Agencies

The director of ad technology for Netflix, Tony Ralph, and director of marketing for Abe’s Market, Michelle Goldstein, will appear at AdExchanger’s Omni.Digital conference on Sept. 10, an event designed to educate marketers on advanced solutions for building seamless cross-channel brand experiences. Cross-channel attribution will be one topic discussed at the conference. As Netflix’s director of […]

In his four years as Havas NA’s SVP of marketing analytics and data consulting, Leon Barsoumian has worked to marry programmatic and analytics. From a programmatic standpoint, the French holding company has two key offerings, Affiperf and Artemis. In 2010, Havas debuted Affiperf, a global trading desk that Havas calls a “Meta DSP” and is […]

One of Google’s themes, when it announced it was dividing its core advertising business from its more experimental endeavors by restructuring into the holding company Alphabet, was “transparency.” Specifically, in the words of Alphabet CEO Larry Page, “improving the transparency and oversight of what we’re doing.” What that means, however, is anyone’s guess. We asked […]

Accuen has a new chief exec in the form of Megan Pagliuca, who comes to Omnicom Group’s trading desk after five years as general manager of digital media at Merkle. Pagliuca replaces Josh Jacobs, who helmed Accuen for nearly four years before leaving in March. Jacobs later turned up as president of Kik Services, where […]

“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 Jose Cebrian, vice president and general manager of email and mobile messaging at Merkle. Data-driven marketing has multiple meanings. In the traditional definition, marketers use data to drive their decisions. […]

Performance marketing agency Merkle is one of the first agencies to use Google’s cross-device measurement platform, as well as an early strategic partner with Facebook’s Atlas cross-device product. As such, it has unique insights into what company CSO John Lee refers to as Facebook’s and Google’s “distinct pros and cons,” with the caveat that it’s […]

WPP-owned Kantar Media revealed Tuesday its strategic investment in digital media intelligence firm BIScience. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Kantar and WPP clients will have access to BIScience’s platform, AdClarity, which lets advertisers run competitive benchmarking across 500,000 unique publishers and mobile apps to identify high-performing traffic sources. “Our footprint as […]

Questions remain about Interpublic Group despite the strong second-quarter revenues reported Wednesday. On a call with investors, IPG chief executive Michael Roth spun the rash of media reviews – which some have nicknamed “pitchapalooza” – in a positive light, positioning the wave of media agency jump balls as an opportunity to win business. But any […]

Advertiser agency reviews took center stage during Omnicom’s Q2 call. Chief John Wren claimed the holding company is well positioned to weather the storm of media reviews, which have spurred the reevaluation of nearly $30 billion in media billings, according to estimates from Pivotal Research, because of Omnicom’s investments in its data-management platform, Annalect, and its programmatic […]

There have been several changes at Medialets in the three months since WPP snapped up the mobile ad platform. It’s got a new chief exec – COO Richy Glassberg took over as CEO from Eric Litman, who remains involved in the company as chairman – and it’s doubling down on its Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditations. Medialets, which received […]

The health care system is evolving due to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which is why MDC Partners introduced a dedicated agency catering to the vertical: Antidote 360. “Health care is moving from a medicinal mindset to a lifestyle mindset,” said Antidote 360 co-founder Jennifer Deutsch, who is also the EVP and general manager of MDC agency […]

The technology landscape is a quickly evolving beast – and in some cases, that can feel quite literal. “The volume of vendors is expanding so fast, it’s a bit like the movie ‘Gremlins,’” said Rachel Pasqua, practice lead for mobile and emerging technology at MEC Global, North America, a GroupM agency. But while clients expect […]

Data is everything, creative is dead. Creativity is paramount, data is a distraction. “You hear people say both things, but neither one is true,” said Michael Lebowitz, CEO and founder of Brooklyn-based digital agency Big Spaceship, whose client list is a who’s who of blue chip brands, including Nestlé Purina, Samsung, BMW, YouTube, Absolut Vodka, […]

iProspect is best known for its heritage in search marketing. But the Dentsu Aegis-owned digital performance agency, which first opened its doors in 1996, is changing with the times. Today, content is where it’s at. “There’s a tendency in the industry at the moment to split down two different paths,” said iProspect global President Ben […]

This week at the Cannes Lions festival, Rubicon Project hosted its annual discussion of some of the world’s most powerful digital media buyers. This panel has historically comprised the leaders of the four largest holding company trading desks, but this year was different – with senior buyers from IPG, Publicis, Dentsu and Bank of America. […]

