Agencies

The ability to buy directly from a publisher, both programmatically and through direct integrations, is transforming agency media-buying practices. Premium inventory is going programmatic thanks to private marketplaces (PMPs) and programmatic guaranteed deals. Meanwhile, header technology has reinvented the way buyers connect with some media sellers. These converging trends have empowered more agencies to go […]

IPG plans to boost investments in data analytics and coordinate its database across all its agencies, CEO Michael Roth said Friday during the holding company’s Q3 earnings call. Read the release. “That will be a key focus for us in 2017 – to make sure all the agencies at IPG have a consistent offering in […]

Publicis Groupe’s organic growth rate was stagnant in the third quarter (up only 0.2%, a decrease from 0.7% growth in the same period last year), due to economic uncertainties related to the US election, Brexit and the surge of media reviews in 2015. Revenue for Q3 was 2.32 billion euros (or about $2.5 billion), down […]

Less than a year old, Hearts & Science, Omnicom Group’s data-driven, integrated agency, has grabbed major accounts from rival holding companies. With Procter & Gamble and AT&T, the agency gained the two largest media accounts in the world within the first four months of its existence. Now Hearts & Science is starting to expand internationally, with […]

Ever since Publicis Groupe disaggregated its trading desk, VivaKi, programmatic has been searching for a new home within the holding company. DigitasLBi is taking an integrated approach by embedding programmatic experts into account teams. “I’m not looking to create a long-term programmatic team silo,” said Carol Chung, who became head of programmatic, North America, at […]

As WPP’s direct marketing agency, Wunderman began collecting data about individual consumers before it was the currency of the digital world. “Data was the lifeline of this place to begin with,” said Wunderman’s New York president, Jamie Gallo. “It was very pedestrian and primal data, but it was what the agency was built on.” As […]

Xaxis, the WPP Group-owned programmatic media platform, snapped up the ecommerce ad tech business Triad Retail Media on Thursday. Triad handles media sales for major ecommerce sites, including those operated by Walmart, Sam’s Club, eBay, StubHub, Staples and Toys R Us. Triad’s gross revenue was more than $500 million in 2015, up from approximately $170 […]

By 2017, digital advertising spend will catch up with linear TV at $68 billion, according to Magna’s latest update to its US ad revenue forecast. But linear TV isn’t going anywhere just yet. “This year what has surprised me is the resilience of national TV,” said Vincent Letang, EVP for global market intelligence at Magna. […]

Aside from some fiery rhetoric in the immediate aftermath of the Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) transparency report, the overall response of agencies to the trade group’s findings has been fairly muted. But independent agencies Mediasmith and Empower MediaMarketing have taken a stand by ending their memberships with the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) […]

The ANA’s recent media transparency probe alleged certain opaque practices and pricing models among holding company trading desks that didn’t always align with the best interest of clients. Programmatic Mechanics thinks it’s in a good position to change some of those perceptions, given its independent status. “We don’t have to be concerned about hitting corporate sales targets […]

On Thursday – amid strengthening rumors of an IPO – Snapchat finally released its anticipated ads API to enable better automation, targeting and measurement. It is running with nine partners. Advertisers can buy Snap Ads – full-screen, sound-on, vertical video ad units – programmatically on the platform. “Advertisers [can now] glean insights and better optimize […]

“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 David Williams, president and CEO at Merkle. Across industries, today’s marketing conversation is all about the personalized experience. Everything you hear and read seems to be focused on the importance of […]

Samsung is quietly briefing agencies and media partners about an addressable TV ad product that uses smart-TV data to target ads across linear broadcasts, according to AdExchanger sources. Samsung’s scale includes 20 million Samsung smart TVs in the US and 50 million globally, and sources say the electronics manufacturer is beginning to activate and monetize […]

Since Merkle began in the ’70s as a database marketing agency, its purview has expanded to include creative services, CRM and search and programmatic ad buying. It’s been an active year for the agency, which has 3,400 people across 21 offices in the US, Europe and Asia. Formerly one of the biggest independent agencies in […]

Carat has a leg up on holding companies scrambling to integrate siloed teams. As part of Dentsu Aegis Network, the media agency operates on a shared profit-and-loss (P&L) statement by country across the network. That allows it to pull in specialist media capabilities to better serve its clients, without those teams competing financially. “This idea […]

