Media Buying Briefing: Havas’ cookieless solution has become key link in its operating model

Take Havas, for example. Its Converged “operating system” (or “data spine”, depending on your taste for corporate metaphors) was launched last February as a cookieless media planning and activation solution.

A year and change later, it’s become the glue that connects its creative, media and digital domains. Converged is credited in its recent earnings report for bringing in accounts with Wyndham Hotel Group, FedEx and the European Commission.

What’s Converged again?

The result of a €400 million ($433 million) investment in AI made across newly spun-off Havas, Converged has become a key part of the company’s go-to market approach. According to chief data and product officer Laura Kell, pitch presentations now include live demonstrations of the Converged tool.

The system itself takes audience attributes and cohorts based on things like media behavior, demographics and psychographics and matches them with individuals on platforms using an AI “propensity model.” The setup avoids relying upon third-party cookies, while “[identifying] the audiences that will be most responsive,” said Kell. Clients can bolster the audience datasets created by Havas with their own first-party data, a function aided by data clean room partners LiveRamp in the U.S., and InfoSum in the U.K.

In the U.K., where Kell is based, Havas uses Converged for programmatic buys on Meta, TikTok, Google’s DV360 and Amazon, as well as direct media investments on Spotify, FreeVee, Prime and ITVX. It’s mainly used for lower and mid-funnel campaigns, she added.

A spokesperson for the network told Digiday that Havas U.K. has managed over 850 campaigns for 41 clients since its February 2024 launch. According to Kell, the system’s driven performance metrics on those campaigns, leading to average cost-per-click (CPC) falling 47%, cost-per-lead (CPL) drops of 44% and a 9% fall in cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM). Performance data from past campaigns gets fed back into the system, so that planners working on future campaigns can access benchmarks for which audiences are likely to respond to a brand’s ads.

Are agency cookieless solutions that important for new business?

Once it became clear that the third-party cookie would fade away rather than burn out, Havas’ pitch to clients shifted. The cookieless selling point of Converged ”lost a lot of momentum” after Google stepped back from the brink last summer, said Kell, though it’s not been dropped from the pitch entirely.

Instead, its execs are emphasizing how Converged joins up Havas capabilities, helping it function as a single entity rather than a collection of odds and ends.

In June 2024, Havas made the system available to staff in its creative agencies and CRM businesses like Havas Helia – the idea being that creative strategists would have access to the same audience insights as their counterparts planning and executing media buys.

It’s meant the system has become part of its creative pitch, as well as its media appeal. Stephanie Nattu, managing director at Creativebrief, noted that operating systems like Converged “can be a big point of differentiation for agencies particularly when shortlisting agencies for a pitch.

“It’s not necessarily the one thing that will sway a client in a pitch but it can be a powerful asset to help impact a client’s decision,” she added.

If Havas is to land more new clients and turn around 2024’s organic growth fall of 0.8%, it’ll likely lean further on Converged. It wouldn’t be alone.

What about the others?

Its holding company rivals emphasize their equivalents of Converged during pitches, particularly for larger multinational clients.

Ryan Kangisser, partner at MediaSense, noted that platforms like Converged, Publicis Groupe’s GrowthOS or Omincom’s Omni unit, are now “front and center in how they talk about themselves, how they present themselves.”

“Where these platforms are relevant is for scaled, complex clients,” said Lucinda Peniston-Baines, co-founder and managing partner of pitch consultancy Observatory International. She told Digiday that such tools had become “table stakes” during reviews.

But here’s the hitch: the main challenge facing Havas and its peers isn’t just keeping up with competitors, or training up staff to effectively wield their own tools. It’s also in differentiating their operating systems enough that they don’t seem interchangeable to prospective clients.

Color by numbers

The constant flow of consumers across digital channels has an impact on those platforms’ ad rates. But in this case, the uncertainty of its future in the U.S. has had a negative impact on TikTok’s rates, according to a recent report from ad platform AdRoll. The report, “The State of Digital Advertising,” notes that comparing January 2025 to January 2024, TikTok’s CPM cratered 80% while Pinterest’s CPM surged 120%. More broadly, looking at Q4 2024 over ’23, the report said display CPMs rose 16%, helped by the usual holiday surge.

Takeoff & landing

• Dentsu secured a two-year extension for global media duties with brewer Heineken. The holding company will execute work in 100 markets including Mexico, Brazil, U.K., Italy, Germany, Spain, The Netherlands, South Africa, Nigeria, Vietnam and India.
• SparkFoundry poached two investment executives from Omnicom Media Group: Kelly Metz, who becomes chief investment officer, and Anthony Dario who becomes evp, video investment. The Publicis-owned media agency also launched a design practice, overseen by Kendra Hatcher King, who becomes global chief design officer.
• As Digiday reported on March 7, Publicis landed Coca-Cola’s North American media business from WPP’s GroupM – specifically EssenceMediacom. At this point, WPP still retains other global responsibilities for the beverage giant.
• IPG’s UM launched BrandSync360, a brand performance tracker that aims to to monitor, measure, and optimize clients’ communication activities

Direct quote

“I don’t need media planners. I need content planners … There are more than 33,000 choices you can make in media in America. A human can’t do that, but you can do that with a machine.”

— Dave Gaines, CEO of Media by Mother, who spoke on the first day of Digiday’s Media Buying Summit in Nashville.

Speed reading

• Among the many topics that came up during Digiday’s Media Buying Summit in Nashville last week, talent recruitment and retention was a big one, with speakers and Town Hall attendees talking about fewer entry-level openings in the field.
• Sam Bradley covered the increasing levels of uncertainty creeping into marketers’ minds over the tariffs battle between President Trump and several countries and regions across the globe, which has had a gloomy effect on the U.S. economy.
• Digiday’s tech-leaning editors collectively covered the news out of Scope3’s pivot to agentic solutions for the industry.