CANNES — For businesses that have often preached the dangers of operating in “silos”, it’s ironic how siloed ad agencies’ programmatic ad tech operations have been within their own companies.
But that is now changing, with a couple of big agency initiatives to reboot how their dedicated programmatic divisions operate in their wider groups.
Publicis’ VivaKi unit is moving its programmatic staff out in to operating agency stablemates, while IPG Mediabrands’ digital and ad tech group Cadreon is retooling itself to be more of an “incubator” for group technology, executives tell an industry panel.
“Everything about automation, programmatic, data needs to reside in the agencies,” says VivaKi global CEO Stephan Beringer. “It is the paradigm the new business model needs to be built on. If we want to scale this intelligence and integrate it in to the service, we need to push capabilities in to the agencies.”
Cadreon global president Arun Kumar says clients are asking for greater visibility in to programmatic strategies – something that is prompting changes.
“We’ve looked at how we can transform ourselves from being a trading desk in to being an incubator for ad tech and develop platforms that allow our agency partners to access that intelligence,” he adds.
“(We are seeking) greater synchronization between planning and buying. When you democratize that , the media agencies can play a more strategic role.”
We interviewed them at the Cannes Lions Festival as part of a series on video advertising presented by Rubicon Project. Please visit this page for more videos from the series.
