Agencies

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 […]

Viewability and fraud will be addressed at AdExchanger’s upcoming CleanAds I/O conference on June 3​​, along with a host of other inventory quality and supply chain issues in the digital advertising ecosystem. Screening out fraudulent and non-viewable ads  has never been easier or more popular. Last summer AdExchanger reported that the number of marketers running viewability […]

A programmatic API for cable television? Cablevision, a telecom and cable systems company reaching 2.5 million households in the New York tristate region, claims it has developed one. It launched Total Audience Application (TAPP) last Thursday, an audience-planning tool that allows marketers to apply first- and third-party data to optimize addressable or linear TV campaigns. […]

So you want to be a programmatic company? As it turns out, it’s not as simple as licensing a single vendor platform and hitting the on switch. For integrated Interpublic Group agency Hill Holliday, the process of building a self-serve programmatic model started last fall and spanned several technology selections. While Hill Holliday uses Turn as […]

“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 Matt Naeger, executive vice president of strategy and analytics for Merkle’s Digital Agency Group. The one certainty of digital marketing over the last 20 years is that it is always changing […]

Agency rebates were a common theme during holding company earnings calls this week, with both Publicis and Omnicom fielding kickback questions from investors earlier in the week. On Friday during IPG’s Q1 call, CEO Michael Roth found himself under the interrogation lights. “This whole issue is not new to IPG,” Roth said, adding that IPG began […]

“Marketer’s Note” is a regular column informing marketers about the rapidly evolving, digital marketing technology ecosystem. This week it is written by Lizzie Komar, Associate Analyst, AdExchanger Research.   Last week, during an on-stage conversation at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O event in San Francisco, Omnicom Digital (OMD) chief Jonathan Nelson described the agency’s evolving approach to technology, data, partnerships, […]

Merkle|RKG’s Digital Marketing Report, released this week, notes strong disparities between the display ad effectiveness and cost of rivals Google and Facebook. In short, Facebook drives conversion rates, but Google is among the cheapest on a CPC basis. Though Google click growth dipped to 0.2% YoY, the Google Display Network (GDN) pulled 11% of all […]

When holding companies Publicis Groupe and Omnicom reported their respective 2015 first quarter earnings on Tuesday, each had to field investor inquiries about agency rebates and kickbacks. Omnicom outwardly denied participating in the controversial activity, at least in the US. “Our media agencies in the US don’t seek rebates,” Daryl Simm, CEO of Omnicom Media […]

On Monday, Interpublic Group snapped up a minority stake in Samba TV, a startup that offers TV analytics and attribution tools. IPG did not disclose the value of its investment. IPG Media Lab initiated the relationship and managed the integration of Samba TV’s data and tools with IPG Mediabrands’ Audience Measurement Platform. “IPG, like every […]

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 […]