Agencies

Accenture, which has crept steadily onto holding company turf in recent years, has tapped Universal McCann, part of IPG, as its global media agency of record. WPP’s MEC was the incumbent. UM will handle cross-channel media buying across all lines of business at Accenture, including its agency brand, Accenture Interactive. Programmatic buys for Accenture will […]

Growth at Accuen was flat last quarter as more clients moved away from nondisclosed programmatic buying methods, where agencies procure inventory and resell it to clients with an unrevealed markup, said Omnicom CEO John Wren on the company’s first-quarter earnings call on Tuesday. “A lot of clients have shifted to wanting these services on a […]

Marketing may be a trillion-dollar industry, but its supply chain needs a makeover, says Microsoft’s CMO. “What makes marketing such a unique case is that the labor component is much higher than any other industry,” said CMO Grad Conn. “I think there’s a lot of opportunity to optimize the way we’re working in marketing and […]

About 18 months ago, data services provider Experian Marketing Services sought a new line of business: agencies. Given Experian’s legacy in marketing data, that seems relatively recent. But Kevin Dean, president and GM of targeting at Experian, has an explanation: “The advent of programmatic and addressability has created an environment where brands are as interested […]

MDC Partners’ media agency, Assembly, has forged a strategic deal with Fox’s true[X], whose products give consumers options in their video ad breaks. The deal also gives true[X] more access to Assembly’s brand roster, like Hotels.com. Assembly and true[X] extended their partnership after collaborating on engagement-based ads for clients like the anti-tobacco nonprofit Truth. While […]

Within a year of its launch, Omnicom Media Group’s (OMG) third agency, Hearts & Science, was running two of the world’s largest media accounts. This feat is made more impressive in that when OMG pitched for one of those accounts, Procter & Gamble, Hearts & Science didn’t even exist. “We had to hire 300 people […]

The agency-client relationship is ailing, and fixing what’s broken will involve deep organizational changes on both sides of the table – starting with the marketer. “The brand has to start with itself,” said Brigitte Majewski, Forrester analyst and author of a report released Thursday calling for a new agency operating model. “If you aren’t asking […]

Trading desk CEOs want to change the narrative around programmatic to one of quality rather than cost efficiency. For Amnet co-CEO Art Muldoon, who joined Dentsu Aegis Network when it acquired his programmatic shop, Accordant Media, in August, the ability to tap into a network of creative and data assets helps push that narrative to […]

Amanda Richman, president of activation and investment at Publicis Groupe’s Starcom, used to mostly negotiate rates with TV networks. Today, she helps clients navigate spend on walled gardens, vet ad tech partners and use data to make smarter media buys. “There’s a deep relationship with investment in media inventory and investment from a tech and […]

Both Publicis Groupe’s Zenith and IPG’s Magna attribute growth in online advertising to programmatic targeting and data in their global ad spend forecasts released this week. That momentum will help digital ad spend overtake TV this year for the first time. Magna pegged overall ad spend at $187 billion this year, a 3.7% increase over […]

Media agency employees sitting for Facebook’s Blueprint certification exam may have flashbacks of their experiences taking the SATs. The exam, which certifies agency employees on every Facebook native ad product within its Ads Manager, Business Manager and Power Editor tools, is a multiple-hour affair that requires weeks of prep. Test-takers must roll up their sleeves […]

Targeting a running watch to a broad group like “runners” on Facebook doesn’t cut it anymore. Bold Worldwide, a social media agency with a roster of sports-focused clients, advocates that its brands – including running and cycling watch Polar – massively increase the amount of content they create. With more versions of ads, they can […]

“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. One thing the human brain is conditioned to do is take shortcuts in making assessments and decisions. Without this, we’d be stuck in […]

Cadreon’s global president Arun Kumar has become IPG Mediabrands’ first-ever chief data and marketing technology officer. In addition to overseeing all data, technology and analytics assets within Mediabrands, he will still head up Cadreon. Among Kumar’s top priorities is scaling IPG Mediabrands’ data stack across the unit and IPG at large. “We’ve gotten pretty good […]

Indie programmatic agency Anagram is indie no more. On Thursday, programmatic ad firm Digilant acqui-hired the five-person team behind Anagram in a bid to beef up its custom programmatic ad solutions. “Providing custom solutions is not just about technology,” said Digilant global CEO Alan Osetek. “Technology is only as good as the people who use […]

