Agencies

As audience buying in digital hurtles forward, the major ad agency holding companies have produced different “flavors” of their agency trading desk (ATD) strategies. For Interpublic Group (IPG), its Mediabrands Audience Platform (MAP) unit spearheads ATD strategy and begins by defining markets according to geographic clusters. North America is one cluster and matched by MAP […]

The incursion of procurement on the marketing organization has caused no shortage of pain at agencies — and some startups as well. Among the concerns are that creative process will be devalued, client services squeezed, and strategic account planning shrunk to a line item by procurement agents who may lack marketing experience. But procurement exists […]

Two years into their existing partnership, ad holding company Interpublic Group is making an unspecified investment in Kiip, a company that promises to connect marketers and consumers through the use of “unexpected” targeted rewards to mobile app users and gamers. Apart from help in continuing to build the San Francisco startup, Kiip co-founder and CEO […]

Essence Digital has acquired Point Reach, a Seattle-based agency with 19 employees and significant mobile capabilities. The deal brings Essence’s global headcount to 233, with the bulk of those staff concentrated in London, New York, and, most recently, San Francisco. The Bay Area presence materialized last September with the acquisition of SF-based Black Bag Advertising […]

Creative agencies, media agencies, PR agencies, “general” agencies. All have faced significant technology disruption in the form of shifting consumer behaviors, disintermediation by vendors, and relentless waves of “marketing tech” requiring evaluation and training. To understand the changes afoot in marketing services business models, we asked a number of senior execs who should know to […]

The six global ad holding companies (WPP, Publicis, Interpublic, Omnicom, Dentsu, and Havas) are basically legal roosting boxes for advertising agencies, but a few years hence we may see them very differently. Or, a few of them anyway. Speaking with AdExchanger today, CEO Martin Sorrell said, “I think our business has changed dramatically in the […]

WPP Group has taken a 20% stake in Globant, a fast growing Latin American marketing and software development firm. Buenos Aires-based Globant blends engineering and design-driven driven approaches. It employs 2,700 in six countries — including Brazil, Argentina, and Columbia — and offers its clients software development, data architecture, e-commerce applications, design, and mobile development […]

As a WPP Group agency, MediaCom works closely with the holding company’s Xaxis trading desk to execute data-driven media strategies. In such relationships between agencies and trading desks, it can be hard for a client to know where the desk stops and the operating agency begins. That creates a tricky problem, since first party data […]

When David Williams bought Merkle in 1988, the first online display banner was still a few years away. But that doesn’t mean marketing tech wasn’t a part of his CRM agency from the get-go as Merkle ‘grew up’ building platforms for direct mail, and then the phone, and then email as the Internet made its […]

Internet marketing agency VirKet based in Mexico City, Mexico announced last month that it had signed on with Kenshoo and its search engine marketing (SEM) platform products – Kenshoo Enterprise (for large, corporate clients) and Kenshoo Local (for managing many smaller advertisers). See the release. Daniel Molano, Chief Strategy & Product Officer at VirKet, discussed the deal and […]

Any media agency will tell you it’s innovating hard around data in campaign planning and reporting. But what does that mean exactly? For Universal McCann, the global media arm of McCann Worldgroup, today’s challenge in analytics isn’t methodological. It’s all in the follow through – creating standardized measurement approaches and then getting insights into the […]

Traffiq is among the few companies to cleanly jump the fence from a product-centric to a services-centric model. One year ago, it was focused on developing and marketing a self-service marketing workflow tool. Over time however it became clear prospective customers weren’t ready. “We were building a model that could be self-serve, and what we […]

In the summer of 2008, Paris-based ad holding Publicis Groupe had started working on CEO Maurice Lévy’s pledge to derive at least 25 percent of the agency’s revenues from digital. The problem was that digital was still a sideline to the main business of creating and buying ads for TV, print and out-of-home. With those […]

  R/GA’s decision to launch a media division one year ago was an unusual step for an agency deeply associated with its creative product. The firm has always talked a good game about data, for instance using personal health data to support the award winning Nike+ and Fuel Band products. But that’s a far cry […]

Speak the name iProspect and what’s the first thing that comes to mind? If you were around during the first wave of online marketing, the answer is certainly “search.” The agency was one of the first independent search marketing agencies to go global with offices in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere before its 2004 acquisition by […]

