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, […]
