Agencies

BBDO isn’t known as a data-driven shop. But the Omnicom-owned creative agency is working hard to change that perception. There’s a certain “muscle memory” among clients who view their creative agency as separate from their digital agency or the people they work with on measurement, said BBDO vet Crystal Rix, who was promoted to chief strategy […]

IPG Mediabrands has rolled content-creation arm Mediabrands Publishing into social media agency Society. Thursday’s merger will tie content creation closer to distribution and targeting across platforms. “You can’t just push content organically anymore,” said Rob Bernstein, managing director at Society. “You need two bookends: smart targeting and really good messaging. It’s not about taking a […]

Marketers across the globe are adapting their relationships with agency trading desks to gain greater transparency into programmatic buys, according to the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA). Ninety percent of members belonging to the European trade body are reviewing their contracts with agency trading desks to gain more control and transparency, the organization said in […]

Publicis Groupe’s creative chief, Arthur Sadoun, will succeed Maurice Levy as its chairman and CEO, the holding company announced Thursday. Sadoun will step into the role June 1 and Levy will transition to chairman of the company’s supervisory board. Publicis Media CEO Steve King will also join the Publicis Groupe Management Board. Sadoun’s appointment comes […]

As the United States ushered in its 45th president on Friday, Google quietly ushered in a number of updates to its ad platforms. But it was Google’s reduction of third-party cookies and pixels on YouTube, as well as the release of a cloud-based YouTube measurement system called Google Ads Data Hub, that had industry insiders […]

IPG Mediabrands’ investment arm, Magna, revealed on Wednesday it is doubling its investment in over-the-top (OTT) TV provider Roku. It declined to name specifics but noted the deal has multiple implications for inventory rates and pricing, third-party research and data. Magna is forming a private deal with Roku to allow more precise targeting between the agency’s […]

Holding company trading desks this year are putting the focus on data and the ability to identify a customer across screens and platforms. That focus made owning data mission critical, and it’s shifted the focus away from programmatic as a silo and toward data management and activation across the board. As a result, “trading desk” […]

Any publisher who is not a big platform company is on the express train to becoming a niche ads business, predicts Meredith Kopit Levien, EVP and CRO of The New York Times. “Up until now, we’ve been a niche consumer business with a $1 billion-plus newspaper ad business,” Kopit Levien said, speaking Thursday at AdExchanger’s […]

Make no mistake about it: Accenture Interactive is here to eat the agency’s lunch. “Our clients asked us to get in this business,” said Glen Hartman, Accenture Interactive managing director for North America, at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview on Wednesday. Clients are starting to look for “nontraditional service providers” that can tie multiple threads together. That […]

“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. Imagine you have $50. I tell you that I’m going to flip a coin, and if you guess the flip correctly, I’ll give […]

Agencies and consultancies are looking more and more alike. Tammy Soares, Accenture Interactive’s newest West Coast lead as of Tuesday, brings nine years’ experience as CEO of Publicis Groupe’s digital agency, Rosetta. There, she gained experience embedding consultants into agency culture. At Accenture Interactive, she’ll be tasked with doing the opposite. “I’m used to working […]

Arun Kumar, global president at Cadreon, will take the stage Jan. 19 to share Cadreon’s full vision for the future at Industry Preview in New York City. Walled gardens are cropping up across the digital ecosystem. “It’s just the way the world is going to be for the foreseeable future,” said Arun Kumar, global president at Cadreon. […]

This is the latest installment in “PII,” a series featuring the talent that makes the wheels turn in our data-driven advertising world. Read previous interviews with talent from Mindshare, Mediavest | Spark, Razorfish, Essence, INNOCEAN, Clear Channel Outdoor and Placed. Patricio Jaramillo is in a serious relationship with data. “My relationship with my wife is first, and then with data,” the […]

Digital ad players from AOL to Facebook have given lead-gen ads a try, but one company built an entire business around it. Fluent has remained relatively quiet since it was acquired by information services company IDI, now Cogint, for $100 million in cash. The company was on a $140 million (gross revenue) run rate at […]

GroupM exec John Montgomery has been to CES for nearly a decade, but this is his first year attending as EVP of global brand safety. So what’s a brand safety guy doing at a consumer electronics show? “To understand brand safety, I need to understand where media is going, particularly new data innovations,” he said. […]

