AOL rolled out a programmatic self-serve platform for TV buyers on Monday, and Omnicom Group is the first agency partner to test-drive it. While some competing solutions only enable planning, AOL said its platform also handles execution and reporting. AOL thinks its developing device graph under Verizon gives it a competitive advantage in omnichannel media […]
The Trade Desk has grown faster than probably any other DSP in recent years, as founder and CEO Jeff Green sought to capitalize on what he saw as strategic errors by rivals. “We saw that most of the DSPs had created channel conflicts for themselves,” said Green, a reference to some other DSPs’ media company […]
NBCUniversal transacted 10-15% of its digital business programmatically during the 2015-2016 season, the company has revealed to AdExchanger. Prior to the upfronts, the company expected to secure 50% of commitments on a “converged” basis, with elements of both TV and digital in a single deal. In this most recent upfront, NBCUniversal’s digital business grew 50% and, of […]
Correction: The original version of the story included incorrect data indicating Publicis Groupe had the most to lose in the “pitchapalooza” wave of agency reviews currently underway. In fact, Omnicom Group and Dentsu are slightly more exposed. The below story makes that clear and includes a corrected chart reflecting actual impact on revenues for the […]
The director of ad technology for Netflix, Tony Ralph, and director of marketing for Abe’s Market, Michelle Goldstein, will appear at AdExchanger’s Omni.Digital conference on Sept. 10, an event designed to educate marketers on advanced solutions for building seamless cross-channel brand experiences. Cross-channel attribution will be one topic discussed at the conference. As Netflix’s director of […]
Merkle is bulking up in the talent department. The CRM agency snagged Razorfish COO Michael Komasinski to serve in a similar role within its digital agency services group, along with Gerry Bavaro, outgoing chief strategy officer for Omnicom’s Resolution Media, to serve as SVP of its enterprise solutions group. Merkle’s revenue grew 20% to $382 […]
When Canadian messaging platform Kik, which aims to become the “WeChat of the West,” hired former Accuen CEO Josh Jacobs as its president of Kik Services, many wondered why someone who had been so ingrained in advertising would pivot to messaging. Or maybe it’s not such a pivot: After all, Jacobs will supervise the new […]
The longtime chief of Omnicom Group’s trading desk operation is leaving the company after nearly four years. Josh Jacobs will move on to unspecified pastures after his lengthy stint as global CEO of Accuen, where he helped grow Omnicom’s revenue from programmatic buying activities to $140 million in 2014. Reached by phone, Jacobs cited personal motives, […]
What is digital video going to look like in 2015? Representatives from all sides talked it out at Industry Preview 2015 in a panel discussion led by Rich Greenfield, Media & Tech Analyst at BTIG & Angel Investor. Participants included: Pooja Midha, Senior VP, Digital Ad Sales & Operations, Disney ABC TV Group Dave Morgan, CEO […]
Media and creative are merging, and agencies are rushing to become experts in areas where traditionally they were not. Full-service agencies like Hill Holliday and MARC USA, for instance, are fast-tracking their media planning and buying abilities. On the flip side, media agencies like GroupM’s Maxus are working to build stronger ties with creatives. Count […]
Omnicom Group’s programmatic buying discipline is still in its early days, the agency holding company emphasized during its Q3 2014 earnings call Tuesday. Programmatic buying constitutes just south of 2% of the company’s overall revenue, which reached $3.75 billion during the quarter, up 7.4% YoY. Most of the growth came from the North America region, […]
A change is on the horizon for Annalect, Omnicom’s analytics and marketing technology arm. Omnicom agencies – both its media traders and its creative firms – use Annalect when they need data-driven expertise for their clients’ campaigns. As such, Annalect has a wealth of data scientists and technologists, 250 relationships with third-party data sources and a […]
While AOL and Publicis Groupe have been programmatic cohorts since last July, the media giant and the holding company took their partnership to another level by adding video and linear TV to the mix Monday at Advertising Week. The move will link Publicis’ digital arm VivaKi with AOL Platforms, which will become Publicis’ preferred partner for programmatic video. […]
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, […]
On Tuesday at the Cannes Lions festival, leaders of the world’s four largest agency trading desks participated in a panel hosted by Rubicon Project. The discussion touched on a wide range of topics, including deal automation, technology investment and transparency. One macro takeaway is that the so-called trading desks resemble each other less than they used to. […]
