AT&T just hired an ad platform whiz kid to take charge of its new TV and video ad business – but that’s the easy part. On Friday, AT&T revealed that Brian Lesser, GroupM’s CEO of North America, will helm a new business unit so the telco can attempt to realize the potential of its vast deterministic […]
Brian Lesser, CEO of GroupM North America, will leave the company for a role at AT&T, the WPP-owned media buying giant announced on Friday. “Brian has been a key contributor to 24/7, Xaxis and most recently GroupM, and we are sorry to see him go, but wish him every success in his new role,” GroupM […]
WPP’s media buying unit GroupM said Thursday that it merged media agencies MEC and Maxus to cut costs, since the two agencies have overlapping capabilities. The yet-to-be-named firm drives a billion dollars in revenue and will be led by MEC CEO Tim Castree. “Combining [MEC and Maxus] gives us scale but also flexibility to invest […]
Brian Lesser, CEO of GroupM North America, will speak at Programmatic IO on April 5 in San Francisco. Marketers are under pressure to transform their businesses around digital while keeping costs low, so agencies have to evolve their business models to meet these demands. At GroupM, that evolution has played out with the launch of mPlatform, which […]
GroupM is refocusing investments around addressable and data-driven media. WPP’s media investment management arm will be split into two pillars, Media Investment and Platform Solutions, the company said Monday. The Media Investment arm will refocus GroupM’s investment strategies around data and platforms, while the new Platform Solutions division will centralize and scale GroupM technology used […]
Welcome to the first episode of AdExchanger Talks, a new podcast on data-driven marketing. Following this discussion with GroupM’s North America CEO, Brian Lesser, we will publish new episodes twice monthly. Let us know if you like it, and please subscribe if you haven’t already, at iTunes or by pasting this link into the iOS podcast […]
For a holding company, WPP is an aggressive buyer of ad tech – most of which winds up within its GroupM unit Xaxis. Since Xaxis absorbed 24/7 Media in December 2013, the programmatic media company’s investments in tech, most of which are acquisitions, have been methodical. The most recent occurred Monday, when Xaxis revealed it […]
When Xaxis released its proprietary data-management platform (DMP) last week, competitors backhanded the WPP-owned tech shop with compliments. On the one hand, $25 million is an impressive figure for a company to invest in technological innovation. On the other hand, what good is this technology if clients are scared off by Xaxis’ opaque business model? […]
WPP Group’s trading desk Xaxis is known for its proprietary approach to technology. The GroupM unit has incubated numerous ad platforms, a legacy of WPP’s 2007 acquisition of 24/7 Media. It offers these products to clients as an alternative to licensing from vendors. By contrast, trading desk rivals VivaKi AOD (Publicis), Cadreon (IPG), and Accuen (Omnicom) are […]
Although the major internet ad players – e.g., Pandora, Spotify, Last.fm – all swear by their direct sales, Xaxis, WPP’s audience buying unit, is looking to leverage audio ads as a way to get more brand campaign ad dollars within its programmatic system. “The appeal [of internet radio audio ads] is that we want to […]
