Agencies

The growing demand for personalized, “real-time marketing” (think: the doings of Oreo and its digital agency 360i that resulted in “Dunk in the Dark” during the Super Bowl), is one of the forces underpinning the push toward unifying the “human” and “technological” elements of the programmatic equation. AOL’s earlier announcement of a new strategic partnership […]

Bob Lord is leaving his twin posts as Global CEO of Razorfish and CEO of Publicis Groupe’s Digital Technologies Division to take on the role of CEO of AOL Networks, a post that has been vacant since April when former head Ned Brody exited in April for Yahoo, pending his non-compete. However, Lord, who joined […]

On agency holding company Omnicom’s Q2 2013 earnings call today with Wall Street analysts, CEO John Wren and CFO Randall Weisenburger talked “programmatic strategy” as Omnicom’s net income for the most recent quarter increased 2.4% to  $289.5 million from $282.7 million in Q2 of 2012. Read the earnings release (PDF). The holding company is looking to […]

Accuen, Omnicom Media Group’s trading desk, is officially opening trading desk operations across 20 markets in Latin America, giving the programmatic unit coverage in 60 countries. Much of the focus on the nations that comprise Central and South America has tended to revolve around the rise in consumer spending by Hispanics in the US and […]

GroupM media agency Mindshare announced in early June that former Digitas exec Jordan Bitterman would become the agency’s new Chief Strategy Officer for North America. While at Digitas, Bitterman co-founded the Digitas NewFront, which was a pre-cursor to the Digital Content NewFronts industry-wide event held most recently in April and May. In an interview last […]

 “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 Sacha Xavier, partner, media and innovation director for for Neo@Ogilvy, and Paul Chenier, vice president of national sales at AskMen.com. Are you frustrated by the number of emails and calls […]

The time when the blanket label “video advertising” will replace references to TV, PC, mobile, or tablet ads is still a long way off, but a new marketplace offering from Videology promises to advance that cause by letting buyers and sellers unify guaranteed and non-reserved ad deals. Dubbed “Descartes,” the system is named for the […]

Seven-year-old mobile agency M&C Saatchi Mobile offers strategic consulting, mobile production, and mobile paid media services. The London-based firm, part of independent agency network M&C Saatchi, employs about 75 staff, and its paid media efforts are focused on direct-response campaigns. Eric Mugnier came to New York in 2011 to open M&C Saatchi Mobile’s first US […]

Last week in Cannes, global leaders from the five biggest holding company trading desks convened for a panel discussion hosted by the Rubicon Project. The event took place on a rooftop against the backdrop of the Mediterranean Sea, while on the sidewalk below creatives scurried between beach parties and celeb-packed sessions at the Palais des […]

It’s been a little more than a year since Kepler Group was spun off (see AdExchanger’s Q&A) from MediaMath, where it had previously been the direct-to-client professional services group. So how’s it going for the world’s first independent agency to be incubated within a demand-side platform? Not bad at all. Kepler is hiring up and […]

At last week’s Merkle client summit, marketing chieftains from Geico and Travelers were present. [Record scratch here.] Wait a second – an agency has two ultra-competitve clients on its roster?  Yes, it’s true. As Merkle CEO David Williams readily admitted to AdExchanger last week, the competitive nature of clients does create sensitivity around the data […]

Annalect Group, the digital and analytics division of Omnicom Media Group, will use Salesforce.com’s Marketing Cloud to support the social marketing offerings across Omnicom’s agencies, according to the companies. Omnicom already uses various Salesforce.com products such as Radian6 and Social.com. Today’s news highlights the company’s efforts to further “bundle” its work with the cloud software […]

For major publishers that built their businesses on print and glossy magazine pages, there is a clear sense that programmatic ad sales methods are becoming mainstream. What’s less clear is how to address the problems that programmatic has forced on them, namely, the struggle over developing a common metric and how to define terms like […]

In pitching the marketer-centric audience at Merkle’s customer summit about the benefits of  DIRECTV’s addressable televison advertising product, the company’s VP of Advanced Advertising, Tom Hagopian, identified two of its challenges, too.  The first was the limited scale of the addressable TV market.  The second… “On the TV buying side, we are constantly involved in […]

Recounting an anecdote in his opening keynote yesterday at Merkle’s customer summit, Merkle CEO David Williams illustrated what a “game-changer” Facebook’s Custom Audience product has been for Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM) companies like his. Williams said that Facebook executives initially told him it would not only never let email addresses match to Facebook login data […]

