Agencies

Last week, WPP launched the “marketing foresight” consultancy Gain Theory, housed within GroupM. Gain Theory, which has 200 people and a new office in New York City, rolls together two existing WPP agencies: the London-based marketing effectiveness agency Ohal and the Bangalore-based data analytics firm Meritus. Jason Harrison, previously CIO at Maxus, has been appointed […]

Partner, build or buy? WPP Group has decided on the last in the case of Medialets. The global holding company said Wednesday it will acquire the mobile ad platform as a wholly owned subsidiary. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Clients across the breadth of WPP’s holdings will have the option to use Medialets’ tech. Medialets CEO […]

“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 Andy Fisher, chief analytics officer at Merkle. The TV network industry has seen extraordinary change over the past several years. Consumer viewing behaviors are in constant flux as they consume […]

Holding company WPP’s Data Alliance and Facebook have expanded their partnership such that WPP clients globally can use data assets from Kantar Media, media agency GroupM and Wunderman’s KBM Group to build unique audience segments to target across the Facebook ecosystem. This partnership is considerably different from what Facebook has with third-party data providers like Acxiom and Datalogix. […]

Database marketing and CRM agency Merkle has acquired performance marketing agency Pointmarc, a Seattle-based digital analytics consultancy. Terms were not disclosed. The deal is the latest in an acquisitions spree for Merkle, which acquired paid search and social agency RKG last July and earlier bought Chicago digital agency New Control, design firm 5th Finger and […]

Wunderman’s new global chief data officer, Gary Laben, saw his remit expand significantly last week, when he was appointed to the position. While Laben was and will remain CEO of KBM Group, Wunderman’s data-focused subsidiary, Laben will now oversee the deployment of Wunderman’s data capabilities globally. “Some of what we have is mature in markets […]

For a holding company, WPP is an aggressive buyer of ad tech – most of which winds up within its GroupM unit Xaxis. Since Xaxis absorbed 24/7 Media in December 2013, the programmatic media company’s investments in tech, most of which are acquisitions, have been methodical. The most recent occurred Monday, when Xaxis revealed it […]

Although programmatic TV executions are far from “real-time,” agencies and some of the digital DSPs have made headway as suppliers open up greater access to inventory (at least on the local-market level). MDC Partners’ Varick Media Management is one of them. The company claims it buys programmatically now across seven different channels, including TV. One […]

The longtime chief of Omnicom Group’s trading desk operation is leaving the company after nearly four years. Josh Jacobs will move on to unspecified pastures after his lengthy stint as global CEO of Accuen, where he helped grow Omnicom’s revenue from programmatic buying activities to $140 million in 2014. Reached by phone, Jacobs cited personal motives, […]

Wells Fargo had a problem. Customers weren’t walking into retail banks, making them less likely to apply for mortgages or credit cards. The solution was to stitch together multiple tech platforms to provide customers with offers where they actually were: on their mobile devices. One of those technologies was Google’s Waze platform, a mapping app that […]

As SapientNitro’s VP of technology, Scott Petry oversees the Publicis-owned digital agency’s tech solutions for clients like Coca-Cola and The Home Depot. The agency, since its acquisition, sits as one of the key digital properties under the Publicis.Sapient umbrella (the others are Razorfish Global and DigitasLBi) – and it’s known for its technology build-outs. Clients […]

The Association of National Advertisers has distanced itself from comments former Mediacom CEO Jon Mandel made onstage at its Media Leadership conference last week. In his presentation, Mandel alleged that the practice of rebates or “kickbacks” demanded by agencies from media suppliers and tech partners – common overseas – has in recent years become widespread […]

Razorfish Global is updating its media strategy. Or, more specifically, it’s complementing its expertise in customer experience design and commerce with media. “Historically, the organization has gone after standalone media RFPs,” said Razorfish Global Chief Strategy Officer Scott Sorokin. “We can’t win against a media company. We have to pivot around technology and experiences – […]

Agencies are not transparent about their actions. Agencies recommend media that is off-strategy when it works for their gain. Agencies accrue media earned by advertisers’ spending and resell it to other advertisers. Agencies demand pay-for-play from vendors in order to be recommended, and cross the line in partnership relationships. These are among the claims made […]

Global CEO Matt Seiler will exit IPG Mediabrands by the end of the year. During his four years at the helm of the media agency, Seiler led a push to align agency compensation more closely with client outcomes. While his efforts in that area met with limited success, he found more traction with an initiative […]

