Publicis Groupe Launches Digital Advertising Plan
New York – As Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL scuttle to build comprehensive ad platforms; French media consultancy Publicis Groupe has reorganized its digital technology platform in concert with major Internet players to make it easier for companies to more effectively navigate the current interactive landscape dominated by such technology giants.
The Paris-based Publicis Groupe’s newly formed ad program network announced Wednesday, under which the French media holding company aims to boost the performance of advertisers’ marketing investments. The move is aimed at enhancing Publicis’ profile in the continually expanding global digital and new media markets.
The breakup of the deal spanning all four major ad serving player: Publicis will incorporate its existing media buying systems with Yahoo!’s Right Media Exchange (which also recently signed a deal with Publicis rival WPP’s GroupM), and with AMP! – Yahoo’s advertising management platform, Microsoft, Google/DoubleClick and AOL to tightly coordinate campaigns across these platforms.
“The announcement also comprises an additional agreement with Yahoo for mobile advertising, which aims to help brands reach mobile consumers more easily.”
The French media company also opened up VivaKi, a cross-agency program headed by David Kenny and Jack Klues as managing partners. The unit draws on the digital operations of Digitas, Starcom MediaVest, Denuo and Zenith Optimedia.
Dubbed the “VivaKi Nerve Center,” the new program will influence Publicis’ rank as the fourth largest media group in the world and stimulate the development of new technologies both of the open source and proprietary varieties. It will develop solutions through deals with major internet players and social networks like MySpace and Facebook. It is also designed to deliver integrated media solutions and an optimized and more efficient data analysis.
Publicis CEO Maurice Levy said VivaKi, which replaces Publicis Groupe Media, represents more than just another way of organizing its agency networks.
“My contention is that until now, what we were attempting to do was offer our clients with services — marketing services, media services or creative,” said Levy in a statement. “We have to shift from that idea to another idea: we need to build with them an approach that is based on value creation. This can lead — and it will take time — to a different approach of fees. As we are creating value, we can share in that value.”
The announcement by Publicis is an endeavor to address the fragmented online advertising market. Alliances between different companies offer differing levels of access to the consumers a particular company might want to target. Publicis said it wants VivaKi to have the largest audience for advertisers.
“The idea is to give the advertisers the opportunity to reach all the audiences with one point of contact,” said Charles-Henri Prevost, vice president of business development for Phonevalley, a division of Publicis Groupe that focuses on mobile marketing and application services.
Publicis Groupe’s mobile marketing agency, Phonevalley, will also bank heavily on Yahoo’s Blueprint technology which is the backbone of Yahoo! Go, a platform that supports widgets and third-party apps. Blueprint, in theory, allows developers to create an app once that can run on the Yahoo! Go platform, which is compatible with hundreds of phones around the world.
Brands associated with Publicis could plug into this capability, making it easier to build one campaign that could work on various phones, carriers and across multiple countries. Phonevalley is claiming to be the first global agency to integrate Blueprint.
The company’s subsidiaries, including Digitas, Starcom MediaVest, Denuo and ZenithOptimedia, will play an important role, as will deals signed with Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and AOL’s Platform-A which will enable brands to reach target demographics on Web-connected computers and cell phones with united campaigns across multiple advertising networks.
In January, Publicis and web search giant Google disclosed they were joining forces to expand in digital advertising but few details on that cooperation had emerged. This partnership will also include working on an easier way for advertisers to book mobile campaigns, Prevost said. “We are not as advanced as we are on the Web,” he said.
Furthermore, Yahoo! and Publicis Groupe will work with Yahoo’s Smart Ads technology, allowing Publicis to build numerous permutations of a given brand’s message more easily.
Certainly, this is a pretty big success for Yahoo, which has been slowly setting up an empire of mobile search and advertising relationships around the world with carriers. Just last week, Yahoo announced five new partners, bringing the total list of carriers that uses its mobile search to 60 over the last 18 months.
“Other projects include deliverance of tailored ads according to geographic region, along with mobile behavioral targeting,” Prevost said.