Yet another data-management platform (DMP) has hit the market, at least for clients of Xaxis, WPP’s trading desk. The DMP, called Turbine, is the fruits of a $25 million investment. “The strategy we designed with Xaxis was to develop the pieces of the ad tech stack that gave the most competitive advantage to our clients,” […]
With the collapse of the proposed merger of agency holding companies Omnicom and Publicis, former agency exec and Vertere Group’s Tim Hanlon provided his take: “Much of of the logic I laid out last year when the deal was announced still holds. If anything, it only exacerbates the questions that brand marketers have about how to best […]
What a fiasco. A “merger of equals” between Publicis Groupe and Omnicom Group that was to be the largest acquisition in advertising history is now off as the two companies have proven unable to overcome a range of impediments, including tax concerns, integration pain, and the personalities of the chief executives. “The challenges that still […]
Marc Landsberg knows agencies. Landsberg previously served as the former EVP at Leo Burnett and president and CEO of Arc and MRM Worldwide. As the current CEO of Chicago-based social agency socialdeviant, he says the traditional media-buying process has been turned upside down and the players flipping the tables aren’t the platform providers. Comcast’s planned […]
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 […]
The largest purveyor of Latin American-influenced food products in the United States, Goya Foods has come a long way from the “Goya, oh boy-a!” tagline it popularized in the 1980s. After reaching $1.3 billion in revenue last year, according to Forbes, the New Jersey-based, family-owned and -operated food company will continue to tap its core […]
Omnicom is going “all in” with a singular Data Management Platform offering that will support audience segmentation and ad optimization across its two key media agencies, OMD and PHD. Driving the platform consolidation is a deal with Aggregate Knowledge, a DMP recently acquired by Neustar for $119 million. Like many agencies, Omnicom already supported DMP functionality, but […]
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 […]
AOL is not taking its foot off the programmatic gas pedal, and agencies are impressed. The $405-million acquisition of video ad platform Adap.tv sheds new light on other recent developments, including the hire of Razorfish’s global CEO Bob Lord to lead AOL Networks and a planned “programmatic upfront” event in September. Their obvious conclusion: AOL’s […]
Here’s a far out option for Publicis and Omnicom as they attempt to fit their trading desk units together: Allow the smaller of the two, Omnicom’s Accuen, to continue as a standalone unit to manage clients that are competitive with Publicis’s Vivaki AOD. It would be the programmatic equivalent of a “conflict shop.” Last week, […]
The combined media spending of Publicis Groupe and Omnicom would amount to roughly $53 billion, according to separate sets of data from Pivotal Research’s Brian Wieser and WPP analytics unit Kantar Media. That translates into a tremendous amount of buying clout. Major publishers across all media continued to absorb the news from this weekend about […]
What does the marketer really think about the Omnicom-Publicis marriage? Intuit’s Head of Online Acquisition, Cezanne Huq, shared his thoughts on the merger, which is partially informed by his own company’s agency services needs as well as his background in the services world. Though he declines to say exactly which agencies Intuit works with today for competitive reasons, […]
As analysis of the merger of Publicis and Omnicom Group rages on, one of the critical challenges ahead for the combined entity appears to be “conflict of interest.” AdExchanger’s Zach Rodgers reported yesterday when the merger announcement was made, Omnicom CEO John Wren was non-chalant about potential conflicts: “Shared clients contributed over $6.5 billion in […]
As more advertising dollars pour into digital — and into agency trading desks — the exchange model’s momentum is likely to continue, no matter what level of integration comes from the merger of Publicis Groupe and Omnicom. Several executives who have served with the trading-desk side of the agency business and moved on said that […]
Publicis and Omnicom have confirmed their intent to create a merger of equals. The two global ad agency holding companies will form a new entity called Publicis Omnicom Groupe – with ownership structured approximately 50/50 and a market capitalization of $35 billion U.S. (press release) Speaking with press from Paris this morning, CEOs Maurice Levy […]
