GroupM said Wednesday that Wavemaker global CEO Tim Castree has been named CEO of GroupM North America. Castree does not yet have a successor and will stay on in an advisory role at Wavemaker until a replacement is named. Castree’s big task will be to get GroupM back to growth in North America, its slowest […]
Even before WPP’s restructuring announcement Tuesday, the holding company had already merged digital agency VML with creative agency Young & Rubicam, and digital agency Wunderman with creative agency J. Walter Thompson. It’s still unclear what that means for GroupM’s four large media agencies. WPP CEO Mark Read didn’t comment directly about the media buying arm, […]
What’s a coco de mer? A double coconut, which is what Martin Sorrell is cultivating with S4. The holding company he once described as a peanut grew into a coconut – also his description – when it acquired MediaMonks in June. With its second acquisition with MightyHive on Tuesday, the coconut has doubled up. From […]
GroupM and Magna both released global advertising spend forecasts Monday with very different findings. GroupM lowered its ad spend growth forecast for this year from 4.5% to 4.3%, reaching $543 billion. Magna, which measured 2018 in retrospect, said global ad spend grew by a record 7.2% this year to $552 billion. GroupM revised its 2019 […]
The TV ad buying ecosystem is getting even messier, according to GroupM’s second-annual “State of Video” report, released Thursday. Some of the report’s revelations are familiar: Linear TV ratings are still dropping and, as eMarketer predicted in September, Amazon is a “likely third force” in the struggle for ad spend between Facebook and Google. GroupM […]
AdExchanger Talks is a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. This episode of AdExchanger Talks is supported by Tealium. Programmatic may have cut its teeth as a direct response medium, but advertisers are also starting to embrace it for upper-funnel campaigns. However, if branding is your goal, the rules of engagement are different. This week on AdExchanger […]
Many in the ad tech industry view demand-side platforms (DSPs) as commodities. Sizmek is hoping to prove otherwise, as it took the wraps off a revamped buying platform Tuesday. Made from the old Rocket Fuel DSP, the new offering, according to Sizmek CEO Mark Grether, has a more streamlined user interface than its previous iteration, […]
When WPP Group-owned GroupM opens its doors at the brand new 3 World Trade Center building in downtown Manhattan next month, it’ll be more than just a symbolic new beginning. The face of GroupM is changing. In addition to the shocking exit of WPP CEO Martin Sorrell in April, two longtime GroupM executives, Chairman Irwin […]
Vista Equity Partners’ plan to buy a majority stake in Integral Ad Science – valuing the company at $820 million, according to AdExchanger sources, or up to $850 million, according to Axios – underscores the ongoing importance of ad verification and the pressure these vendors face to grow their product offering to remain competitive. “There’s […]
GroupM’s State of Digital report, released Thursday, predicts a year of CPM inflation and ecommerce growth as the duopoly maintains its stronghold over the digital economy. Marketers in 2017 spent 44% of their digital budgets programmatically, according to the report. That’s up from 31% in 2016, and GroupM predicts it will rise to 47% in […]
Agencies are calling 2018 “Mediapalooza Two” as brands review an inordinate amount of accounts, following a pattern that began in 2015. Since January, brands including Microsoft, Shell, Asda and Mondolez have put a collective $10 billion worth of media accounts up for review, according to research firm ID Comms. But this year, brands are putting […]
GroupM said Friday that global Chairman Irwin Gotlieb will step back from his role to become a senior adviser to the company. Gotlieb was GroupM’s founding CEO in 2003 and ran the company until transitioning to Chairman in 2012. GroupM’s global CEO Kelly Clark will continue to lead WPP’s media-buying unit. Gotlieb has made a […]
NBCUniversal is about to do something TV companies have talked about for years: transact TV in a similar way as digital – on impressions. NBCU revealed Thursday that it would begin to measure live, on-demand and time-shifted TV ad buys using a common impression-based metric called CFlight. CFlight will be part of NBCU’s upfront pitch and […]
Ever since AT&T hired GroupM honcho Brian Lesser last August to lead its new advertising and analytics business, he’s been on a hiring spree. And many of the recruits share one thing in common: They’ve earned their programmatic stripes in some capacity. Time will tell how the AT&T Advertising & Analytics division will develop should […]
On May 25th, when the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect, media agencies will be subject to a new set of laws around targeting European consumers. The GDPR, which makes it illegal for businesses to use EU citizens’ data without proper basis or consent, will limit media agencies’ ability to target […]
