Home Agencies Publicis Groupe Creative Chief Arthur Sadoun To Succeed Maurice Levy In June

Publicis Groupe Creative Chief Arthur Sadoun To Succeed Maurice Levy In June

SHARE:

mlPublicis Groupe’s creative chief, Arthur Sadoun, will succeed Maurice Levy as its chairman and CEO, the holding company announced Thursday. Sadoun will step into the role June 1 and Levy will transition to chairman of the company’s supervisory board.

Publicis Media CEO Steve King will also join the Publicis Groupe Management Board.

Sadoun’s appointment comes after years of speculation over who would replace the iconic 74-year-old Levy, who is credited with expanding Publicis from a French company to one of the largest global advertising players.

Although Sadoun is a creative executive, The Wall Street Journal reports that he is credited with bringing more digital expertise to Publicis’ creative agencies. And Publicis’ recent appointment of former VivaKi Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer Rishad Tobaccowala to chief revenue officer shows its desire to move more digital strength up in its ranks.

“I think [Sadoun’s] background was probably less important than [his] fit as a leader of the company,” Pivotal analyst Brian Wieser told AdExchanger.

Sadoun enters the top seat following a few years of upheaval.

Publicis Groupe suffered a major talent exodus after disbanding its trading desk, VivaKi, in 2014. Amid the kerfuffle, the group lost major media accounts including Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Walmart and Mondelez, leading to a slew of poor quarterly earnings results. Most recently, Publicis merged SapientNitro with Razorfish to eliminate duplicative capabilities.

But Wieser added in a research note that Publicis has been on “something of a tear lately” with new account wins across creative and media for brands such as Kellogg’s Special K, HSBC, KFC, Fiat Chrysler and Mars.

However, the dust hasn’t quite settled at Publicis yet.

“Publicis is not yet out of the woods with respect to their restructuring, and this could make near-term growth lumpy,” he wrote. “Specifically, the company is still undergoing fairly significant changes at its media agency group and at its creative agencies.”

Must Read

A comic depiction of Google's ad machine sucking money out of a publisher.

DOJ vs. Google, Day Five Rewind: Prebid Reality Check, Unfair Rev Share And Jedi Blue (Sorta)

Someone will eventually need to make a Netflix-style documentary about the Google ad tech antitrust trial happening in Virginia. (And can we call it “You’ve Been Ad Served?”)

Comic: Alphabet Soup

Buried DOJ Evidence Reveals How Google Dealt With The Trade Desk

In the process of the investigation into Google, the Department of Justice unearthed a vast trove of separate evidence. Some of these findings paint a whole new picture of how Google interacts and competes with its main DSP rival, The Trade Desk.

Comic: The Unified Auction

DOJ vs. Google, Day Four: Behind The Scenes On The Fraught Rollout Of Unified Pricing Rules

On Thursday, the US district court in Alexandria, Virginia boarded a time machine back to April 18, 2019 – the day of a tense meeting between Google and publishers.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters

Google Ads Will Now Use A Trusted Execution Environment By Default

Confidential matching – which uses a TEE built on Google Cloud infrastructure – will now be the default setting for all uses of advertiser first-party data in Customer Match.

In 2019, Google moved to a first-price auction and also ceded its last look advantage in AdX, in part because it had to. Most exchanges had already moved to first price.

Unraveling The Mystery Of PubMatic’s $5 Million Loss From A “First-Price Auction Switch”

PubMatic’s $5 million loss from DV360’s bidding algorithm fix earlier this year suggests second-price auctions aren’t completely a thing of the past.

A comic version of former News Corp executive Stephanie Layser in the courtroom for the DOJ's ad tech-focused trial against Google in Virginia.

The DOJ vs. Google, Day Two: Tales From The Underbelly Of Ad Tech

Day Two of the Google antitrust trial in Alexandria, Virginia on Tuesday was just as intensely focused on the intricacies of ad tech as on Day One.