Media Buying Briefing: The Big Three’s pieces are in place – let’s see who wins

Observers note the similarity to Publicis’ Power of One model, given that WPP has made its Open platform the connective tissue among the four divisions. Even the Enterprise Solutions unit appears to emulate Publicis’ Sapient in its bid to offer consultative smarts to help clients navigate their way through AI investment and strategy. 

One could do worse than borrowing from the Publicis playbook, given the success it has enjoyed in winning far more new business than any other holdco out there. And yet, the devil will be in the details, noted Jay Pattisall, vp and senior agency analyst at Forrester. 

Pattisall noted that WPP’s global account directors have sometimes been distracted by internal wrangling over resources and budgeting given all the different agencies that wanted to play a role on the team. “This should simplify that and allow the global account leads to focus much more so on the client’s needs and delivering on those needs, as opposed to managing internal squabbles,” he said. “There’s simplicity to be had and there is coherence there.”

Another consultant who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak more freely, said Rose’s effect on WPP has actually been felt before the big announcement last week, and that the holdco is showing up more positively in pitches. “What you’ve seen from the Estee Lauder win, and what we’ve seen in recent pitches, is there’s a reason to have a open mind about what they are going to deliver next year,” said the consultant. “There’s just more stability.”

Tom Denford and David Indo, the co-CEOs of consultancy ID Comms, held a LinkedIn Live session on Friday to talk about the WPP news. A three-year strategic transformation that Rose and co. are undertaking will come with some unintended results, noted Indo. “The first year of this three-year program is going to be to stabilize the loss of profit and the loss of revenue, which is going to do two things — it’s going to force WPP to pitch like crazy, and it’s going to force them to defend like crazy. So it’s almost like a perfect storm.”

Indo offered marketers his advice on what they should be focusing on in relation to WPP’s changes, besides not panicking. He called on advertisers to ask for, and get a forensic understanding of, what WPP Open actually does, “and how that will enable [their] business to be productive,” he said. “Without that glue, without that line of thread, bringing all of these disparate business units together, then it’s not going to work.”

Justin Ricketts, WPP Production’s global chief transformation officer, offered his explanation of what Open does, in a LinkedIn post of his own. “WPP Open is not trying to be Marcel [Publicis’ operating connector]. It is an end-to-end agentic marketing platform, built on top of Open Intelligence, combining proprietary technology with deep partnerships across Google, Adobe, OpenAI and Microsoft. The architecture is designed to keep WPP permanently on the edge of what AI can do rather than locking into any single vendor’s capabilities or any single moment’s technology assumptions.”

There’s an argument to be made that Wall Street has the holdcos’ number by their lack of enthusiasm for the stock prices of all three. “I do think it’s incredibly telling that the street isn’t buying it,” said Steve Boehler, principal at Mercer Island Group consultancy. “I know that Wall Street and the markets are very short-term focused for the most part these days, but I can’t help but ponder the evidence that the market isn’t buying the strategy as they run to daylight.”

Meantime, Publicis keeps chugging along, winning pitch after pitch. It’s even clawed back a bit of the losses on its stock price. And Omnicom, while a bit slowed by the absorption of Interpublic Group, is emerging from that digestive process with a renewed fire in its belly — and the combined data assets of Acxiom with the commerce skills of Flywheel. 

Will the pursuit of principal media or proprietary media — their best means of generating profit, not just revenue — end up being a differentiator among the Big Three? That’s unlikely, if only because they all seem to carry out principal/proprietary in similar ways. 

So let the three-way battle for holdco supremacy rage on. Where WPP was once seemingly out of the fight, its strategic shift could put some weight behind its blows. 

Color by numbers

Out of home media has been on a pretty impressive growth trajectory over the last five years, but there’s one big thing hindering media buyers and planners from allocating more budget there — the lack of an independent third-party measurement source. That’s the findings of a study of 120 brand and agency executives by Accretive, an OOH tech and measurement platform. Some findings: 

• 68% percent of marketers said they would increase their OOH ad spend by at least 5% if a single, neutral, third-party entity verified all OOH impressions and audience data. And 14% would increase their budgets by 20%. 
• Barriers to more investment include limited quality and scale of inventory (49%), complexity of execution (42%), lack of internal expertise (41%), and a lack of standardized measurement (32%).

Takeoff & landing

Last week felt like a baby mediapalooza, with lots of account wins by multiple media agencies. They include: 

• WPP Media landing Estee Lauder’s global media business, taking business from Monks, Assembly and Brainlabs.
• Havas landed integrated AOR duties for pharma firm Indivior, which includes media and creative. 
• Omnicom’s PHD won Asia Pacific pharma firm Menarini’s media business following a review.
• Dentsu’s Carat successfully defended its media account with Revo fitness brand for another three years.
• Horizon Media’ Horizon Next won media AOR duties for HVAC and plumbing firm American Residential Services. 
• Stagwell’s Assembly won audio and video firm Jabra’s paid media business, including as lead partner for Amazon services. And fellow Stagwell agency Gale won integrated AOR work for Embrace pet insurance. 
• Independent Novus won media planning and buying across digital and offline channels for A&W Restaurants. 

Direct quote

“It’s kind of been the case for a number of years that internally, the emphasis has been on media because it’s been more profitable. But if you’re a CMO, aren’t you a bit worried that you’re losing all these agency brands? And what about creativity? How can you have a creative agency that just says we want to make money from media?”

— ID Comms co-CEO Tom Denford, talking about WPP’s strategic moves to consolidate into four divisions, in a LinkedIn Live chat. 

Speed reading

• Seb Joseph tackled the heady topic of agencies trying to move past billable hours charged to clients in favor of subscriptions.
• Sam Bradley wrote about the fact that YouTube has become a go-to source for brand GEO strategies.
• Sam also covered how Reddit has upped its game to become a more attractive destination for upper funnel media dollars. 
• I looked into one agency’s efforts to help narrow the knowledge gap between the C-suite and marketing teams on how to employ and embrace gen AI.