WPP Buys A Niche; Media Execs Turn To Tech

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

Buying Niches

WPP teamed up with with US buyout firm Providence Equity Partners to acquire sports marketing firm Chime Communications for $584 million. “WPP needs to build its position in the sports market and therefore this is a strategic asset,” said Simon Davies, analyst at Canaccord Genuity. Reuters has more. Related: Dentsu snapped up Synergy Medical Communications. A spokesperson tells AdExchanger, “The marketing of prescription drugs by pharmaceutical companies and other health care-related entities has reached a major turning point due to health care reforms and changing drug development trends.” Press release. The future of agencies is vertical.

Automating The Audience

Seven in 10 US media execs expressed concerns about delivering audiences on digital, according to May data from Market Measurement. And they’re turning to tech to solve the problem. Among survey respondents asked which advertising technology is most essential, 41% said they’re focused on mobile, and a majority (52%) are likely to grow investments in programmatic. Ad tech to the rescue! More from eMarketer.

Keep Calm And Carry On

There have been a few data breaches of gigantic proportions – Target (40 million customers), JPMorgan Chase (80 million accounts), UCLA (4.5 million health records) – but The New York Times says those big numbers are misleading a public that’s already bitterly concerned over the security of its personal and consumer data. Security experts have caught up to hackers in sophistication, meaning losses from data breaches are going down, and even when there are breaches a slim fraction of those affected are actually put at risk. Read the full report.

Open Aggression

The open, programmatic exchange world is experiencing a shift from “adversaries” to “allies” as publishers and exchange companies push back against Silicon Valley giants Facebook and Google (which control a solid majority of the world’s online advertising). At least that’s what AppNexus President Michael Rubenstein foresees – though he’s clearly got a horse in the race. In Australia, AppNexus joined media companies to make a mobile inventory coalition, but to date that’s been a more international than domestic phenomenon. Read on.

Google For Liberté

Late last week, Google braced for a standoff with France after announcing it would fight efforts by the EU to apply Right to be Forgotten worldwide. A French privacy regulator, La Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), has given Google until the end of July to comply with its ruling. Google agreed to remove links from European domains, but refuses to apply the ruling outside Europe. In a blog post, Google’s global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer, played the liberté card. “If the CNIL’s proposed approach were to be embraced as the standard for Internet regulation, we would find ourselves in a race to the bottom,” he wrote. The EU vs Silicon Valley saga continues. More via the NYT.

But Wait, There’s More!