The merger of comScore and Rentrak, announced Tuesday, creates a powerful new player providing unified digital and offline measurement. The deal poses a real challenge to Nielsen, which nevertheless is not about to be overthrown as the reining champ of marketing and media measurement. Pending regulatory approval, comScore will begin to combine its digital audience measurement […]
As agencies face increasing pressure to produce more content with shrinking budgets, some are streamlining production with in-house capabilities. At least, that’s what WPP had in mind when in 2009 it partnered with Hogarth Worldwide, a global marketing implementation firm. As a sister organization to WPP, Hogarth acts as a production and global distribution resource […]
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 […]
WPP-owned Kantar Media revealed Tuesday its strategic investment in digital media intelligence firm BIScience. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Kantar and WPP clients will have access to BIScience’s platform, AdClarity, which lets advertisers run competitive benchmarking across 500,000 unique publishers and mobile apps to identify high-performing traffic sources. “Our footprint as […]
There have been several changes at Medialets in the three months since WPP snapped up the mobile ad platform. It’s got a new chief exec – COO Richy Glassberg took over as CEO from Eric Litman, who remains involved in the company as chairman – and it’s doubling down on its Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditations. Medialets, which received […]
Agency rebates were a common theme during holding company earnings calls this week, with both Publicis and Omnicom fielding kickback questions from investors earlier in the week. On Friday during IPG’s Q1 call, CEO Michael Roth found himself under the interrogation lights. “This whole issue is not new to IPG,” Roth said, adding that IPG began […]
“Marketer’s Note” is a regular column informing marketers about the rapidly evolving, digital marketing technology ecosystem. This week it is written by Lizzie Komar, Associate Analyst, AdExchanger Research. Last week, during an on-stage conversation at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O event in San Francisco, Omnicom Digital (OMD) chief Jonathan Nelson described the agency’s evolving approach to technology, data, partnerships, […]
Last week, WPP launched the “marketing foresight” consultancy Gain Theory, housed within GroupM. Gain Theory, which has 200 people and a new office in New York City, rolls together two existing WPP agencies: the London-based marketing effectiveness agency Ohal and the Bangalore-based data analytics firm Meritus. Jason Harrison, previously CIO at Maxus, has been appointed […]
Partner, build or buy? WPP Group has decided on the last in the case of Medialets. The global holding company said Wednesday it will acquire the mobile ad platform as a wholly owned subsidiary. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Clients across the breadth of WPP’s holdings will have the option to use Medialets’ tech. Medialets CEO […]
Holding company WPP’s Data Alliance and Facebook have expanded their partnership such that WPP clients globally can use data assets from Kantar Media, media agency GroupM and Wunderman’s KBM Group to build unique audience segments to target across the Facebook ecosystem. This partnership is considerably different from what Facebook has with third-party data providers like Acxiom and Datalogix. […]
Digital measurement company comScore needed WPP’s investment in order to rival Nielsen in cross-platform ratings, according to one comScore partner. Although Nielsen dominates linear TV measurement, its push toward a “Total Audience” rating will improve its mobile Online Campaign Ratings tool, launched last summer. ComScore, in lockstep, rolled out a cross-platform tool in January to […]
WPP Group’s data management investment division Kantar entered Thursday into a strategic deal globally with online measurement mainstay comScore, which could give it up to 20% equity stake in the company — if all shakes out as planned. Read the full release. Through the deal, comScore will issue about 5% of its shares in exchange for […]
Financially troubled British grocer Tesco confirmed rumors it intends to offload its data marketing and analysis division, dunnhumby. In documents released Thursday, Tesco said it has appointed Goldman Sachs as its adviser to explore “strategic options” for the US$756 million business as it embarks on a complete overhaul of its assets. It’s hard to bucket […]
While marketers have long rallied around tent-pole events like the Super Bowl, the focus is no longer solely on the big-ticket TV buys or stadium sponsorships. But big games are still valuable to advertisers. While ads tied directly to major sporting events still command the most money because of their enormous draw, marketers are also […]
KBM Group might be the data services unit of WPP agency Wunderman, but don’t think of it as just a database manager. “Our job is to provide strategic leadership, not simply be a database vendor when clients need one,” said William Burkart, who became KBM Group’s president and COO in late September. So if you […]
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, […]
Rentrak defended itself late last week against rival measurement firm Nielsen, whose global president Steve Hasker claimed Rentrak “never lets the facts get in the way of a good press release.” Hasker, in a Friday media briefing regarding errors Nielsen had discovered in its national networks ratings going back to March 2, opened fire on […]
At the outset of Advertising Week in New York City, WPP chief Sir Martin Sorrell turned his attention to Amazon’s VP of global ad sales Lisa Utzschneider on the stage they shared with Live Nation, CBSi and ESPN. “Your job, I guess, is to demonstrate the value of Amazon’s data for off-platform advertising,” he quipped. “Your revenues […]
It wouldn’t be the first summer weekend French agency holding company Publicis Groupe sent shock waves through the advertising ecosystem. Close to the anniversary of the infamous ad merger of equals that never quite materialized as Publicis Omnicom Group (POG), French pub Boursier reported on a rumor the holding company could be close to extending […]
You could be forgiven for not thinking of WPP Group-owned agency POSSIBLE as a media agency. It’s not, of course – certainly not compared to the dedicated media advertising shops beneath WPP’s GroupM umbrella. But POSSIBLE does have an in-house media practice. “We have many clients for which we provide comprehensive media services, but we […]
For many product-pushing brands, investing in airtime simply makes sense to reach as wide an audience as possible. But as brands begin to apply real-time data to contextualize ad buys, demand and dollars will shift from TV budgets to digital video and mobile. But creative challenges around dynamic creative will accompany this shift. For brands […]
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, […]
In a wide-ranging panel at Cannes, CEOs Dick Costolo (Twitter), Philippe Dauman (Viacom) and Martin Sorrell (WPP) discussed the evolution of rich media consumption on mobile devices and why marketer investment in mobile video does not yet match consumer demand. Sorrell, who opened the panel by stating WPP spends $750 million with Viacom (said Dauman: […]
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. […]
GroupM made waves last week when Ari Bluman, chief digital investment officer for North America, said WPP Group’s media agencies will stop buying impressions in open auctions by the end of 2014. It turns out that’s not quite the case, as Brian Lesser, CEO of WPP’s Xaxis programmatic platform, made clear in public comments Tuesday […]
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,” […]
Enterprise social media management company Sprinklr has acquired social data analytics and services firm Dachis Group for an undisclosed sum, the latest venture from Razorfish’s cofounder and former CEO Jeff Dachis. As a combined entity, Sprinklr, founded in 2009, and Dachis Group will employ 300 with offices in New York, London, and Austin, and serve […]
WPP Group-owned media agency GroupM’s launch Monday of spinoff Modi Media, intended to improve targeted television ads, expands WPP’s authority on addressable and interactive TV tools and services. Michael Bologna, GroupM’s former director of emerging communications who was named as Modi’s president, said Modi will operate as a separate business unit with access to clients […]
WPP Group’s digital and direct marketing agency Wunderman and its media-buying agency MEC have launched a joint venture called CHOREOGRAPH to address converging client demands in paid, earned and owned media. The proliferation of cross-channel marketing campaigns and the subsequent need to marry transactional, customer and demographic data with audience-level information drove CHOREOGRAPH’s creation. “Over […]
Late last year, we asked a handful of senior execs at platform companies to answer the question, “What will happen next year in marketing and advertising that hasn’t happened before?” This year we invited some of those same contributors to evaluate their earlier forecasts and update them for 2014. The below is from Mark Grether, chief […]
