Agencies

After applying zero-based budgeting, CPGs are coming back, said IPG CEO Michael Roth during his company’s Q1 2018 earnings call Friday. Roth said CPGs are among the leading spenders for the quarter, with spend up by 10% across IPG. The growth was in part reflective of new business wins. “I’ll put it out there that […]

Dentsu Aegis-owned 360i said Wednesday that former president Jared Belsky will become CEO. Belsky was promoted to the new role after former 360i chairman Bryan Wiener left the agency to become CEO of measurement firm comScore on Monday. Sarah Hoffstetter, 360i’s previous CEO, is now chairman of the agency. “This was [a] very well-planned succession,” […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Jay Friedman, chief operating officer at Goodway Group. As the attention on Mark Zuckerberg’s recent testimonies dies down, the conversation is shifting instead to what should have been addressed. From an […]

The blockchain-based advertising marketplace NYIAX on Friday announced new leadership appointments and a partnership with Rebel AI, another blockchain ad tech startup, as it looks to scale. Bill Wise, the CEO of Mediaocean, has gone from a NYIAX adviser to executive chairman of the board and Richard Bush, formerly the company product chief, is being […]

Despite consumer outrage aimed at Facebook, Publicis Groupe’s sentiment about the platform is status quo. “The impact is not material on our business in the short or medium term,” said Steve King, CEO of Publicis Media, on the holding company’s Q1 2018 earnings call Thursday. “Facebook is a very important partner to us. They have […]

No other holding company has had its CEO as ingrained as WPP. Now WPP must keep its massive organization, with so many disparate agencies and pieces, together without Sorrell. “He was important not only as the voice, look and feel of WPP, but he was very much involved in the day-to-day operations,” said Rebecca Lieb, […]

Longtime WPP CEO Martin Sorrell’s abrupt departure Saturday shocked the industry. Sorrell, 73, is the advertising giant’s founding CEO and the only person to hold the title since 1986. But despite his age, WPP’s board never named a possible successor for the company. There are many options to choose from, said Brian Wieser, senior research […]

WPP CEO Martin Sorrell stepped down Saturday from the massive agency holding company he founded in 1985 and where he had served as CEO since 1987. WPP chairman Robert Quarta will be executive chairman until the new CEO is appointed. Mark Read, CEO of Wunderman, and Andrew Scott, WPP’s corporate development director and Europe COO, […]

Facebook’s decision to shut off partner categories and turn down the spigot of data flowing into and out of its platform may be a necessary step to comply with GDPR and improve consumer privacy. But Facebook could’ve given partners more notice, rather than wait until two months before GDPR goes into effect, said Arun Kumar, […]

Brand safety has become such a hot-button issue for advertisers that competing holding companies and agencies are ditching their territorial natures to fight it together. The 4As said Tuesday it has formed an industry consortium called the Advertiser Protection Bureau (APB), a cross-holding company and agency effort to better share knowledge around brand safety incidents […]

Agencies are calling 2018 “Mediapalooza Two” as brands review an inordinate amount of accounts, following a pattern that began in 2015. Since January, brands including Microsoft, Shell, Asda and Mondolez have put a collective $10 billion worth of media accounts up for review, according to research firm ID Comms. But this year, brands are putting […]

GroupM said Friday that global Chairman Irwin Gotlieb will step back from his role to become a senior adviser to the company. Gotlieb was GroupM’s founding CEO in 2003 and ran the company until transitioning to Chairman in 2012. GroupM’s global CEO Kelly Clark will continue to lead WPP’s media-buying unit. Gotlieb has made a […]

NBCUniversal is about to do something TV companies have talked about for years: transact TV in a similar way as digital – on impressions. NBCU revealed Thursday that it would begin to measure live, on-demand and time-shifted TV ad buys using a common impression-based metric called CFlight. CFlight will be part of NBCU’s upfront pitch and […]

Kepler Group, a New York-based agency focused on programmatic, media activation and CRM, revealed Wednesday it has been acquired by kyu, a collective of marketing, consulting and design companies. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. kyu operates under Hakuhodo DY holdings, one of Japan’s largest marketing holding companies behind Dentsu. While kyu’s agencies, which […]

WPP confirmed Tuesday that its board has hired an independent counsel to investigate CEO Martin Sorrell for misuse of funds and allegations of inappropriate behavior. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news. The advertising giant issued the following statement regarding the investigation: “The Board of WPP has appointed independent counsel to conduct an investigation […]

