Following ad network Undertone’s summer snap-up of programmatic exchange Upfront Digital Media, the company rolled out on Friday a programmatic platform called Virtuoso. The platform is part of Undertone’s developing ad stack, said cofounder Eric Franchi. The company will stagger the release of Virtuoso’s functions, first beginning with programmatic execution and workflow via the Upfront integration. There’s a […]
“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 John Lee, executive vice president at Merkle. Challenged by an already short digital marketer attention span, the data-management platform (DMP) is already running the risk of going from today’s front-page […]
Mobile ad platform Millennial Media is buying up mobile exchange Nexage and the message to agencies seems fairly clear: We want to be your everything. Announced Tuesday, the $107.5 million deal, a mixture of cash and stock, is expected to close in Q4. The tech integration will start in earnest in the new year. With […]
Cloud CRM stalwart Salesforce.com and agency holding company Omnicom Group are extending their love affair. The companies on Tuesday revealed a CRM data-sharing initiative (they’re calling it a customer engagement platform) extending across Omnicom. This means Salesforce.com will pipe data from email, sales transactions, call center/service requests and mobile data into Annalect’s data-management platform. Previous […]
The first half of 2014 was sobering, to put it mildly, for Publicis Groupe and its CEO, Maurice Levy. In the wake of the holding company’s failed megamerger with Omnicom Group and its weak second-quarter earnings report, Levy needs to show digital strength. Some structural changes announced Tuesday may help it do that. Among the […]
Marketers are under enormous pressure to target users from tablets to connected TVs, but the supply side needs to feel incented in order for programmatic TV to take hold. This was a theme emerging from the DMEXCO show Thursday where a mashup of marketers, agencies and tech companies mixed for two days in Cologne, Germany. […]
KBM Group, a data services business and division of Wunderman, revealed its partnership Wednesday with Provenir, a move designed to improve the predictive targeting capabilities of the former’s IMPACT 360 Customer Engagement Platform. The partnership, the companies hope, will enable brands to consolidate interactions that occur across numerous channels like mobile, social, display and more traditional […]
ICrossing, a digital marketing agency owned by publishing giant Hearst, unveiled Wednesday the beginning phases of a long-term partnership with marketing software provider Kenshoo. ICrossing will integrate its Connected Marketing Platform (CMP) with Kenshoo’s tools that automate and add intelligence to bids in paid search campaigns. The ability to automate campaign functions is a key […]
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: […]
The age-old question for streaming TV advertisers is, how to target the viewers they want while reaching the scale their businesses need. The quick-serve restaurant operator CKE, which owns Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, sought an answer in a case study with Attain and Amazon Ads.
America’s Test Kitchen introduced direct and programmatic buying for its free ad-supported TV channels – marking the first time it’s selling ad inventory as a standalone package.
Ad agency holding companies are among the most adaptable businesses out there. In recent years holdcos like Publicis, WPP and Omnicom-IPG have stretched our notions of what an agency business even is exactly.
Audience preferences are constantly evolving. So why not ads that evolve in real time, too? No, really.
MyFitnessPal has just announced the launch of a data-driven advertising business that draws on its wealth of user-provided meal planning, fitness and nutrition data.
Smartly is acquiring INCRMNTAL, an incrementality measurement startup founded in Tel Aviv in 2019 that focuses on causal lift rather than user-level tracking.
