Agencies

Brands, agencies, publishers and vendors agree that while the industry is rife with ad quality issues, programmatic isn’t the culprit. “Programmatic is not the problem,” said Shaune Kolber, programmatic creative and ad fraud manager at Dell, at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O conference in New York City on Thursday. “It’s a way of buying. It’s not supposed […]

One of the many pressures facing holding companies is increased competition from management and IT consultancies like Accenture, Deloitte, IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers. While consulting firms may not be their biggest threat today, tomorrow could be another story. Holding companies tend to work from the bottom up, focusing on marketing initiatives like creative or media strategy […]

IPG took a hit in revenue last quarter as cost-cutting clients opted to forego agency-of-record (AOR) relationships in favor of working project by project. Unfortunately for IPG, that business model doesn’t provide a consistent revenue stream, as it gives clients the ability to stop their projects. “During the third quarter, several of our largest clients […]

Unlike at a traditional agency, which typically services the brand marketer, IBM Interactive Experience (iX) has a direct inroad to CEOs. Clients undergoing massive transformation will often hire IBM to rethink commerce or marketing – and those conversations trickle down to IMB iX to put into practice, said Robert Schwartz, global head of agency services […]

Publicis is still clearing up confusion among its employees, clients and investors about its offering and value prop since it acquired Sapient in early 2015. “We are currently making sure our model is clear for everyone,” CEO Arthur Sadoun said on the company’s third-quarter earnings call Thursday. “We have to start with our people so […]

Omnicom’s trading desk Accuen shrank $9 million, or 0.2% year over year, in the US this quarter because clients continue to favor fully disclosed programmatic buys, the company said Tuesday. In other markets, where nondisclosed buys have generally been more accepted by marketers, Accuen was almost flat, growing by just $2 million in the quarter. […]

Publicis Groupe on Wednesday launched Publicis Spine, a technology and data platform that gives its agencies access to a universal ID and a centralized team of engineers, analysts and strategists. Led by former Starcom Global Brand President Lisa Donohue, Spine is the backbone of Publicis’ goal to make business transformation a core service for clients. […]

As the global COO of Merkle, Michael Komasinski keeps the proverbial engines running both internally and in the agency’s services business. After joining Merkle in 2015 from his post as COO of Razorfish North America, Komasinski helped drive 30% revenue growth across the business in 2016. Komasinski also was largely responsible for leading the integration […]

Agency holding company stocks are down. Many of the biggest advertisers are struggling. Omnicom agency Hearts & Science thinks it’s found the solution to serve clients in an era of disruption. “It’s a highly commoditized media marketplace, and will only get more so because of automation,” said Frances Ralston-Good, UK CEO of Hearts & Science. […]

Dentsu Aegis wants to be a 100% digital-economy business by 2020. To get there, the agency appointed Nigel Morris to serve as the company’s chief strategy and innovation officer in June. Morris will focus on the “important, not the urgent,” in the new role, an upgrade from his previous position as head of Americas. Over […]

Triad Retail Media promoted its chief customer officer, Sherry Smith, to the CEO position on Tuesday. Roger Berdusco, Triad’s former CEO, is leaving the company to pursue other opportunities. Triad manages ad sales on major retailers’ ecom sites including Walmart, Sam’s Club, eBay, Stubhub, Staples, Toys R Us, and most recently, Barnes & Noble. But […]

Megan Pagliuca, former boss of Omnicom-owned Accuen, has become the first-ever chief data officer of Hearts & Science, where she will lead the agency’s charge toward identity-based media buying. Pagliuca will oversee Hearts & Science’s tools and strategy that will put individual identities at the center of not just media execution, but brand strategy and […]

WPP’s stock is down. And the company’s longstanding chief, Martin Sorrell, isn’t sure if the holding company can do anything about the factors putting pressure on its business. “I don’t know whether anything is within our control or not,” Sorrell said. “Some people say it’s the rise of the digital giants. No. Some people say […]

US cable TV networks are being strangled by cut cords. Research firm eMarketer lowered its US TV ad spend forecast for 2017 by $1 billion on Wednesday, citing “faster-than-expected growth in cord cutting” as the main contributor to the decline. US TV ad spend will still grow, the firm predicted – but by just 0.5% […]

