Agencies

The combined media spending of Publicis Groupe and Omnicom would amount to roughly $53 billion, according to separate sets of data from Pivotal Research’s Brian Wieser and WPP analytics unit Kantar Media. That translates into a tremendous amount of buying clout. Major publishers across all media continued to absorb the news from this weekend about […]

As news of the Publicis-Omnicom mega merger settles, questions remain about what this means for the advertising landscape. AdExchanger reached out to venture capitalists who fuel much of the ad market and asked them this question: “What impact do you expect the merger will have on ad tech and venture capital, if any?” Click or […]

What does the marketer really think about the Omnicom-Publicis marriage? Intuit’s Head of Online Acquisition, Cezanne Huq, shared his thoughts on the merger, which is partially informed by his own company’s agency services needs as well as his background in the services world.   Though he declines to say exactly which agencies Intuit works with today for competitive reasons, […]

The differentiator is: Who holds the data? Immediately following the Publicis-Omnicom mega-merger that came on a sunny Sunday afternoon in France, a couple of questions remained. To what extent was the deal motivated by technology-driven changes in marketing? And what are the deal’s implications for consumer tech titans like Google, Twitter and Facebook? “If you […]

As analysis of the merger of Publicis and Omnicom Group rages on, one of the critical challenges ahead for the combined entity appears to be “conflict of interest.” AdExchanger’s Zach Rodgers reported yesterday when the merger announcement was made, Omnicom CEO John Wren was non-chalant about potential conflicts: “Shared clients contributed over $6.5 billion in […]

As more advertising dollars pour into digital — and into agency trading desks — the exchange model’s momentum is likely to continue, no matter what level of integration comes from the merger of Publicis Groupe and Omnicom. Several executives who have served with the trading-desk side of the agency business and moved on said that […]

Tim Hanlon is Founder and CEO of consulting firm Vertere Group. As a former key executive within Publicis, Hanlon’s years of experience provide him a unique view into today’s announced merger of agency holding companies Publicis Groupe and Omnicom Group.   AdExchanger asked Hanlon about his “take” on the blockbuster combination earlier today. AdExchanger: Did you […]

Publicis and Omnicom have confirmed their intent to create a merger of equals. The two global ad agency holding companies will form a new entity called Publicis Omnicom Groupe – with ownership structured approximately 50/50 and a market capitalization of $35 billion U.S. (press release) Speaking with press from Paris this morning, CEOs Maurice Levy […]

A merger of Omnicom Group and Publicis Groupe, the announcement of which is expected tomorrow, would result in a sprawling array of media agencies — and digital agencies that buy media — under one corporate roof. Omnicom’s big media agency brands are PHD, OMD, and Resolution Media. The Publicis side is sprawl-ier, consisting of Starcom […]

Data-driven buying methods have boosted media margins at MDC Partners, although programmatic is still small as a percentage of the whole business. On the holding company’s earnings call yesterday, CEO Miles Nadal said digital media stands out in its portfolio of marketing services firms with margins surpassing 20%. “Strategically, our media investments especially digital media […]

Publicis Groupe is hemorrhaging senior digital talent. With his exit for a plum job as CEO of AOL Networks (AdExchanger story), Razorfish CEO Bob Lord became the latest in a string of digital agency CEOs to leave the French holding company. Among the others are Colin Kinsella, former CEO of Digitas North America, who recently […]

“Trading desks, which include WPP’s Xaxis, Publicis’ Audience on Demand, Omnicom’s Accuen and Interpublic’s Cadreon, probably deployed $2 billion of online spending in the US last year, up from around $1bn in 2012 and may spend up to $3bn in 2013. This represents a substantial change in the context of a market which saw $18 […]

For Emmy Spahr, associate media director at Publicis agency Mediavest, “programmatic media” is a phrase that increasingly is part of the agency-client dialogue. As a member of Mediavest Group’s Geo-Commerce Center of Excellence, Spahr focuses exclusively on helping a major American cable company with its acquisition-driven plans. “We’re getting a lot of ‘asks’ for a […]

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 […]