Facebook’s announcement Wednesday that it would ban third-party data partners from directly targeting on its platform hit ad buyers hard. Previously, buyers could directly apply third-party data segments to their targeting on Facebook through suppliers like Acxiom, Oracle and Experian to enrich Facebook’s data with offline segments. Now, marketers using segments from third-party data brokers […]

Accenture Interactive has made a sport of snapping up digital agencies and folding them into its organization, a strategy which has turned it into the largest digital agency group in the world, with revenues north of $4.4 billion. On Thursday, Accenture Interactive revealed it acquired MXM, the digital and CRM agency owned by magazine publisher […]

Oscar Garza, EVP of media activation at Essence, will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming Programmatic IO conference on April 10-11 at the Marriott Marquis in San Francisco. Brands concerned about brand safety, transparency and media budget control are sweetening to the idea of taking programmatic in-house. But marketers often don’t realize there’s a lot more to programmatic than […]

Since Guillaume Lelait was promoted March 20 from Fetch’s US managing director to its first-ever US CEO, he’s inherited a wealth of operations and clients. He’s also inherited an ongoing lawsuit with former client Uber. Last September, Uber sued Fetch for $40 million after accusing the agency of buying click fraud to take credit for […]

Gartner’s annual digital agency magic quadrant, released last Friday, placed Digitas, AKQA, MRM//McCann, Isobar, SapientRazorfish, R/GA, IBM iX, iCrossing, Ogilvy & Mather, Accenture Interactive and VML as leaders with deep capabilities in business transformation and strategy. The quadrant ranked agencies with at least $175 million in digital marketing services revenue in 2017, and provide services […]

Ad tech companies grew roughly five times faster than the digital advertising market from 2010 to 2016, according to an ad spend forecast released by Zenith on Monday. The forecast tracked the revenues of 14 publicly traded ad tech companies including Adobe Marketing Cloud, Criteo, The Trade Desk, Rubicon Project, Rocket Fuel (taken private under […]

Holding companies are in a period of slow growth and organizational upheaval as clients cut spending while demanding new services and business models from their agencies. Of the big six holding companies, Publicis Groupe has undergone the biggest disruption since it purchased Sapient for a whopping $3.7 billion in 2014 and later wrote down the […]

When Andrew McKechnie left the role of global creative director at Apple to become Verizon’s first-ever chief creative officer in February 2017, he had a tall order. McKechnie, who reports directly to Verizon CMO Diego Scotti, was tasked with developing the brand’s own in-house creative agency. Named 140, after the group’s digs at 140 West […]

Erica Schmidt, Cadreon’s former EVP and managing director in North America, has been promoted to global CEO of the programmatic unit, the company said Wednesday. Schmidt takes over the role from Arun Kumar, chief marketing and data technology officer of IPG Mediabrands, who oversees the group’s central media, data and technology practice as well as […]

Ever since AT&T hired GroupM honcho Brian Lesser last August to lead its new advertising and analytics business, he’s been on a hiring spree. And many of the recruits share one thing in common: They’ve earned their programmatic stripes in some capacity. Time will tell how the AT&T Advertising & Analytics division will develop should […]

Welcome to AdExchanger Talks, a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. Jay Friedman, our podcast guest this week, came up with the concept for a recent AdExchanger comic depicting a marketer running on a “brand safety” treadmill while scarfing down “cheap CPM” cupcakes. The point: You can’t have it both ways. In this week’s episode, Friedman […]

On May 25th, when the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect, media agencies will be subject to a new set of laws around targeting European consumers. The GDPR, which makes it illegal for businesses to use EU citizens’ data without proper basis or consent, will limit media agencies’ ability to target […]

Despite a slight uptick in CPG volumes in Q4 2017, WPP CEO Martin Sorrell still predicts cyclical budget cutting from the sector due to pressure from activist investors and zero-based budgeting (ZBB). “What we see in packaged goods, certainly, is a continued caution,” he said on WPP’s Q4 and FY 2017 earnings call Thursday. “I […]

Spend on Omnicom’s trading desk Accuen continues to decline as brands increasingly favor disclosed programmatic buying models. Accuen’s Q4 revenue declined by $12 million globally and $17 million in the US year over year. Before Q3, when Accuen’s revenues first began declining YoY,  Accuen’s revenue had grown between $18 million and $45 million each quarter […]