Agency holding companies met stronger headwinds last quarter, as clients postponed or cancelled campaigns in Europe and North America. This statement from WPP Group sums up the picture at the three global agency groups that reported Q3 results this week: “Each quarter in 2012 has ratcheted down from a relatively strong first quarter. Provisional forecasts for […]

Compared to the U.S., Japan’s programmatic buying space is in its infancy. But to Rocket Fuel, this is the perfect time to stake a claim for its demand-side platform in that country, as the ad tech firm has been working on building a bigger global presence this year. But instead of just opening up its […]

On yesterday’s Omnicom Q3 earnings call with CEO John Wren and CFO Randall J. Weisenburger, the ad agency’s digital media and analytics efforts through Annalect were highlighted…. -and that’s news in itself as trading desk-related business has rarely, if ever, made an appearance on a holding company earnings call. A trend to watch for the […]

Ari Bluman was an important figure in the evolution of 24/7 Media, and later after its sale to WPP, in the formation of the holding company’s aggressive ad technology strategy. He recently left 24/7 Media to join WPP’s GroupM as Chief Digital Investment Officer, a newly created role. AdExchanger spoke with him about the new […]

Top dogs from the four dominant agency trading desks took the stage at the BB King Blues Club this morning. They hit on a bunch of topics new and old, including “education” fatigue, incursions made by DSPs, and making audience trading part of the “fabric” of all agencies. We’ll present this one lick-by-lick in honor […]

Kurt Unkel, President of VivaKi Nerve Center, has been giving Phileas Fogg a run for his money lately as he travels the globe looking to ignite client solutions emanating from his Publicis-owned research and development unit. Last week, he discussed a range of topics with AdExchanger including his group’s agency trading desk solution, Audience on […]

Tracking agency adoption of data-driven strategies is pretty easy in the media planning sphere. Media agencies partner with trading desks, data platforms, demand side platforms, and others to launch and optimize audience buying programs. With creative and “general” agencies, the adoption curve is more obscure. But if you squint, you can see it. Take Cheil USA, […]

Agency trading desks are understandably eager to ramp up with the Facebook Exchange, which promises to broaden the reach and frequency of their programmatic buying efforts. But right after the FBX launch they weren’t equally able to use it — which has led to some hand wringing. WPP’s Xaxis had a direct seat, while Publicis’s Vivaki […]

The ad industry has moved well past the experimental phase of audience buying. But where programmatic media has proven most effective are still primarily around direct response objectives. Many in the space agree it’s only a matter of time before brand marketers get serious. But is that true? To answer that, we asked three senior […]

WPP sees a tough environment for the rest of this year and next, and as a result has lowered its forecast for 2012 from anticipated 4% growth to 3.5%. In its mid-year spending report, the holding company says a cyclical spending downturn related to the absence of Olympic games and U.S. elections is a contributing […]

Here’s some new evidence that digital marketing technology in Europe may be catching up to the U.S. Last week Ari Bluman, North America President at Real Media Group, left for a new job as chief digital investment officer of GroupM N.A. (press release). In the wake of his exit, WPP-owned 24/7 Media has changed the […]

It was three months ago that Jack Bamberger joined GroupM agency MEC as president, digital for North America. He was in some ways an unusual choice, having far more experience on the media than the agency side. Of his last 20 years, 13 were spent at Time Inc., Meredith Corporation, and Ashton Kutcher’s Katalyst Media. […]

GroupM has promoted North America CEO  Rob Norman to run its digital kit and kaboodle on a global level. Among his objectives is closer management of dealings between GroupM’s thousands of digital specialists and the spangled array of ad technology partners. The WPP-owned media agency network has never had a Chief Digital Officer before. Speaking […]

Dentsu-owned 360i is well known for “earned” and social media strategies, but about half its revenue comes from paid media billings, search, and analytics. The agency has solved complex data problems for the likes of Capital One, J.C. Penney, and NBC Universal, and it’s positioning for a future of ballooning analytics requirements. EVP Jared Belsky […]

Earlier this month WPP bought a majority stake in Acceleration, a 13-year-old consulting and services firm that helps marketers and publishers implement digital ad technology. (press release) The company employs 148 marketing technologists in London, New York, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Dubai, and Johannesburg. AdExchanger spoke with Cameron Hulett, who leads Acceleration’s consulting and sales […]