Pointing at its own 350 person-strong digital team and “hyper growth” for its products and services related to the digital channel, Merkle kicked off its “CRM Executive Summit” today in Charleston, South Carolina. Merkle CEO David Williams recounted for customer attendees how it was only four years ago that “the stars were aligning” and true […]

From math teacher at the US Military Academy in West Point more than 20 years ago to his new role as Chief Strategics Analytics Officer of agency DraftFCB, Ken Beatty has sampled a unique set of perspectives on data and its impact on people. Today, like any good agency “soldier,” he says he wants to […]

Twitter has shown aggressiveness over the past few months in developing its advertising business, and this morning’s global data-sharing deal with WPP Group represents another significant advancement. Read the release. The relationship is through WPP’s Data Alliance, which includes the holding company’s media buying and planning umbrella GroupM, the analytics provider Kantar and digital creative […]

WPP Group’s trading desk Xaxis is known for its proprietary approach to technology. The GroupM unit has incubated numerous ad platforms, a legacy of WPP’s 2007 acquisition of 24/7 Media. It offers these products to clients as an alternative to licensing from vendors. By contrast, trading desk rivals VivaKi AOD (Publicis), Cadreon (IPG), and Accuen (Omnicom) are […]

When Publicis Groupe launched it five years ago, VivaKi Audience On Demand was among the first holding company trading desks. And Google was its key partner, supporting a great majority of AOD’s ad serving and auction-based display media buying. But those days are over. As of Q1, Google’s DoubleClick Bid Manager (formerly Invite Media) is […]

In her role as Managing Director of Connected Platforms at media agency PHD, Andrea Wolinetz helps manage client opportunities that are digital but don’t necessarily fit a silo such as “mobile” or “social.” She offers Foursquare as a prime example of this conundrum in the agency: “Should you call your mobile specialist because it’s a […]

At yesterday’s Digitas NewFront, Huffington Post executives said they would offer their native advertising content distribution system exclusively to the Publicis Groupe interactive shop’s clients. While billed as “real-time,” the self-serve content system will post marketers’ content within a two-hour window of receiving the request. “We’re bringing our year-old BrandLive service to HuffPost that will […]

Ad network Pulse 360, a subsidiary of Seevast, is on the brink of shutting down and may have closed its doors already, AdExchanger has learned. Pulse 360 issued a company-wide layoff in April and began looking for a buyer or new investor, according to a former employee who asked to remain anonymous. Pulse 360 founder […]

WPP Group has shared some new details on revenue performance and strategy for its Xaxis trading unit. Xaxis grew its revenue by 28% during the first quarter, said Pivotal Research Analyst Brian Wieser in a research note. WPP had previously stated the business had 2012 media billings of $270 million and a headcount of 200. […]

Interpublic Group has made changes to its Cadreon trading desk in North America, uprooting it from its previous home in the Mediabrands Audience Platform and repotting it in the Magna Global media investment arm. As Adweek reported earlier this month, a new entity called Magna Global North America will absorb the trading desk along with […]

Since being acquired in September 2012, Paul Cimino’s Brilig Data Exchange serves not only its own customer base but also that of its new owner, Merkle, and all of the first- and third-party data it looks to leverage on behalf of its Merkle clients across marketing campaigns. In an ongoing effort to understand how data […]

After a relatively quiet period following its acquisition by WPP Group for $540 million last year, AKQA’s executives popped up in New York on Friday to deliver what the digital agency described as an “experiment” in reaching out to clients and the media. “We wanted to give back to our customers by sharing with them […]

Marketers worldwide are pouring more money into digital ads, according to a new report from GroupM. Internet ad spending is expected to reach $113.5 billion worldwide this year, a 14.6% increase from last year and representing more than 21% of advertising budgets, reports the media buying agency, which polled marketers from 28 countries. North America […]

“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. Have you seen recent articles about the Firefox cookie-blocking privacy debate? I don’t blame those of us in the digital media community for going […]

Full-service digital agency Booyah Advertising has launched a trading desk, led by new hire Matt Thompson, previously with Mindshare in London. The trading desk will employ four people, all in Denver. Booyah the agency is part of Booyah Networks, which also owns video ad marketplace SpotXchange. Booyah Advertising did $100 million in media last year, […]