Ninety-five percent of marketers have changed their 2020 marketing plans since March, according to a Dentsu Aegis Network survey, reflecting just how acutely the pandemic has heightened the need for flexibility. “It’s either been an optimization, a budget cut, a budget increase or shifting money throughout the year to better match new consumer behaviors,” said […]
The agency holding companies all face the same external struggles – new competition, slowing growth and the need for new skills. But they’re taking different paths to confront these challenges. Traditionally, holding companies followed the same playbook: growth by acquisition to amass the scale that gave them clout across major clients. But the shift to […]
Dentsu Aegis Network’s media billings grew 28% in 2018, according to benchmarking firm RECMA, making it the fastest-growing media group among the holding companies. The company now has $13 billion under management across Carat, dentsu X, iProspect and other agencies. This week on AdExchanger Talks, Dentsu Aegis’ media chairman, Doug Ray, describes the agency’s growth […]
Dentsu Aegis Network launched Sellwin, an Amazon-focused consultancy, on Wednesday. The business is made up of six consultants, with access to another 130 specialists across Dentsu’s US agencies for things like ecommerce search, creating product page content and Amazon voice skills, said Sellwin President Travis Johnson. The consultancy model is new for Dentsu, Johnson said, […]
AT&T’s promise to connect data, technology, distribution and content to make advertising better for all constituents is exciting. So exciting, in fact, that industry executives from both the buy and sell sides gathered in support of the idea at the Relevance conference in Santa Barbara, Calif., this week, willing to help make it happen. But […]
Dentsu-Aegis Network is buying its agency Merkle an early Christmas gift: San Francisco-based B2B media agency DWA. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. All DWA’s 150 employees will join Merkle, and the agency will operate as a Merkle company. “There’s a growing group of enterprise level, B-to-B and technology businesses, all moving at […]
Dentsu Aegis wants to be a 100% digital-economy business by 2020. To get there, the agency appointed Nigel Morris to serve as the company’s chief strategy and innovation officer in June. Morris will focus on the “important, not the urgent,” in the new role, an upgrade from his previous position as head of Americas. Over […]
Has performance-based pay finally arrived for agencies? Traditionally, marketing services firms were paid on a set scope of billable hours worked by each employee on an account. But a growing number of advertisers are pushing for more tangible, ROI-based remuneration. The biggest recent example is McDonald’s. The quick-serve advertiser’s RFP process specified that agency compensation […]
360i – the digital agency recently recognized by the Forrester Wave – prides itself on its ability to adapt to rapid changes in technology. “Marketers need agencies that are adaptable, but still retain the fundamentals,” CEO Sarah Hofstetter said. Forrester singled out 360i’s strong data chops, its ability to facilitate collaboration rather than competition between […]
While media bartering isn’t commonly discussed, the ANA’s two reports on agency transparency referenced the practice 49 times. Here’s how it works: A barter agency might agree to buy an advertiser’s surplus product, such as an airline’s unsold flight tickets at full price, which it would give to employees for business travel. In return, the […]
If Dentsu Aegis Network’s majority investment in Merkle goes through, the CRM and performance marketing agency will support Dentsu’s media-buying agencies. Those media agencies will gain access to Merkle’s proprietary tools, including a cross-device identity management system, a CRM-matching database for publishers and, most notably, the M1 audience platform. “The intent is that every agency […]
Japanese holding company Dentsu Aegis Network will acquire a majority stake in Maryland-based Merkle – a CRM and performance marketing specialist – and one of the largest independent digital agencies. It did $436 million in revenue in 2015, a 14% increase over the year prior. While terms were not disclosed, the deal values Merkle at […]
While MAGNA Global and ZenithOptimedia projected in their most recent forecasts that digital ad spend will exceed TV by 2017, Dentsu Aegis Network’s Carat begs to differ. The agency’s global ad spend report released Thursday found that while digital media will account for 29.3% of global advertising spend by 2017 ($161 billion), TV will still […]
Automated guaranteed has been the slowest part of programmatic to get off the ground. But one of its biggest proponents is the Dentsu Aegis-owned trading desk Amnet, which sees the technology as key to making programmatic a central part of everything an agency does. From January to December last year, budgets going to automated guaranteed […]
Location analytics company Placed announced Wednesday its attribution service would connect billboards to in-store traffic. It will do this via a mix of partnerships with holding company agencies and out-of-home (OOH) inventory suppliers like Clear Channel Media and cinema ad network NCM. “OOH is shifting,” said Michael Lieberman, COO of tenthavenue, an OOH agency within […]
We hear about TV budgets being reallocated to digital, but how much budget exactly? According to an AOL survey of 300 brands, agencies, and publishers, nine out of 10 of those buyers push 10% of their TV budgets to digital. While that’s good news for online publishers, it creates additional burdens around how data can […]
