Publicis Groupe will make Adobe Marketing Cloud technology available to clients across its agency portfolio, the companies revealed Wednesday. Under the deal, the Paris-based holding company’s agencies will package Adobe MediaOptimizer and Adobe AudienceManager as part of a solution with the name Publicis Groupe Always-On Platform. It’s not the first time the companies have worked together on a large […]
“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 John Lee, executive vice president at Merkle. First-party data-driven marketing is becoming increasingly pervasive. Marketers use data to individually match and engage their own customers and prospects on addressable platforms like […]
It wouldn’t be the first summer weekend French agency holding company Publicis Groupe sent shock waves through the advertising ecosystem. Close to the anniversary of the infamous ad merger of equals that never quite materialized as Publicis Omnicom Group (POG), French pub Boursier reported on a rumor the holding company could be close to extending […]
You could be forgiven for not thinking of WPP Group-owned agency POSSIBLE as a media agency. It’s not, of course – certainly not compared to the dedicated media advertising shops beneath WPP’s GroupM umbrella. But POSSIBLE does have an in-house media practice. “We have many clients for which we provide comprehensive media services, but we […]
“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 Megan Pagliuca, VP and GM for digital media at Merkle Inc. It was penned in response to Rob Griffin’s recent piece, “The Death of the Third-Party Ad Server.” Rob Griffin’s […]
San Francisco-based agency Nice Advertising services small-to-midsize CPG brands like Jelly Belly, Sunsweet and Crystal Geyser. The independent agency is creating a programmatic buying outfit in-house, partnering with TubeMogul as its dedicated video demand-side platform. The growth in programmatic spend is most striking. Since the agency’s Director of media and analytics Eliot Kent-Uritam joined Nice […]
Merkle’s been busy. Since 2011, the privately held CRM and database marketing agency has been on an acquisition roll: Brilig (data exchange); 5th Finger (responsive design); Social Amp (social commerce); IMPAQT (search engine marketing); New Control (digital and direct marketing agency services); and, most recently in July, RKG (search). It’s all part of what Merkle […]
Dentsu reported steady quarterly earnings Tuesday both in Japan and abroad. The Japanese holding company saw Q2 revenue rise to $1.3 billion, a 9.8% increase YoY. The company saw 10.6% organic growth in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 4.7% in the Americas and 14.8% in Asia-Pacific. The modest growth was driven by new client […]
“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, COO at Goodway Group. I see a concerning pattern forming in the marketplace. Agencies are bracing for change as advertisers heavy up on programmatic, often in-house, according to a […]
The strategic deal struck Monday between AOL Platforms and French agency Havas’ programmatic trading desk Affiperf benefits both parties: AOL Platforms gets sell-in with Havas’ clients and Havas can unify media assets for marketers in a central hub – ONE By AOL. This is AOL’s second major agency deal since March, when it debuted ONE […]
Amazon’s enterprise self-serve ads platform, designed for agencies and brands, is intended as a programmatic complement rather than a replacement for direct-sold inventory. Publicis agency VivaKi is the first and only agency Amazon Media Group is working with at present for the self-serve platform rollout. Over the last three years, Amazon has spoken with agency […]
Horizon Media, the largest standalone media agency in the US with some $4.5 billion in ad spend across 100 clients, has not been a major participant in the programmatic trend. But that may be changing. Horizon is rolling out a programmatic division, dubbed HX, to handle its machine-driven ad buys for clients. The initiative, supported […]
What’s the hottest new digital toy? If you’re Facebook and Twitter, it’s the buy button. To recap: Facebook published a blog post explaining its experimentation with a buy button – currently with select small and medium-sized businesses – with which users can purchase goods directly through the Facebook platform. This announcement followed Twitter’s own dalliance with […]
It’s hard times for late stage advertising technology companies. Many public and private investors are gloomy on ad tech, and older startups needing new funds lately find themselves forced to choose between unattractive options, such as going public or raising money at a lower valuation, a painful event sometimes referred to as a “down round.” […]
Like the rarely seen zedonk (half zebra, half donkey), agency-led VC is an odd little hybrid — a sometimes-awkward marriage of investing and marketing services. But the genre has staying power. Investing arms within WPP Group, Publicis Groupe (VivaKi Ventures), Interpublic Group, and MDC Partners are all notable players that have been researching and making […]
For many product-pushing brands, investing in airtime simply makes sense to reach as wide an audience as possible. But as brands begin to apply real-time data to contextualize ad buys, demand and dollars will shift from TV budgets to digital video and mobile. But creative challenges around dynamic creative will accompany this shift. For brands […]
When Dewayne Hankins moved from his marketing post at AEG – which owns several professional sports teams, including the Los Angeles Kings hockey club – to a new job as VP of marketing and digital for pro basketball’s Portland Trail Blazers, the No. 1 imperative was clear: Think young. Hankins had followed his boss, Blazers CEO […]
