Agencies

Cloud CRM stalwart Salesforce.com and agency holding company Omnicom Group are extending their love affair. The companies on Tuesday revealed a CRM data-sharing initiative (they’re calling it a customer engagement platform) extending across Omnicom. This means Salesforce.com will pipe data from email, sales transactions, call center/service requests and mobile data into Annalect’s data-management platform. Previous […]

The first half of 2014 was sobering, to put it mildly, for Publicis Groupe and its CEO, Maurice Levy. In the wake of the holding company’s failed megamerger with Omnicom Group and its weak second-quarter earnings report, Levy needs to show digital strength. Some structural changes announced Tuesday may help it do that. Among the […]

KBM Group, a data services business and division of Wunderman, revealed its partnership Wednesday with Provenir, a move designed to improve the predictive targeting capabilities of the former’s IMPACT 360 Customer Engagement Platform. The partnership, the companies hope, will enable brands to consolidate interactions that occur across numerous channels like mobile, social, display and more traditional […]

ICrossing, a digital marketing agency owned by publishing giant Hearst, unveiled Wednesday the beginning phases of a long-term partnership with marketing software provider Kenshoo. ICrossing will integrate its Connected Marketing Platform (CMP) with Kenshoo’s tools that automate and add intelligence to bids in paid search campaigns. The ability to automate campaign functions is a key […]

Publicis Groupe will make Adobe Marketing Cloud technology available to clients across its agency portfolio, the companies revealed Wednesday. Under the deal, the Paris-based holding company’s agencies will package Adobe MediaOptimizer and Adobe AudienceManager as part of a solution with the name Publicis Groupe Always-On Platform. It’s not the first time the companies have worked together on a large […]

It wouldn’t be the first summer weekend French agency holding company Publicis Groupe sent shock waves through the advertising ecosystem. Close to the anniversary of the infamous ad merger of equals that never quite materialized as Publicis Omnicom Group (POG), French pub Boursier reported on a rumor the holding company could be close to extending […]

You could be forgiven for not thinking of WPP Group-owned agency POSSIBLE as a media agency. It’s not, of course – certainly not compared to the dedicated media advertising shops beneath WPP’s GroupM umbrella. But POSSIBLE does have an in-house media practice. “We have many clients for which we provide comprehensive media services, but we […]

San Francisco-based agency Nice Advertising services small-to-midsize CPG brands like Jelly Belly, Sunsweet and Crystal Geyser. The independent agency is creating a programmatic buying outfit in-house, partnering with TubeMogul as its dedicated video demand-side platform. The growth in programmatic spend is most striking. Since the agency’s Director of media and analytics Eliot Kent-Uritam joined Nice […]

Merkle’s been busy. Since 2011, the privately held CRM and database marketing agency has been on an acquisition roll: Brilig (data exchange); 5th Finger (responsive design); Social Amp (social commerce); IMPAQT (search engine marketing); New Control (digital and direct marketing agency services); and, most recently in July, RKG (search). It’s all part of what Merkle […]

The strategic deal struck Monday between AOL Platforms and French agency Havas’ programmatic trading desk Affiperf benefits both parties: AOL Platforms gets sell-in with Havas’ clients and Havas can unify media assets for marketers in a central hub – ONE By AOL. This is AOL’s second major agency deal since March, when it debuted ONE […]

Amazon’s enterprise self-serve ads platform, designed for agencies and brands, is intended as a programmatic complement rather than a replacement for direct-sold inventory. Publicis agency VivaKi is the first and only agency Amazon Media Group is working with at present for the self-serve platform rollout. Over the last three years, Amazon has spoken with agency […]

Horizon Media, the largest standalone media agency in the US with some $4.5 billion in ad spend across 100 clients, has not been a major participant in the programmatic trend. But that may be changing. Horizon is rolling out a programmatic division, dubbed HX, to handle its machine-driven ad buys for clients. The initiative, supported […]

Like the rarely seen zedonk (half zebra, half donkey), agency-led VC is an odd little hybrid — a sometimes-awkward marriage of investing and marketing services. But the genre has staying power. Investing arms within WPP Group, Publicis Groupe (VivaKi Ventures), Interpublic Group, and MDC Partners are all notable players that have been researching and making […]

Updated 7/2/14, 3:22 p.m. For the second time in less than a year, CRM and database marketing agency Merkle is on the acquisition prowl. This time, it gobbled up RKG, an agency that provides paid search, social marketing and comparison shopping engine services. With the RKG acquisition, Merkle CEO David Williams said the agency is […]

