Interpublic Group

Omnicom unveils the latest version of its ID and analytics tool; there’s a new Google Search update in town; and Omnicom Media addresses CTV ad frequency.

During what was supposed to be a quarter marked by financial uncertainty, IPG did slightly better than expected.

Ad industry growth will slow to single-digits next year; consolidation hits the CPG market; and predicting the future of the FTC based on a commissioner’s pitch to the president-elect.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Priced Out Big brands and retailers are raising prices, partly due to pandemic-related costs – but also because the drumbeat of inflation and supply-chain news provides air cover. Many companies are raising prices to expand profit, not to sustain it. (H/t Lindsay Owens for […]

Interpublic Group’s $2.3 billion purchase of Acxiom Marketing Services in 2018 shook the industry. And it reverberated into 2019 with Publicis Groupe’s follow-up acquisition of Epsilon. This week on the podcast, IPG Chief Data and Technology Officer Arun Kumar comes into the studio for a frank discussion of the deal and the larger trend of […]

For the big six holding companies, 2016 was a year of acquisitions, restructures, reviews and leadership shakeups, centering expertise around data and digital. But they also engaged in strategies at odds with best practices and client interests. Faced with shrinking margins and rising technology costs, holding companies found new ways to eke revenue – methods […]

Programmatic buying of display and video ads will expand rapidly for years to come, according to new findings from Magna Global. In a forecast released Monday, the Interpublic Group media investment unit predicted the amount of global ad inventory bought and sold using programmatic methods in 2015 will rise 49% compared to last year – […]

Questions remain about Interpublic Group despite the strong second-quarter revenues reported Wednesday. On a call with investors, IPG chief executive Michael Roth spun the rash of media reviews – which some have nicknamed “pitchapalooza” – in a positive light, positioning the wave of media agency jump balls as an opportunity to win business. But any […]

Much has changed for Interpublic Group since 2005, when Michael Roth stepped in to lead the then-troubled holding company. His background, as the CEO of a life insurance company, was unconventional, but it made sense given his role was to push IPG back to financial solvency. “The original profile for this job was financial,” he told […]

Global CEO Matt Seiler will exit IPG Mediabrands by the end of the year. During his four years at the helm of the media agency, Seiler led a push to align agency compensation more closely with client outcomes. While his efforts in that area met with limited success, he found more traction with an initiative […]

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, […]

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 […]

As agencies, media companies, and platform players converge on the south of France for the annual Cannes Lions festival, the overall state of their industry appears to be strong. In its latest media spend forecast, Magna Global remains bullish on both total media owner advertising revenues and programmatic revenues. Meanwhile, total media spend will grow […]

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 […]

With the Omnicom-Publicis merger now in some doubt, WPP Group retains a glimmer of hope that it could remain the world’s largest agency holding company past the third quarter. In its Q1 earnings report Friday, WPP listed media investment – represented by its GroupM network and the Xaxis ad tech unit – as among its […]

Investing in new and existing creative and digital talent in 2014 will be a key development pillar for Interpublic Group (IPG), the holding company said in its Q4 call. IPG revealed full-year 2013 revenue of $7.12 billion, an organic increase of 2.8% from $6.96 billion in 2012. Fourth quarter revenue was $2.12 billion, compared to […]

Automation Is Coming. In panel after panel at New York’s Advertising Week, publishers and agencies heaped hate on ad selling inefficiencies and delivered eulogies for their mutual adversary, the insertion order. The big questions: Which players will be first to seize the automation grail? And how long will it take? The holding company trading desks […]

The guys who came up with Interpublic Group’s display ad-trading strategy have embarked together on a joint consulting venture. Their new company, Unbound, will serve as a systems integrator to brands and publishers as they make decisions about programmatic ad technologies. “We saw a pretty big gap in the marketplace. There’s no real technology-and-service systems […]

Interpublic Group is making good on recent pledge to automate 50% of its cross-channel buying activity by 2016. The holding company’s Mediabrands division has signed up a group of broadcast partners to install an automated media buying system that will span TV, radio, and digital out-of-home ads. The list of the IPG Mediabrands’ initial partners […]

Last week in Cannes, global leaders from the five biggest holding company trading desks convened for a panel discussion hosted by the Rubicon Project. The event took place on a rooftop against the backdrop of the Mediterranean Sea, while on the sidewalk below creatives scurried between beach parties and celeb-packed sessions at the Palais des […]

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 […]

Interpublic Group has made changes to its Cadreon trading desk in North America, uprooting it from its previous home in the Mediabrands Audience Platform and repotting it in the Magna Global media investment arm. As Adweek reported earlier this month, a new entity called Magna Global North America will absorb the trading desk along with […]

As audience buying in digital hurtles forward, the major ad agency holding companies have produced different “flavors” of their agency trading desk (ATD) strategies. For Interpublic Group (IPG), its Mediabrands Audience Platform (MAP) unit spearheads ATD strategy and begins by defining markets according to geographic clusters. North America is one cluster and matched by MAP […]

Two years into their existing partnership, ad holding company Interpublic Group is making an unspecified investment in Kiip, a company that promises to connect marketers and consumers through the use of “unexpected” targeted rewards to mobile app users and gamers. Apart from help in continuing to build the San Francisco startup, Kiip co-founder and CEO […]

Agency trading desks are understandably eager to ramp up with the Facebook Exchange, which promises to broaden the reach and frequency of their programmatic buying efforts. But right after the FBX launch they weren’t equally able to use it — which has led to some hand wringing. WPP’s Xaxis had a direct seat, while Publicis’s Vivaki […]

Adgregate Markets announced a partnership with IPG Mediabrands’ Emerging Media Lab unit today which will make Adgregate Markets a preferred technology provider within IPG. According to the release, “IPG will promote Adgregate products and services to the Interpublic agency network.” Part of the deal includes Adgregate Markets new socially-infused “ShopFans” in banner, e-commerce technology. Read […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. Kafka On AdECN Exchange Peter Kafka of All Things D is reporting that the next edition of the AdECN Exchange from Microsoft will not get rolled out until early next year. This past July, Jed Nahum said in an interview with AdExchanger.com that the […]

Adam Cahill is SVP, Director of Digital Media, Hill Holliday, a media and creative agency, and unit of Interpublic Group. AC: I think the launch of AdX 2.0 is an example of growing the pie as opposed to stealing share from a competitor because it’s going to bring lots of new sellers (AdSense and DART […]

Michael Brunick is VP, Media Technology Director at Mediabrands Worldwide, a media buying and planning unit of Interpublic Group. AdExchanger.com: In your opinion, what is driving creation of agency buying platform strategies? MB: Agencies have more control and insight into how media dollars are spent for their clients. They also have access to more sensitive […]