Agencies

A progenitor of the agency trading desk concept and key advocate for programmatic buying within the agency world is leaving his multifaceted role at MDC Partners. For the past six years, Darren Herman’s business cards have carried titles including chief digital media officer at MDC media agency The Media Kitchen; CDMO at Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal […]

According to Merkle, Facebook’s Custom Audiences program and its related lookalike modeling tools lead the pack when it comes to customer prospecting. Merkle bills itself as a CRM agency, so the company knows a thing or two about database matching online. Paul Steketee, head of paid social and emerging media, said match rates on Facebook […]

Latin America marks great opportunity for media buyers and brands looking to monetize and scale their reach in emerging markets. In Mexico alone, eMarketer estimates total media ad spend was $5.2 billion in 2012. Yet understanding the cultural nuances of each Latin American country is as important as the financial and operational intricacies of the […]

Omnicom is going “all in” with a singular Data Management Platform offering that will support audience segmentation and ad optimization across its two key media agencies, OMD and PHD. Driving the platform consolidation is a deal with Aggregate Knowledge, a DMP recently acquired by Neustar for $119 million. Like many agencies, Omnicom already supported DMP functionality, but […]

Resonate has debuted a platform that measures consumers’ online motivations to help agencies better target campaigns across mobile, social and video. Dubbed Resonate Analytics for Agencies, the software is based on 4-year-old technology that statistically models people’s behavior online against in-depth, survey-based knowledge about their personal values to track how those values motivate the way […]

Google and Publicis Groupe’s MediaVest have signed an upfront agreement, with the media agency committing to spend a “significant amount” of ad dollars on YouTube and Google’s other display and mobile properties, including its ad networks. The deal is “open-ended” and simply involves the promise of spending a set amount in advance, perhaps up to […]

On Omnicom Group’s Q3 earnings call last week, CEO John Wren waxed poetic for a few minutes about the holding company’s investment in data, calling out a new director of applied data position at agency RAPP. Loren Grossman, the guy filling out that role, is charged with “deriving actions” from data platforms including DMPs, CRM systems […]

Deloitte Digital’s acquisition today of Seattle-based digital social media marketing agency Banyan Branch is a strong indicator that the management consultancy is vying for more agency share. Banyan’s 50-person team, which is broken down into social analytics/insights, engineering and design — as well as audience marketing talent, which Banyan defines as advocate/influencer activation and social […]

The lawyers may be scurrying and the deal fees mounting, but Omnicom and Publicis are still on track to complete their $35 billion megamerger by early 2014. The companies are making slow but steady progress on achieving regulatory approval for the deal, Omnicom CEO John Wren told investors on the company’s Q3 earnings call this morning. […]

Emmett Shine’s Bowery-based agency Gin Lane Media is not your everyday 25-person creative shop. The agency had early roots in women’s apparel; its founder and CEO began T-shirt company LOLA New York in 2005 while circumnavigating the downtown New York design and art scene. After securing a number of small projects that landed SeamlessWeb and […]

MAGNA GLOBAL Research has issued a new report this morning chock full of data that shows robust growth in programmatic buying of digital media. For starters, the company says that in the U.S. programmatic inventory (display, mobile, social, video) will hit $7.4 billion this year. Of that, $3.9 billion will be real-time biddable, which $3.5 […]

Essence has made another key hire from the Razorfish talent pool with its appointment of Christian Juhl as the digital agency’s CEO of North America. Juhl arrives from his former post as president, West, at Razorfish, where he managed four offices with a focus on integrated media, creative and technology lines of business. Essence, in […]

There’s a bright future for agencies in being effective purveyors of first-party data, said Brian Krick, the newest head of North American search and biddable for digital agency Essence. But, he said, they have to be willing to have tough conversations and break down barriers. Weaning channel-specific marketers off artificially inflated CPAs that don’t reflect true incremental revenue […]

Video demand side platform TubeMogul and IPG Mediabrands have expanded their work together in the UK, Australia and Japan as the two seek to build up their programmatic video operations in those countries. Their agreement also aims to deliver more seamless campaign tools to globally-minded US marketers. TubeMogul’s non-exclusive partnership with Mediabrands, which has largely […]

Notice how the cover-up of scandal is often worse than the original misdeed? The same is true when it comes to the appearance of a conflict of interest – if it looks like a conflict, you’ve got a conflict. That’s ultimately what led Starcom MediaVest Group CEO Laura Desmond to resign from the board of […]

