around, and Google has claimed an entire city block for itself.
Ken McCarthy: Google, of course, didn’t just sign a lease — they bought a building.
Ken McCarthy oversees research at real estate broker Cushman Wakefield. He says Internet companies are so hungry for office space that buildings in some Manhattan areas haven’t been this full for seven years.
McCarthy: The midtown south market is the tightest market in the country.
But getting in is vital to woo Internet-wary clients. So says Patti Williams. She teaches marketing at Wharton.
Patti Williams: A lot of these traditional advertisers still find all of this stuff to be a little newfangled.
But new media’s profit model is a classic.
Williams: They may be delivering new fashioned tools, and allowing consumers to connect in ways that maybe they couldn’t as well before. But they’re making money in a pretty old fashioned kind of way.
Selling ads.
In New York, I’m Sally Herships for Marketplace.