Agency

Publicis Buyback Ends Dentsu Partnership

French advertising group Publicis has bought back 18 million of its own shares from Japan’s Dentsu for €644.4m, bringing an end to their nine-year partnership that analysts say has yielded little value.

The companies had been partners since the Japanese agency – the country’s largest marketing services group by revenues – teamed up with Elisabeth Badinter, a member of the founding family and the biggest shareholder in Publicis, to act in concert.

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We are publishing another panel excerpt from the recent ATS London event. The panel in question focused on bringing brand budget into the automated channel. The panel was moderated by ExchangeWire editor, Ciaran O’Kane, and speakers included: Nathan Woodman, COO, Adnetik; Richard Dance, Director of Digital Innovation, Blue Hive; Alex Rahaman, CEO at StrikeAd; Andy Ellenthal, CEO, Peer39; and Bruce Journey, DataXu CRO.

It gave Richard Dance the opportunity to challenge some of the widely held views of our – sometimes – “navel-gazing” ad tech community. He provides some interesting commentary from the brand’s perspective, particularly around the complexities of the current display eco-system. He notes that Facebook has made it easy for marketers, and as such continues to suck up a lot of brand budget. Dance works closely with Ford on their digital strategy. He’s exactly the kind of person that should be canvassed by ad tech companies on where display is falling down. If you can’t sit through the entire panel session, you should skip to 11:25 on the video clip – where Dance suggests the simplicity of the Facebook proposition is one of the key reasons why it is attracting brand spend.
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Jason Bigler is Director, Product Management at Google and is the point man for all of the company’s display products in Europe. Here he discusses Google’s European display strategy, the bespoke approach that is required, the cross-channel opportunity, and how we get to that $200 billion figure.

We hear lots about Google’s display strategy in the US. Can you give some overview on the approach to Europe’s fragmented display market?

Our general approach actually isn’t very different on the core issues. Publishers look to us to help them maximise the value of every ad impression while advertisers look to us to help them achieve the best ROI on their advertising spend. If we aren’t delivering on either of those core concepts then we don’t have a business in any market.

However in Europe, as you point out, the market is more fragmented and each country can be in a different phase of product adoption. You really have to apply a country-specific lense when examining the best approach. As an example, we are seeing tremendous growth on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange in Europe. Spend has increased more than 130% year on year and the number of buyers and sellers has increased more than twofold over last year. This is going to be a big year for programmatic buying across most of the region. But is it exactly the same in every country across Europe? Not a chance. So in some countries we’re in full commercialisation mode and in others we’re still in the evangelising phase.

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Edgar Baudin is Co-Founder & Managing Director at Gamned. Here he discusses the Gamned offering, the state of the French exchange marketplace, the generalist versus specialist argument and the effect of Sapin legislation on real-time media buying in France.

Is much of the data-driven ad spend in the French market still coming from DR budgets and are brands still avoiding automated channels?

Most of the spending in France is still related to DR campaigns, i.e. acquisition and retargeting. The first group to adopt this technology was composed of merchants who focused on ROI, and that explains why they drive the biggest parts of the investments.

Now that brands have access to transparency and ad verification, they’ve started to switch part of their budget over to RTB campaigns. There’s still a lot of work to be done, informing and educating marketers, for them to increase their budgets and go from the test campaign phase to long-term RTB integration in their media plans. Branding campaigns will need a strong increase in data offering which is a must-have for audience and targeting setups.

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Criteo To Hit $400 Million In Revenue This Year

Criteo has become a colossus in the European ad tech space. The French company, founded by Jean-Baptiste Rudelle in 2005, has a client list which includes some of the biggest names in e-commerce (Office.co.uk, Zoopla, Glasses Direct, Boden, among others).

Last year the company generated $200m in turnover, compared with $60m in 2010 and $9m in 2009. If the trend continues, Criteo could double its revenues in 2012. There are already plans to hire 250 people this year, bringing the workforce to 750 employees. At this rate, Criteo could possibly become the largest Internet company in France.

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The PostView is a new column written by senior execs working in the European online advertising industry.

There have been a lot of pieces recently putting forward the argument that reducing the volume of ads on a page could help salvage/preserve the growth of the online display advertising industry. While it would seem the most logical strategy, the issue might actually be more deep-rooted than that.

We exist in a digital world now where the overwhelming volume of ads are directly proportional to the overwhelming volume of content being created. In 2010, Eric Schmidt stated that we create as much information in two days as we have done since the dawn of man through to 2003. Schmidt might have been throwing another baseless fact out to the digieratti, but he was making an interesting point about the current content overload.

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Le Trading Media

In an epic twenty-seven pages on the potential of RTB in the French market, IAB France has outlined an impressive overview of the entire market. The report goes into great detail on the emerging data-driven advertising market in France, with explainations of key constituents in the exchange eco-system. It even includes some Q&As with leading ad execs in France, including recent ATS Paris speaker, Arthur Millet, Directeur Commercial at Amaury Medias Digital. Further insight on the growth of automated buying and RTB is provided by industry heavyweights like Sébastien Robin, Directeur Des OpérationS, at AFFIPERF. You can download the IAB report on the growth of RTB in France here.

mediascale Reports Strong 2011 Growth

mediascale, one of Germany’s leading independent digital agencies, reported a gross income of €5.6m last year – an increase of 17 per cent compared to 2010. The billings for the same period rose 22 per cent from €59m to €72m.

mediascale uses its own cross-platform targeting tool NE.R.O, together with Plan.Net, to develop solutions for clients and agency partners. Julian Simon, managing director of mediascale, is bullish on future growth for mediascale:

Right now we are running about 35 per cent of all campaigns on NE.R.O. By the end of 2012, we want to increase that by 40 per cent or more. This targeting will aid not only in direct sales support but also image and brand communications. It’s more about planning for consumer-relevant criteria such as purchase decision stages, interests and attitudes of the user. There is great potential in targeting, especially for content and creative solutions. The system combines information from the user profile with the matching design, text, product or price for the dynamic creation of promotional materials. Thus, advertising effectiveness and efficiency of the campaigns increase significantly.

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Lee Puri is Co-Founder at Media iQ Digital. Here he discusses the centralisation of re-targeting and why prospecting in display will be good for the industry.

Many advertising agencies and clients made moves in 2011 to take direct control of display buying, probably the most notable of which saw the move to centralise retargeting in-house. Many networks and media owners are seeing their budgets shrink as the agencies look to secure increasingly larger share of media budgets for internal trading; for many third parties their clients could ultimately prove to be their nemesis.

The ad network’s ability to continually re-invent itself has essentially guaranteed its survival over the years with ever constant demand side pressures at play. However, the challenge centralising retargeting poses to third-party trading companies is a far greater threat than ever before – and far more dangerous for those players that are not on top of their game. A good elevator pitch and an expensive media lunch will no longer ensure continued presence on a plan. It’s more and more about delivering those incremental results, and let’s be honest, this is what it needs to be.

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