Automation Is Coming. In panel after panel at New York’s Advertising Week, publishers and agencies heaped hate on ad selling inefficiencies and delivered eulogies for their mutual adversary, the insertion order. The big questions: Which players will be first to seize the automation grail? And how long will it take? The holding company trading desks […]

Mark Weninger, chief creative officer at Merkle, said there’s growing clamor outside of the creative fortress. Taking the stage at Advertising Week on behalf of the customer relationship-marketing agency, he alluded to a force that’s “armed with zetabytes of numbers and analysis.” The new competitive differentiator in advertising is the person or platform that holds […]

Was Bob Lord the only beam bracing the dam at Razorfish? The Publicis-owned shop lost another bigwig this morning with the exit of Chairman Clark Kokich for a new job as chief strategy officer at Marchex. Kokich was a mainstay at Razorfish, having previously been CEO and president. Tallying the headcount losses, Razorfish has lost […]

“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, chief operating officer at Goodway Group. I thought the days when companies promised awesome algorithms without offering any details were over. Companies like AppNexus or DataXu are transparent […]

WPP Group CEO Sir Martin Sorrell takes an increasingly broad view of his competitors. In addition to the company’s two largest agency holding company rivals, Interpublic and Publicis/Omnicom (the future Publicis Omnicom Group), and smaller players Havas Media and Dentsu/Aegis, he says the company now competes broadly with Internet giants, researchers and data firms. “We […]

Critical Mass has lasting expertise in analytics. The digital agency specializes in optimizing websites and other user experiences by placing data at the center. For some clients, such as Nissan, it acts as the measurement hub for all shops in the roster. The agency’s Marketing Science group is led by Shaina Boone, who oversees about 30 […]

More advertisers are running in-house “agency” units in 2013 than did five years ago, according to a new survey from the Association of National Advertisers. The change is driven in part by the weak global economy, but also could be chalked up to digital acceleration – including data/analytics and social imperatives. The survey of 203 […]

Rockfish has added 100 staffers since its acquisition by WPP Digital in 2011, expanding from its anchor office in Arkansas to Chicago, Austin and Atlanta. Now the agency is in the midst of constructing a digital CRM practice. Citing growing client demand for CRM-related services, Rockfish’s SVP & Chief Strategy Officer Dawn Maire noted a […]

This story continues our series on programmatic media in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China). Check out our earlier pieces on Brazil and Russia. The final installation, on China, will publish in the coming weeks. India’s growing Internet population would seem to make it a prime market for RTB and programmatic buying. But the […]

With agencies continuing to voice concern about their battles with clients’ procurement officers, some high-profile agency executives have called to pay for performance. Perhaps they should look no further than today’s direct-response business — traditionally driven by search advertising — where agencies like WPP GroupM’s Quisma have been operating for more than a decade. Quisma continues […]

This week saw the formal launch of a marketing services company geared to entertainment clients. Water Cooler Group contains four agency brands – Maude (offering creative and strategy), Media Storm (planning and buying), Hip Genius (social media) and Bolt (for iTV). Among its clients are Food Network, MLB Network, Major League Soccer, Viggle, and cable […]

The guys who came up with Interpublic Group’s display ad-trading strategy have embarked together on a joint consulting venture. Their new company, Unbound, will serve as a systems integrator to brands and publishers as they make decisions about programmatic ad technologies. “We saw a pretty big gap in the marketplace. There’s no real technology-and-service systems […]

Interpublic Group is making good on recent pledge to automate 50% of its cross-channel buying activity by 2016. The holding company’s Mediabrands division has signed up a group of broadcast partners to install an automated media buying system that will span TV, radio, and digital out-of-home ads. The list of the IPG Mediabrands’ initial partners […]

Fees remain the most common way for marketers to compensate advertising agencies, according to the 2013 Trends in Agency Compensation survey released by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). Out of 98 client-side marketers, 81% indicated that they continue to use some type of fee compensation for various agency types and services. Labor-based fees, which […]

Media agencies have more influence than ever, thanks to the runaway train of audience fragmentation and the infrastructure/manpower needed to address it. This trend is nicely articulated by Publicis Groupe’s acquisition of digital agency Engauge Marketing – not because Engauge is a digital media agency (it’s not) but rather because it’s a creative and content-centric […]