In prior holiday seasons, Mars United execs offered AdExchanger end-of-year commerce perspectives as a rare bird in the agency world: a large indie player in a pool full of holding companies.
This year, Mars is back on the docket. Except now it’s to talk about the company’s acquisition by Publicis, the largest of the agency holdcos.
“It’s going to be harder for [indie agencies] to compete,” said Rob Rivenburgh, the CEO of Mars United, who also now leads the Publicis Commerce global group, which includes the shopper marketing agency Arc Worldwide and creative commerce agency Saatchi & Saatchi X.
For Mars, which became part of Publicis in September, he noted the advantages of having Epsilon’s in-house identity resolution service, called CORE ID, and the Citrus Ad retail media DSP, a former acquisition that’s now part of Epsilon.
New agencies and types of agency services will arise, Rivenburgh said. But nowadays, he added, marketers are making tougher calls on whether they’re “willing to keep [an indie agency] in the fold and stable of companies that they work with.”
AdExchanger caught up with him about the company’s priorities as part of a holdco.
AdExchanger: Why the move to a holdco?
ROB RIVENBURGH: Our vision was to continue to be the preeminent global commerce marketing organization. And we knew, to be competitive, we needed additional scale.
We needed breadth and depth of people, but also data and additional technology capabilities. Publicis brought that in spades between Sapient, from a consulting and technology perspective, and Epsilon with its CORE ID [an identity graph and resolution service] from an audience standpoint.
Then there’s the global footprint of Publicis and, frankly, their commitment in commerce.
What are your priorities in year one?
I’m looking to maximize the data that we have, particularly this Epsilon CORE ID and the extensive audience and information that they have. How do we leverage that more effectively from a commerce perspective?
That is first and foremost. Having that data available to us, we want to leverage it not only for media planning and activation, but also for our understanding of shopper behaviors and different nuances that a shopper or segment of shoppers has.
The other big one is really to ensure that, ultimately, what we’re doing is selling more stuff. One thing I heard lately and have been quoting myself is that we’ve got to put more “retail” into retail media.
What does that mean?
Right now, there’s just a tremendous amount of excitement and euphoria, if you will, for retail media.
But retail media has been around for 20-some-odd years. It’s just obviously changed dramatically over the last three to five years. And I think you have a lot of interest and excitement about the opportunity right now, which is more in media plans than in ideas and shopper experiences.
One of the things I don’t want to lose sight of in commerce is that when we’re coming up with consumer segments and shopper insights to develop an idea that ultimately drives that behavior change, we’re doing that through a compelling idea and experience, beyond just a media plan.
I’m stating the obvious, but at times you can lose sight of that.
In Publicis Commerce, is it all about advertising that drives that sale, as opposed to, say, creative strategy or brand marketing?
With “traditional media” – and I’m using air quotes here – that is still more of a traditional media agency.
As you get into the mid and lower funnel, that is where we focus. But as technology and the mediums have changed, retail media and performance agencies started to creep up the funnel.
The “Power of One” model is where we might have a creative agency, a media agency, commerce and technology working with a client, all Publicis agencies.
“Power of One” – is that a Publicis thing or an MBA term?
It’s an internal mantra, a Publicis thing, for sure.
Do you think the boom times continue in retail media?
It’s going to be interesting to see how it plays out. But a lot of the retail media marketplaces are looking for significant growth year over year. And I’ve been seeing the press and others talking about 20% or 30% growth.
I asked a lot of our clients, “Is your budget going to grow by 20%-30%?”
And the answer, historically, is “No.”
It’s not because they don’t want to invest, but there’s only so much to go around. Retail media costs are going up, and the cost to just service the respective marketplaces and retailers overall has gone up.
So I do think there is a point where, if people continue to want to see that kind of growth, they’re going to need to get actual growth of their business. They’re going to need to sell more products.
Where this thing goes in the coming months and year, I’m not sure. But I think there’s an inflection point where the growth can’t continue at that level for retail media.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
