Agencies

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 […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Paul Steketee, head of paid social and emerging media capabilities at Merkle. Some common themes are emerging here at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity: Data and digital are the talk […]

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 […]

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 […]

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,” […]

Independent media agency Harmelin Media, whose clients include BET and Blue Diamond Almonds, is constructing its own in-house trading desk. Working with TubeMogul, Harmelin, which used to work with a dozen vendors, will commit programmatic video buys to a single platform. Harmelin is doing this so it can be a better steward of client campaigns. […]

When one thinks about media planning, one does not think of Omnicom-owned agency RAPP. This is understandable. RAPP built its reputation as a creative, CRM and digital agency. But the confluence of advertising and marketing means that the media planning and buying disciplines are increasingly areas RAPP hopes to build out. AdExchanger spoke about this, […]

The road to “programmatic premium,” once a cow path, has become a highway (OK, maybe a county road) cutting through the heart of ad land. And Google can’t take its foot off the gas pedal. The company on Wednesday rolled out a programmatic video marketplace called Google Partner Select and announced support for direct deals through the DoubleClick platform. The […]