MEC North America’s digital president Shenan Reed is discussing the way her media agency communicates with its sisters in GroupM (“We’re all one big stock ticker symbol and it’s to nobody’s advantage to be competitive with each other”) when her Ringly vibrates. That’s the connected piece of jewelry that perks up when someone receives a call […]

iSocket’s former CTO, Karl Bunch, will help focus Xaxis’ discipline around its demand-side products. Bunch, an ad tech vet who also worked at Time Warner Music, CPXi and AppNexus, started as Xaxis’ VP of global product development last week. The WPP-owned programmatic media company revealed the hire Tuesday. Bunch’s immediate prerogative is learning Xaxis’ business and […]

Creativity on mobile – or the lack thereof – was top of mind at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday. “The notion that creativity hasn’t been cracked on mobile – I find that depressing,” said Lindsay Pattison, CEO of Maxus Worldwide, speaking at an IAB event sponsored by Facebook and NASDAQ during the big show. “Most clients […]

Digital measurement company comScore needed WPP’s investment in order to rival Nielsen in cross-platform ratings, according to one comScore partner. Although Nielsen dominates linear TV measurement, its push toward a “Total Audience” rating will improve its mobile Online Campaign Ratings tool, launched last summer. ComScore, in lockstep, rolled out a cross-platform tool in January to […]

Depending on how you frame it, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Pinterest are either disintermediating the influencer marketing ecosystem or “wrapping their arms more tightly around it,” as Lisa Weinstein, president of global digital, data and analytics at Starcom MediaVest Group, puts it. Circa 2011, brands threw money at social marketing agencies with one goal: “Go […]

IPG Mediabrands’ media investment arm, MAGNA Global, has added 15 long-tail and premium TV networks to its consortium mix. The long-term goal is to automate more than 50% of client buys. MAGNA Consortium’s original slate of partners included print, digital and TV publishers like Clear Channel Media and Entertainment, Tribune, AOL, Cablevision and A+E Networks. […]

The divide between publishers and advertisers around viewability sharpened during a Tuesday morning panel “Inside The Mind Of The Advertiser,” hosted by analytics provider Integral Ad Science. This wasn’t much of a surprise considering one panelist was Ari Bluman, GroupM’s chief digital investment officer for North America. GroupM has taken a notoriously hardline stance around […]

With the revamp of its partner program last week, Facebook is for the first time allowing agencies to pursue certification – under a specialization called Media Buying. (Don’t call it a badge.) The change is a tacit acknowledgement that Facebook’s key relationships in the ad ecosystem include not only the builders of tools for reaching […]

MDC Partners had a record-high number of client wins in 2014, includeing Diageo’s Johnnie Walker, Unilever’s Magnum Ice Cream and InBev’s Corona in Brazil. As a result, its Q4 revenue increased 17.5% YoY (from $289.2 million to $339.9 million). Organic revenue also increased $12.5%, with new business wins totaling $56.7 million. FY 2014 revenue increased […]

One hundred percent desktop ad viewability sounds like the simplest thing and an easy standard to meet. But advertisers still are in want, publishers wish they could provide it and this demand has generated frothy press releases from the ad tech community with “100% viewable” bolded in the header. The problem is that “100% viewable” […]

During Interpublic Group’s (IPG) Q4 and year-end earnings call on Friday, chief Michael Roth emphasized – as he did after Q3 – the holding company’s barter-based programmatic model that discloses margins. This isn’t the only difference from the black-box models of IPG’s competitors, which deploy programmatic on an agency-by-agency basis. “We continue to believe that […]

A global consumer packaged-goods giant and specialty automotive company have very different digital aspirations. For toothpaste brand Colgate-Palmolive Co., its target demographic is everyone. “How many teeth exist in the world?” said Jack Haber, VP of global advertising and digital for Colgate-Palmolive Co., during Simulmedia’s Salon series panel event Thursday with MediaLink. “For some brands, […]

WPP Group’s data management investment division Kantar entered Thursday into a strategic deal globally with online measurement mainstay comScore, which could give it up to 20% equity stake in the company — if all shakes out as planned. Read the full release. Through the deal, comScore will issue about 5% of its shares in exchange for […]

Five months after taking the wraps off its revamped ad management product, Facebook is slowly but steadily chalking up new Atlas customers. In the wake of its splashy deals with Omnicom Group and Havas, the company has unveiled agreements with database marketer Merkle and Mediaocean, the dominant provider of RFP and workflow management software geared […]

Programmatic activities contributed $20 million in incremental revenue to Omnicom Group’s top line in Q4 2014, suggesting the machine-driven media buying trend continues to drive growth in agency land. For full-year 2014, the holding company’s programmatic revenues were around $140 million, CFO Philip Angelastro told investors during the company’s earnings call. That’s about 1% of […]