Jim Butler, president of the Dentsu Aegis digital agency Isobar US, is ready to hit the CES showroom floor even though, at the time of this interview, it hadn’t opened yet. It’s his first pilgrimage to CES, and much of what will be displayed at the Las Vegas Convention Center falls into both personal and […]

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which officially kicks off Thursday, is fundamentally a hardware show. It’s a sprawl of new toys that consumers will either really want (drones!) or want not at all (3-D TVs!). “One needs to be careful about CES, as there are a lot of things on display and aren’t relevant for […]

The transparency train is making its next stop in Latin America. On Tuesday, a company called Exiber came out of stealth with a raison d’être centered on what it calls “uncomplicated and transparent programmatic marketing.” Based in Miami, Brazil and Mexico, Exiber bills itself as a data-driven agency for LatAm and US multicultural customers looking for […]

For the big six holding companies, 2016 was a year of acquisitions, restructures, reviews and leadership shakeups, centering expertise around data and digital. But they also engaged in strategies at odds with best practices and client interests. Faced with shrinking margins and rising technology costs, holding companies found new ways to eke revenue – methods […]

Maureen Bosetti, the chief investment officer for IPG Mediabrands’ Initiative, will discuss dynamics for this year’s upfronts alongside other TV power players at Industry Preview on Jan. 18 in New York City. The 2016 TV upfronts ended with networks posting double-digit CPM increases, but will that momentum carry into 2017? Two key factors could help buyers wield […]

Agencies live in a dog-eat-dog world, fighting for diminishing brand budgets. How can a new agency compete against giants with huge war chests and tons of employees? For Gale Partners, a two-and-a-half-year-old digital agency that began as a systems integrator, the trick is to frame its data and strategy capabilities in a way that solves a specific […]

“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 Michael McLaren, executive global group director, high-tech and business-to-business practices, at Merkle. Have you ever found yourself in a meeting where sales leadership challenged marketing leadership for evidence that their […]

Agencies are developing skills and business models around advanced TV buying, just as they once did for programmatic buying. GroupM has a dedicated department in Modi Media. IPG Mediabrands’ Cadreon, Dentsu Aegis’ Amplifi, Omnicom and Publicis Groupe also have added expertise. Even independent agencies like Horizon Media are building out advanced TV centers. “Advanced TV” […]

Advertisers get a little antsy when they see headlines like “More Facebook Measurement Problems!” – but the sky didn’t fall when Facebook began what’s turned into an ongoing measurement mea culpa. “I don’t have a single client that doubts the social and economic performance and importance of Facebook and all of their platforms,” said Rob Norman, […]

Programmatic TV doesn’t exist? Don’t tell that to Dentsu’s media agency, Carat, which just reserved inventory programmatically across five local broadcasters. The upfront commitment, finalized this week, was executed with Videa, a private exchange/supply-side platform owned by Cox Media Group. The commercials will appear on Cox local affiliate stations, including CBS, Fox, NBC and ABC, […]

A few weeks ago, WPP initiated [m]Platform, a unit designed to consolidate data and tech expertise throughout the GroupM media agency families. Most of [m]Platforms’ executive leadership came from Xaxis. But where does that leave Xaxis? With global CEO Brian Gleason leaving to oversee [m]Platform, EMEA CEO Nicolas Bidon became Xaxis’ top dog – as […]

Not all network agencies are beholden to their holding company trading desks. Dentsu-owned 360i, for one, “has never spent a dime with Amnet,” said Chairman Bryan Wiener. Rather, it buys all media – roughly $1.5 billion worth – in-house. And programmatic, he said, should be integrated into 360i’s “overall offering.” 360i originally focused on search […]

“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. It’s generally thought that second-price auctions are better at extracting maximum bids from buyers than first-price auctions. The auction mechanics of eBay, the […]

Both WPP’s GroupM and IPG’s Magna pinpoint 2017 as the year digital ad spend finally surpasses linear TV, according to forecasts each media-buying unit released Monday. Magna noted that digital grew 17% globally this year to $178 billion, contributing $23 billion to the total $26 billion growth in ad spend this year. GroupM predicts that digital will […]

“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 Matthew Mobley, chief technology officer at Merkle. At a marketing event I recently attended, there was one aspect that resonated with me the most: the marketing funnel and how marketers […]