MDC Partners’ trading desk Varick Media has witnessed an exodus of numerous senior executives on the road to a new organizational hierarchy, first laid out in 2014. Many have recently left the trading desk – or transferred to sister agencies – as the holding company centralized Varick’s operations (and moves to offices housing the agency Assembly by the […]

By Kelly Liyakasa and Alison Weissbrot Agencies are becoming more consultative. Consultants are buying creative agencies. And systems integrators are dabbling in client strategy. “Everyone talks about online vs. offline media or creative vs. media, but when a marketer wants to change the consumer journey, we’re talking new operating models and governance,” said Glen Hartman, […]

Times Square was abuzz this week with talk of the elusive “agency of the future.” “Agencies will need to be far more empathic, far nimbler and more agile,” said Paul Gunning, CEO of DDB Chicago, on Tuesday at Advertising Week in New York City. “The holding company getting rid of silos is the foundation of […]

Facebook is being raked over the coals about measurement at Advertising Week in New York City. For the last two years, Facebook was only counting videos that were seen for three seconds or more, resulting in exaggerated reported average view times. The heat was so great that Carolyn Everson, Facebook’s VP for global marketing solutions, […]

Welcome to the first episode of AdExchanger Talks, a new podcast on data-driven marketing. Following this discussion with GroupM’s North America CEO, Brian Lesser, we will publish new episodes twice monthly. Let us know if you like it, and please subscribe if you haven’t already, at iTunes or by pasting this link into the iOS podcast […]

Xaxis is placing three bets on how it can evolve programmatic buying, according to global COO Nicolle Pangis. One, it wants to understand the entire consumer life cycle. That means using historical data and a team of data scientists to figure out when someone enters the market for an item and the best time to […]

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in programmatic TV and video. Today’s column is written by Jay Friedman, COO at Goodway Group. I spent the first 10 years of my career in traditional media. The past 10 have been in digital. When I made the transition I was astounded by […]

Agencies that don’t comply with the American Association of Advertising Agencies’ (4As) Transparency Guiding Principles of Conduct (TGPC) will risk losing their memberships. Under the new rule, which the agency trade body blogged about on Monday, anyone (from marketers to executives from other agencies) who finds an agency is not compliant with the 4As’ guidelines […]

If time is money, agencies and publishers are still working out how to bill for it. At a Wednesday event hosted by IAS in Manhattan, Mitch Weinstein, SVP of ad ops at IPG Mediabrands, shared research that found time in view was more important in driving ad effectiveness than the number of in-view pixels. In […]

Publicis-owned agency Zenith had many high-profile exits in the last year, like Julian Zilberbrand moving to Viacom and John Nitti going to Verizon, but the agency is doubling down on recruitment. Increasing competition from systems integrators and consultants like Deloitte and Accenture have forced Zenith to rethink its talent requirements. “We’re recruiting people who can […]

A tough global economy has given way to cost-conscious marketers, short-tenured CMOs and squeezed agencies. These are the challenges Maxus Global CEO Lindsay Pattison must work through as she sets the vision for the GroupM agency. “We are the challenger group in the family,” said UK-based Pattison. “We are more data-driven. We didn’t come out […]

Over the last year Omnicom went on a tear, poaching big-brand clients from its competitors. Omnicom Media Group (OMG) lured Procter & Gamble from Publicis Groupe’s Starcom Mediavest and built the data-driven agency Hearts & Science to support it. AT&T also consolidated its business under Omnicom when it moved its media account from WPP’s MEC to Hearts […]

As the ad industry races to embrace mobile, social, data targeting and ad tech, Young & Rubicam (Y&R) CEO David Sable says it’s forgetting about the consumer. Audience targeting? Misses out on potential customers. Ad blocking? A reflection of the unchecked proliferation of ads. Sponsored content? It’s been around forever. But he also realizes ads […]

When Vice needed to diversify its distribution beyond Facebook and YouTube, it didn’t look to other digital platforms. Instead, said CEO Shane Smith, Vice partnered with HBO and hatched plans for a TV network. “We realized we couldn’t be hostage to Facebook and YouTube. We had to go off-platform,” he told WPP head Martin Sorrell […]

Mobile has been reshaping the way advertisers spend on digital, but the pace is picking up significantly, setting the stage for desktop ad spend to contract even faster than legacy channels. As advertisers shift spend to mobile, desktop advertising will shrink faster than newspapers and magazines, according to Zenith’s Advertising Expenditure Forecast, released on Monday. […]