French holding company Publicis Groupe acquired software and consulting firm Crown Partners on Tuesday and intends to align it with digital agency Razorfish. The purchase is a play to power up Razorfish’s ecommerce capabilities, especially as businesses that haven’t traditionally had strong online presences seek to remedy that situation. “Everyone wants to have an ecommerce capability today, even […]

When they write the history of programmatic advertising, June 2014 will go down as the month when you needed two hands to count the number of big advertisers running their machine-driven media buys in-house. Procter & Gamble, American Express and Mondelez all recently joined the small club of brands embracing exchange-traded media (existing members include Kellogg’s, […]

Dentsu Aegis Network-owned Isobar is a full-service digital agency, a descriptor with less and less meaning as digital infuses all media – or something close to all media. It’s a branding issue about which Jeff Maling, co-CEO of Isobar US, is well aware. “If we’re known for anything in the confusing digital landscape vs. AKQA, R/GA or Huge, […]

A financial injustice plagues the marketing world. “Media outlets have proliferated over the past 10 years,” said Daniel Morel, chairman and CEO of WPP-owned digital agency Wunderman. “But somehow, the purse size of the CMO hasn’t changed that much. If you measure the size of the growth of media outlets and the money available for communication, […]

Matt Seiler is remarkably on-message. For the past five years, the CEO of Interpublic Group’s media investment arm, Mediabrands, has banged the drum about the need for performance-based compensation for agencies. More recently he also took up the banner of automation, proposing to automate 50% of all media investment by the end of 2015. Interestingly, the automation rallying […]

The steward of Interpublic Group’s trading desk strategy has left the holding company, AdExchanger has learned. Michael Brunick, SVP for programmatic within IPG Mediabrands’ Magna Global media investment unit, will join Unbound, a consulting firm focused on helping publishers and advertisers seize the programmatic opportunity. “One of the biggest trends since middle of last year […]

Independent media agency Harmelin Media, whose clients include BET and Blue Diamond Almonds, is constructing its own in-house trading desk. Working with TubeMogul, Harmelin, which used to work with a dozen vendors, will commit programmatic video buys to a single platform. Harmelin is doing this so it can be a better steward of client campaigns. […]

When one thinks about media planning, one does not think of Omnicom-owned agency RAPP. This is understandable. RAPP built its reputation as a creative, CRM and digital agency. But the confluence of advertising and marketing means that the media planning and buying disciplines are increasingly areas RAPP hopes to build out. AdExchanger spoke about this, […]

Agencies and vendors are teaming up to tackle the tech and organizational challenges associated with aligning real-time media with trending topics. Publicis-owned agency DigitasLBI, for example, during its digital NewFront rolled out a series of publisher and vendor relationships to improve its real-time offerings. The agency developed a Brand Content Index in conjunction with the […]

Full-service digital agency Primacy began in 1994 as Acsys Interactive. In 2012, it rebranded to emphasize its presence in digital. Also, prospects weren’t always clear how to pronounce Acsys. (It was “Access”, for the record.) The agency, still independently owned by President Stan Valencis, has traditionally gotten traction via word of mouth. “We get a […]

Just a few years ago, brands needed to be educated around the messaging and measurement technologies available in the digital age. That imperative has since shifted as marketing departments try to figure out how they take that technology and maximize results. As a side effect, the line between data and marketing services providers like Experian […]

There’s a new guy in charge at Essence, the 9-year-old agency best known as a key partner to Google on its programmatic and other marketing activities. London-based Essence has promoted Christian Juhl, previously in charge of its North American operations, to run the company as global CEO. With his promotion, founder and previous CEO Matt […]

The line between enterprise software and digital agencies is blurring. As the merger between Publicis and Omnicom came to a screeching halt last week, the growing demand for data and tech prowess within the agency environment was all too apparent. In the case of computing giant IBM, developing an in-house agency has been a (lesser-known) […]

With the collapse of the proposed merger of agency holding companies Omnicom and Publicis, former agency exec and Vertere Group’s Tim Hanlon provided his take: “Much of of the logic I laid out last year when the deal was announced still holds. If anything, it only exacerbates the questions that brand marketers have about how to best […]

What a fiasco. A “merger of equals” between Publicis Groupe and Omnicom Group that was to be the largest acquisition in advertising history is now off as the two companies have proven unable to overcome a range of impediments, including tax concerns, integration pain, and the personalities of the chief executives. “The challenges that still […]

Digital agency Essence has hired Oscar Garza, formerly of Electronic Arts (EA), to lead a new effort to bring programmatic buying solutions to clients in North America. Garza started this week as director of programmatic and audience, tasked with building a new team based out of Essence’s San Francisco office. As director of acquisition for […]