Updated 7/2/14, 3:22 p.m. For the second time in less than a year, CRM and database marketing agency Merkle is on the acquisition prowl. This time, it gobbled up RKG, an agency that provides paid search, social marketing and comparison shopping engine services. With the RKG acquisition, Merkle CEO David Williams said the agency is […]
French holding company Publicis Groupe acquired software and consulting firm Crown Partners on Tuesday and intends to align it with digital agency Razorfish. The purchase is a play to power up Razorfish’s ecommerce capabilities, especially as businesses that haven’t traditionally had strong online presences seek to remedy that situation. “Everyone wants to have an ecommerce capability today, even […]
When they write the history of programmatic advertising, June 2014 will go down as the month when you needed two hands to count the number of big advertisers running their machine-driven media buys in-house. Procter & Gamble, American Express and Mondelez all recently joined the small club of brands embracing exchange-traded media (existing members include Kellogg’s, […]
Dentsu Aegis Network-owned Isobar is a full-service digital agency, a descriptor with less and less meaning as digital infuses all media – or something close to all media. It’s a branding issue about which Jeff Maling, co-CEO of Isobar US, is well aware. “If we’re known for anything in the confusing digital landscape vs. AKQA, R/GA or Huge, […]
In a wide-ranging panel at Cannes, CEOs Dick Costolo (Twitter), Philippe Dauman (Viacom) and Martin Sorrell (WPP) discussed the evolution of rich media consumption on mobile devices and why marketer investment in mobile video does not yet match consumer demand. Sorrell, who opened the panel by stating WPP spends $750 million with Viacom (said Dauman: […]
A financial injustice plagues the marketing world. “Media outlets have proliferated over the past 10 years,” said Daniel Morel, chairman and CEO of WPP-owned digital agency Wunderman. “But somehow, the purse size of the CMO hasn’t changed that much. If you measure the size of the growth of media outlets and the money available for communication, […]
Matt Seiler is remarkably on-message. For the past five years, the CEO of Interpublic Group’s media investment arm, Mediabrands, has banged the drum about the need for performance-based compensation for agencies. More recently he also took up the banner of automation, proposing to automate 50% of all media investment by the end of 2015. Interestingly, the automation rallying […]
“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 Paul Steketee, head of paid social and emerging media capabilities at Merkle. Some common themes are emerging here at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity: Data and digital are the talk […]
On Tuesday at the Cannes Lions festival, leaders of the world’s four largest agency trading desks participated in a panel hosted by Rubicon Project. The discussion touched on a wide range of topics, including deal automation, technology investment and transparency. One macro takeaway is that the so-called trading desks resemble each other less than they used to. […]
GroupM made waves last week when Ari Bluman, chief digital investment officer for North America, said WPP Group’s media agencies will stop buying impressions in open auctions by the end of 2014. It turns out that’s not quite the case, as Brian Lesser, CEO of WPP’s Xaxis programmatic platform, made clear in public comments Tuesday […]
As agencies, media companies, and platform players converge on the south of France for the annual Cannes Lions festival, the overall state of their industry appears to be strong. In its latest media spend forecast, Magna Global remains bullish on both total media owner advertising revenues and programmatic revenues. Meanwhile, total media spend will grow […]
The steward of Interpublic Group’s trading desk strategy has left the holding company, AdExchanger has learned. Michael Brunick, SVP for programmatic within IPG Mediabrands’ Magna Global media investment unit, will join Unbound, a consulting firm focused on helping publishers and advertisers seize the programmatic opportunity. “One of the biggest trends since middle of last year […]
Yet another data-management platform (DMP) has hit the market, at least for clients of Xaxis, WPP’s trading desk. The DMP, called Turbine, is the fruits of a $25 million investment. “The strategy we designed with Xaxis was to develop the pieces of the ad tech stack that gave the most competitive advantage to our clients,” […]
PubMatic says adoption of its AgenticOS, combined with strong CTV and mobile demand, set the stage for double digit growth in the second half of this year.
The Trade Desk, once a Wall Street darling, now faces the challenge of rebuilding goodwill across the investor community and the ad tech industry.
While the outcome of Paramount Skydance’s bid for Warner Bros. Discovery hangs in the balance, Paramount is laser-focused on driving streaming growth.
On Wednesday, and in time for the upfronts, Nielsen added more than 200 advanced audience segments in Nielsen ONE, its cross-platform analytics dashboard.
In pursuit of ad revenue, Dow Jones is betting on a tried-and-true strategy: direct relationships, first‑party audiences and a disciplined approach to using data to enrich ad campaigns.
Infillion, an ad tech business built on M&A, is back with another acquisition. This time it’s Catalina, a century-old market research and shopper marketing company with roots in physical cash register machines.
