Agencies

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 […]

Publicis Groupe’s massive transformation is starting to pay off – but the business still has a way to go before its new model is complete. The holding company reported earnings on Thursday with organic growth of 2.2%, reaching $3.2 billion for the quarter. Organic growth for all of 2017 was 0.8%, hitting roughly $12 billion. […]

As the first homegrown WPP agency, GroupM’s Mindshare has always had an entrepreneurial spirit. “We were born in Asia when Madison Avenue and the high street of London told us you can’t have a media independent,” said Mindshare’s US CEO, Adam Gerhart. “That provocateur and internal upstart mentality is pervasive in everything we do.” The […]

Advertisers want to market using the type of rich data provided by walled gardens – but that’s not possible on the open web. So the major holding companies have each developed data platforms to meet their clients’ needs. The question is: What’s the difference between their offerings? Publicis Groupe’s Spine, IPG’s AMP, WPP’s mPlatform, Dentsu […]

Dentsu Aegis Network has spent the past year furiously integrating with publishers so advertisers can target consumers using PII-based identifiers. These identifiers let Dentsu clients target more precisely, consolidate reach and frequency management around a single ID and optimize marketing spend. Advertisers get the benefits of walled gardens without the wall. The program, known as […]

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is written by Dominique Netto, head of client services at [m]PLATFORM – GroupM. After the brand-safety sagas of 2017, Alphabet appears to be using some of that $27.7 billion Q3 revenue to further develop brand safety across YouTube. There […]

While most agencies are still trying to wrap their heads around programmatic, digital agency Essence is expanding into the linear world. When it launched as a digital agency in 2005, Essence didn’t bother investing in traditional media, said Global CEO Christian Juhl. Instead, it would wait until traditional media became digitized and the market naturally […]

When Wavemaker, the agency born from GroupM’s joining of MEC and Maxus, hired former Publicis exec Oleg Korenfeld last month, it asked him to build a platform to facilitate media planning, buying and strategy across eight major markets. The agency knows that having globally scaled technology is key to its ability to consolidate. Korenfeld is […]

When Facebook updates Ads Manager or tests a new ad placement, agencies – and even their account reps – are sometimes the last to know. In some cases, new features are enabled by default without any overt communication from Facebook, which can be “par for the course,” said Anita Walsh, director of social strategy at Horizon […]

Within the context of Publicis Groupe’s broader restructure, Publicis Media was born to simplify the group’s media offering while leveraging a more modern definition of scale. “Although it’s become so much more complex, media has always been about scale and insight,” said Steve King, CEO of Publicis Media. “We weren’t leveraging that scale effectively.” Publicis […]

IPG purges its media plans of any ad tech companies that fail to provide value. “We’ve been talking to all of the ad tech companies we work with to make sure we’re optimizing for the effectiveness of media – and, frankly, if they can’t do that, we look for providers that can,” Michael Roth, chairman and […]

Although connected TV buyers have become pretty sophisticated at targeting and delivering an ad to individual users, managing frequency across video providers is a work in progress. But despite the industry’s recognition that consumers demand better ad experiences, many viewers find themselves bombarded with the same ad. Worse, those ads sometimes run within the same […]

Although GroupM has invested aggressively in programmatic and data-driven marketing technology, Chairman Irwin Gotlieb still adheres to the importance of top funnel marketing. “I believe strongly in a marketing funnel, and that broad targeting will continue to remain an essential part of marketing,” he told AdExchanger. “If I focus my effort on picking the lowest […]

  GroupM Chairman Irwin Gotlieb has always had an intuitive eye for technology. He’s been applying it to the CES show floor since the 1970s, when it was called the Comdex computer expo show and disc drives sold for $400,000. Gotlieb began offering his knowledge to clients, vendors and other partners on his legendary floor […]

Media agency Horizon is giving its advanced TV platform Pivot a facelift. Horizon is building a custom planning tool using 4C Insights, the social and TV data analytics platform designed to go beyond age and gender demographic targeting. Instead, 4C’s tool will integrate with Pivot to help Horizon marry behavioral, attitudinal and purchase data with […]

WPP is embracing the forces of change – both internally and externally. Internally, CEO Sir Martin Sorrell knows WPP’s clients want simplification, which will lead to more consolidation. “We’ve seen it amongst clients and media,” he told AdExchanger. “We’re quite likely to see a similar set of circumstances in the agency business.” And externally, he’s […]

“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. Already, 2018 is shaping up to be a very interesting year. Our industry is getting close to making real progress on some of […]

The past year was a tough one for agency holding companies. WPP, Omnicom, Publicis Groupe, IPG, Dentsu Aegis Network and Havas posted little to no growth in 2017. The agency business has been in flux for years, but 2017 offered the “perfect storm” of challenges that caused growth to stutter, said Greg Paull, principal analyst […]

Mobile programmatic pricing is about to have its hockey stick moment, set to grow more than 45% by 2019, according to a projection released by programmatic agency Goodway Group on Tuesday. Mobile prices will increase incrementally, just under 4% month over month throughout the coming year, including for mobile display and mobile video ads served […]

Dentsu-Aegis Network is buying its agency Merkle an early Christmas gift: San Francisco-based B2B media agency DWA. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. All DWA’s 150 employees will join Merkle, and the agency will operate as a Merkle company. “There’s a growing group of enterprise level, B-to-B and technology businesses, all moving at […]

For agencies, managing and optimizing campaigns across walled gardens is no easy task. Because Facebook, Google, Snap, Twitter and Amazon each have their own ways of defining audiences and processes for optimizing spend, buyers have to launch campaigns multiple times across each of them for every client, without getting consistent insight into what’s working and […]

When ads show up next to questionable content, consumers are far from impressed. Sixty-four percent of adult consumers say a brand’s reputation is at risk if its media appears next to hateful or derogatory content, according to research released Wednesday by Omnicom media agency Hearts & Science, which surveyed roughly 1,500 consumers ages 22-45 across […]

We Are Unlimited, the integrated agency Omnicom launched to service the McDonald’s account earlier this year, has hired former iCrossing President Mark Mulhern as its new CEO. In an interview, Mulhern said he was attracted by the opportunity to test a new agency model. “The future of our industry is based on specialisms coming back […]

  By Alison Weissbrot, Sarah Sluis and Kelly Liyakasa Programmatic has transformed the role of the media agency. When programmatic was new, trading desks formed within agencies and holding companies to incubate expertise. As the buying method matured and the trading desk business model came under scrutiny, clients demanded that talent be integrated with their […]