Earlier this month WPP bought a majority stake in Acceleration, a 13-year-old consulting and services firm that helps marketers and publishers implement digital ad technology. (press release) The company employs 148 marketing technologists in London, New York, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Dubai, and Johannesburg. AdExchanger spoke with Cameron Hulett, who leads Acceleration’s consulting and sales […]
As AKQA’s media team stares into the maw of WPP and its Xaxis audience buying unit, what does it see there? Scott Symonds, Managing Director of AKQA Media, is certainly aware of Xaxis’s reputation as the most controlling of the holding company trading desks – an entity that has been known to force its solution […]
For agencies and marketers, there’s a pervasive lack of synthesis among available consumer data. It would seem particularly frustrating for Steve Plimsoll, chief technology officer, Mindshare Worldwide, but he sounds much too excited about the next eight years, when he believes that problem will be solved. Plimsoll is taking steps to position his media shop […]
WPP Group just scored a win at the intersection of social and programmatic display. Facebook has confirmed to AdExchanger that it added the holding company’s Xaxis audience buying unit to its list of approved real-time bidding partners for the new Facebook Exchange. Xaxis is the only one of Facebook’s RTB partners to hail from within […]
The acquisition of AKQA, the largest remaining independent interactive agency, by WPP sent waves through the ad sector today. Read: the French Riviera was buzzin’. Numerous senior agency people attending the Cannes Lions global ad festival have either worked for AKQA or competed with it dating back to its founding in 2001. The deal was […]
WPP Group has added digital agency AKQA to its holding company corral as the digital, pure play agency remains a highly-sought-after prize. Read the release. It was rumored that AKQA would be acquired by Dentsu for $600 million in 2010. Though today’s acquisition did not include terms of the deal, and considering time has passed […]
The talk of the agency business the last few years has been “tear down the silos.” That has usually meant putting digital media buying at the center of a hub that can be tapped for more traditional disciplines like TV, print and out-of-home. In a sense, GroupM, WPP’s media unit, has served that function. But […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. WPP Spot Runner Suit Tossed David Kaplan of PaidContent reports that WPP’s suit against Spot Runner, “a web-based TV creative ad agency”, has been thrown out by a New York court. WPP had said in the suit that its investment in the start-up had […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here. Lookery Closes Its Doors No more Lookery. CEO Scott Rafer announced from the Lookery blog that the Company is winding down operations. Rafer offers a post mortem of regrets and/or mis-steps that he believes, if avoided, could have led to a different conclusion such […]