The TV ad makeover is gaining steam, judging by comments on the ground this week in Cannes. Cablevision and NBCUniversal/Comcast are talking up the data granularity and addressability of their millions of set-top boxes, and agency buyers are crowing about results they’re seeing from programmatic TV activities. For example, Modi Media, GroupM’s addressable TV agency, […]

Much has changed for Interpublic Group since 2005, when Michael Roth stepped in to lead the then-troubled holding company. His background, as the CEO of a life insurance company, was unconventional, but it made sense given his role was to push IPG back to financial solvency. “The original profile for this job was financial,” he told […]

A host of content-focused marketing agencies has sprung up inside agencies and media companies in recent years, so why not launch one jointly backed by those entities? That’s the logic behind Truffle Pig, a new agency joint venture from WPP Group, Snapchat and DailyMail. DailyMail and Snapchat media will be the starting points for branded […]

IPG’s MAGNA GLOBAL and Publicis Groupe’s ZenithOptimedia released global advertising forecasts Monday, both noting that, in very distinct ways, mobile propels the world’s advertising industry. MAGNA predicted mobile will go from 30% of all digital advertising to 55% by 2019, with a 53% increase this year – crossing the symbolic $50 billion mark. ZenithOptimedia similarly […]

Merkle is bulking up in the talent department. The CRM agency snagged Razorfish COO Michael Komasinski to serve in a similar role within its digital agency services group, along with Gerry Bavaro, outgoing chief strategy officer for Omnicom’s Resolution Media, to serve as SVP of its enterprise solutions group. Merkle’s revenue grew 20% to $382 […]

IPG Mediabrands’ trading desk Cadreon is no longer defined as a trading desk, according to Cadreon’s global president, Arun Kumar. “We see ourselves as an ad tech incubator whose job is to look at how to push this data-driven marketing culture through to the rest of the organization,” he said, fresh off a relocation to […]

In early August, Anthony Rhind, chief digital officer at Dentsu Aegis’ Carat Global, will leave his position and head to ad tech firm Adform as its chief strategy officer. It’s not the most obvious move for Rhind, who has dedicated the past two decades of his career to the agency worlds of Datorama, Havas Digital, […]

Havas unveiled a tool Monday designed to measure inventory quality holistically by assessing fraud, viewability, ad clutter and brand context. The tool, called a meta-quality barometer, provides a quality score for publishers or inventory providers. “We need to help media vendors and tech partners to better guarantee the quality of the inventory,” said Dominique Delport, global […]

As more brands introduce attribution technology – or push their agencies to do the same – basic models and applications on the vendor side are expanding. Initial players in the space, such as Adometry and Visual IQ, still focus on enterprise clients. Meanwhile, a newer breed of attribution tech is aiming more for a white-label […]

The fox can’t guard the chicken run. GroupM is not down with Facebook and Google’s reticence around third-party verification tags. “You can’t measure yourself,” said John Montgomery, COO of GroupM Interaction, North America, speaking at AdExchanger’s Clean Ads I/O conference in New York City on Wednesday. The fact that Facebook is working closely with the […]

“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 by Patrick Hounsell, executive vice president and chief digital officer at Merkle. I was at an industry conference recently. It was another in a long line of events where one smart industry […]

When French holding company Publicis Groupe decentralized the programmatic capabilities of its agency trading desk VivaKi in February, it did so to capitalize on the increasing performance of programmatic, said VivaKi CEO Stephan Beringer. While Beringer didn’t pinpoint the exact drivers for the restructuring, “It was the culmination of insights that led to the need […]

When Canadian messaging platform Kik, which aims to become the “WeChat of the West,” hired former Accuen CEO Josh Jacobs as its president of Kik Services, many wondered why someone who had been so ingrained in advertising would pivot to messaging. Or maybe it’s not such a pivot: After all, Jacobs will supervise the new […]

Adam Cahill is taking his 20 years of digital media experience – during which he has worked at Dentsu Aegis Network agency Carat and, most recently, as chief digital officer at IPG’s Hill Holliday – and launching his own programmatic firm: Anagram. The agency, which opened its doors Wednesday and will work exclusively with MediaMath’s […]

John Montgomery, COO of GroupM Interaction, North America will appear at AdExchanger’s upcoming CleanAds I/O conference on June 3​, an event addressing inventory quality and supply chain issues in the digital advertising ecosystem. GroupM’s stance on viewability is clear: “If an ad can’t be seen, then we can’t expect clients to pay for it,” said […]