While major change-management consultancies like Deloitte, Accenture and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) have acquired creative and digital design agencies to get closer to the CMO, they’ve haven’t purchased any media-buying agencies. But as these consulting firms move deeper into the digital marketing arena, they’re building media-buying services as well. Here’s how Deloitte, Accenture and PwC are stirring […]

As EVP of performance marketing for Interpublic Group’s MRM//McCann, it’s in Subu Desaraju’s purview to crack marketing cloud complexities in client deployments. Adobe, Oracle, Salesforce, IBM and Nielsen all built marketing clouds via acquisition, but with these ongoing investments come challenges around data interoperability and overall efficiency across their stacks. Although a number of platforms […]

Dentsu Aegis Network’s Isobar sits on the blurring continuum between agency and consultancy. Launched in 2000 under the name Roundarch as a joint venture between WPP, Deloitte and BroadVision, Isobar used to compete with the “who’s who list of digital agencies,” said co-CEO Jeff Maling. But when WPP and Deloitte exited the investment and Aegis […]

Google updated its brand safety controls on Tuesday after a slew of companies pulled advertising spend from YouTube and Google Ad Exchange. In response to the withdrawals, Google promised to develop tools to better police and remove ads from content that attacks people based on their race, gender, religion or “similar categories.” To do so, […]

When Merkle launched as a CRM and performance media agency in 1988, its strong data repository and direct-response focus set it apart from other media agencies. As marketing went increasingly digital, Merkle’s strong data foundation laid the groundwork for a natural evolution into programmatic buying, turning it into a competitor for digital and media agencies. […]

XAd only wants advertisers to get paid if someone actually walks in the door. On Thursday, the location-based mobile ad network said it would allow brands to transact on a cost-per-visit (CPV) basis. Advertisers will be able to make media buys based on foot traffic-related KPIs and only pay for performance. It’s an appealing proposition […]

Brian Lesser, CEO of GroupM North America, will speak at Programmatic IO on April 5 in San Francisco. Marketers are under pressure to transform their businesses around digital while keeping costs low, so agencies have to evolve their business models to meet these demands. At GroupM, that evolution has played out with the launch of mPlatform, which […]

Havas Media is going through a brain change thanks to IBM and Watson developer Equals 3. While Havas’s relationship with IBM goes back for decades, it was mostly on the creative side. But Havas Media has over the past year been installing and training a Watson-powered artificial intelligence (AI) solution – in the form of […]

This is the third of three stories in a mini-series on how artificial intelligence is affecting the work that agencies do. Read the previous stories about Xaxis and Publicis.Sapient.  After years of double-digit growth, global lingerie brand Cosabella suddenly lost momentum in 2016. “We decided we needed to cut ties [with our agency] and change something […]

This is the second of three stories in a mini-series on how artificial intelligence is affecting the work that agencies do. The next installment will publish on Friday. Read the first story about Xaxis.  As marketer interest in artificial Intelligence (AI) grows, Publicis.Sapient sees opportunity to provide guidance. It has a dedicated unit that provides AI-related advice […]

As consumer attention continues to fragment, creative agencies are relying more on real-time insights to craft personalized messages and optimize them on the fly. That requires bringing media and creative services closer together. While smaller indie shops are bringing media execution in-house to make messaging more relevant, holding companies experiment with cross-discipline and cross-agency teams. […]

This is the first story in a trilogy on how artificial intelligence is affecting the work agencies do. The next installments will publish on Wednesday and Friday. Xaxis, a partner of dynamic creative platform Jivox, is leveraging the latter company’s newest product, released on Monday: an AI-based dynamic creative content recommendation engine. Xaxis will layer […]

The relationship between Lenovo and its agency partners is not what it used to be – in a good way. “That’s not to say that there isn’t a role for the traditional agency, like we have with our creative agency, Ogilvy, to drive the brand framework – we need that,” Lenovo SVP and CMO David Roman told […]

GroupM digital agency Essence on Thursday launched a data strategy unit, its latest shift in an ongoing reorg around audience-based planning and buying. To lead the new unit, Essence has tapped Jon Taylor, previously VP of operations and audience insights at Dun & Bradstreet. The data strategy team will guide clients through platform selection and […]

“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. If you’ve been through an IPO before, you know how delicate the initial pricing is. If it’s too high, the stock doesn’t get […]