Despite a slight uptick in CPG volumes in Q4 2017, WPP CEO Martin Sorrell still predicts cyclical budget cutting from the sector due to pressure from activist investors and zero-based budgeting (ZBB). “What we see in packaged goods, certainly, is a continued caution,” he said on WPP’s Q4 and FY 2017 earnings call Thursday. “I […]
As the first homegrown WPP agency, GroupM’s Mindshare has always had an entrepreneurial spirit. “We were born in Asia when Madison Avenue and the high street of London told us you can’t have a media independent,” said Mindshare’s US CEO, Adam Gerhart. “That provocateur and internal upstart mentality is pervasive in everything we do.” The […]
Advertisers want to market using the type of rich data provided by walled gardens – but that’s not possible on the open web. So the major holding companies have each developed data platforms to meet their clients’ needs. The question is: What’s the difference between their offerings? Publicis Groupe’s Spine, IPG’s AMP, WPP’s mPlatform, Dentsu […]
“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is written by Dominique Netto, head of client services at [m]PLATFORM – GroupM. After the brand-safety sagas of 2017, Alphabet appears to be using some of that $27.7 billion Q3 revenue to further develop brand safety across YouTube. There […]
While most agencies are still trying to wrap their heads around programmatic, digital agency Essence is expanding into the linear world. When it launched as a digital agency in 2005, Essence didn’t bother investing in traditional media, said Global CEO Christian Juhl. Instead, it would wait until traditional media became digitized and the market naturally […]
When Wavemaker, the agency born from GroupM’s joining of MEC and Maxus, hired former Publicis exec Oleg Korenfeld last month, it asked him to build a platform to facilitate media planning, buying and strategy across eight major markets. The agency knows that having globally scaled technology is key to its ability to consolidate. Korenfeld is […]
Although connected TV buyers have become pretty sophisticated at targeting and delivering an ad to individual users, managing frequency across video providers is a work in progress. But despite the industry’s recognition that consumers demand better ad experiences, many viewers find themselves bombarded with the same ad. Worse, those ads sometimes run within the same […]
Although GroupM has invested aggressively in programmatic and data-driven marketing technology, Chairman Irwin Gotlieb still adheres to the importance of top funnel marketing. “I believe strongly in a marketing funnel, and that broad targeting will continue to remain an essential part of marketing,” he told AdExchanger. “If I focus my effort on picking the lowest […]
GroupM Chairman Irwin Gotlieb has always had an intuitive eye for technology. He’s been applying it to the CES show floor since the 1970s, when it was called the Comdex computer expo show and disc drives sold for $400,000. Gotlieb began offering his knowledge to clients, vendors and other partners on his legendary floor […]
Digital advertising is growing, and big platforms like Google and Facebook continue to reap the profits. That’s the insight from global ad spend forecasts released Sunday by GroupM, Zenith and Magna, which predict the industry will grow between 3.1% and 5.2% this year to as high as $535 billion, as reported by Magna. Advertising growth […]
Agencies are dying? Don’t tell that to Rob Norman, chief digital officer and veteran of WPP’s GroupM, who said Monday he will step down from his full-time role to become a part-time adviser for the company. But even if agencies aren’t having a near-death experience, they should behave like they are, Norman said: “If you […]
As holding companies distribute programmatic knowledge to their operating agencies, trading desks are repositioning to stay relevant to clients. Xaxis, GroupM’s trading desk that pioneered the model of selling media to clients at a mark-up on a guaranteed CPM, will now buy for clients on guaranteed metrics that impact business performance, such as viewability and […]
If an agency spends $100 programmatically for its client, how much money actually ends up with the publisher? Agencies and marketers want to know – especially GroupM. As awareness of hidden fees continues to rise, GroupM is doing more than just tracking where media spend ends up. It’s pulling and rerouting spend to take advantage […]
Triad Retail Media promoted its chief customer officer, Sherry Smith, to the CEO position on Tuesday. Roger Berdusco, Triad’s former CEO, is leaving the company to pursue other opportunities. Triad manages ad sales on major retailers’ ecom sites including Walmart, Sam’s Club, eBay, Stubhub, Staples, Toys R Us, and most recently, Barnes & Noble. But […]
US cable TV networks are being strangled by cut cords. Research firm eMarketer lowered its US TV ad spend forecast for 2017 by $1 billion on Wednesday, citing “faster-than-expected growth in cord cutting” as the main contributor to the decline. US TV ad spend will still grow, the firm predicted – but by just 0.5% […]