WPP CEO Martin Sorrell called out Twitter’s revenue potential – along with the social platform’s positioning amid Google and Facebook’s ad dominance – in an interview with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey onstage at Dmexco in Germany on Wednesday. “Twitter does not seem to have achieved the prominence Twitter [and the industry] would want,” Sorrell said. […]

Ritz Crackers is always looking for out-of-the-box ways to connect with its customers. So when NUE Agency, which develops the music strategy behind campaigns for Ritz’s parent company Mondelez, suggested launching a voice-activated cooking show on Amazon Echo, Ritz marketing exec Lauren Sella was all in. “As a brand, we’re about celebrating people getting together and providing inspiration to make […]

Both Publicis Groupe’s Zenith and WPP’s GroupM have lowered their 2017 ad spend forecasts, due to cost-cutting clients and slow economic growth in global markets. Zenith projects 4% growth for the global ad market by the end of the year, down from its original forecast of 4.2%. GroupM revised its 4.4% forecast down to 3%, […]

Advertisers want measurement that assesses video brand safety. And the latest beneficiary of that need is OpenSlate, a video analytics company that can determine if ads were placed alongside appropriate video content on YouTube. The YouTube measurement partner said Thursday it’s bringing a new brand safety auditing tool for YouTube to market, partnering with independent […]

Mindshare launched a service on Thursday designed to let programmatic planners automate targeting, which lets them create lots of segments quickly. The system, called ANNA, is still in beta and uses AppNexus’ demand-side platform (DSP) and a new API from dynamic creative optimization (DCO) platform Jivox. “Physically, you wouldn’t have time to sit in a […]

At agencies, “centers of excellence” are on the outs. Instead, holding companies are moving the specialists who once powered their analytics hubs and trading desks closer to client work by embedding them in account teams at their operating agencies. “The idea is to infuse a data-driven philosophy and culture within agencies and support [them] not […]

WPP cut its growth outlook from 2% to between flat growth and 1% during its Q2 2017 earnings call on Wednesday as clients, particularly CPGs, squeeze their marketing budgets. WPP pegged 2017 growth at 3% at the beginning of the year and reduced it to 2% in Q1. “The key factors here were the trifecta […]

Media agencies know how to find the right person at the right time, thanks to the growth of programmatic. But they’re still trying to pin down how to send the right message. “You want the media to recognize where they were, but you also want to recognize where they were in the conversation,” said Zimm […]

Demand-side platform (DSP) DataXu hired former 4As exec Peter Kosmala as its VP of platform solutions, the company said Friday. With Kosmala, who started in late July and will report to chief revenue officer Ed Montes, DataXu hopes to grow its self-serve business with agencies. “This is about forging even stronger relationships with a channel […]

WPP’s media-buying unit GroupM on Thursday unveiled its own global viewability standard for display and video ads on social media feeds. Display ads must be 100% in view for one second before a user scrolls past to count as viewable. Video ads still have to be 100% in view, but can be initiated as autoplay […]

Facebook is giving advertisers a bit more control over how they buy in-stream video ads within the news feed, through Audience Network and on Watch, its newly launched video tab. In the past, advertisers that wanted to purchase in-stream placements delivered into ad breaks were required to run them in the news feed. Starting Thursday, […]

“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. Despite not having an ad-focused business model, Amazon keeps Sir Martin Sorrell up at night and is the most likely candidate to […]

When La-Z-Boy decided to use Oracle’s data management platform, it didn’t want the technology to sit around. Instead, it came up with a turbo-charged strategy to aggressively test, learn and adapt. The furniture maker’s agency, RPA, tested 168 audiences in 10 months using first-party, second-party and third-party data it loaded into the platform. Its audience-focused […]

It’s been six months since GroupM launched mPlatform to unify its agencies’ access to data and technology. Since its inception, the organization has rolled out a data repository containing insights tied to known consumer IDs and now agencies across GroupM and WPP are “building it into the fabric of their networks,” said mPlatform CEO Brian […]

Brian Lesser, CEO of GroupM North America, will leave the company for a role at AT&T, the WPP-owned media buying giant announced on Friday. “Brian has been a key contributor to 24/7, Xaxis and most recently GroupM, and we are sorry to see him go, but wish him every success in his new role,” GroupM […]

Media agency vet Katie Ford was looking for a change. Over 23 years at Publicis Groupe, her passion for technology and data in a changing marketing environment had grown. So she left her role as President and Managing Director of Spark Foundry to become marketing solutions provider Amobee’s first ever chief client officer, the company […]