WPP’s Sorrell: 2009 ‘Very Tough’, Zuckerberg Made Mistake On Beacon January 30, 2009
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentNo surprise that Martin Sorrell sees the next few months as “very tough,” but the WPP ad group CEO also reckons the financial markets will improve in the second half of the year, leading to a “real-world” recovery in 2010 (via Bloomberg).
By that time, though, the advertising world will have changed: “Old media will never be the same again or as profitable again,” he told an International Advertising Association gathering in London yesterday (via Campaign mag).
Read The Rest—>Very Tough’, Zuckerberg Made Mistake On Beacon
WPP Takes Stake in Omniture January 29, 2009
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentThe agreement is a testament to Martin Sorrell’s belief that ad holding companies must branch out beyond their traditional expertise
NEW YORK WPP Group and Omniture have concluded a collaboration agreement through which the holding company will invest $25 million in the analytics firm.
The firms agreed to work together on product development, with WPP shops like OgilveyOne, Wunderman, Enfatico, GroupM and 24/7 Real Media participating.
The plan calls for WPP in 12-18 months to shift its own technology and data products onto Omniture’s platform. This includes 24/7’s ad-serving systems and TNS’ data collection platforms.
The agreement is a testament to WPP CEO Martin Sorrell’s belief that ad holding companies must branch out beyond their traditional expertise in media and creative. (WPP spent $649 million to buy ad serving firm and network 24/7 Real Media in May 2007.)
“In the current economic environment and as clients continue to experiment with and develop their online budgets, the need for better analysis, measurement and focus on return on investment is more important than ever,” Sorrell said in a statement.
WPP bought 2.8 million units of Omniture common stock at $8.76 per share. Based on Omniture’s outstanding shares, WPP will own about 3 percent of the company.
Omniture’s shares this morning opened at $9.44. The firm also issued a warrant giving WPP the option to purchase more shares if undisclosed performance objectives are met.
Read The Rest—>WPP Takes Stake in Omniture
WPP's Martin Sorell Discusses the current market outlook January 21, 2009
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentWPP's Sir Martin Sorrell Talks about the economy his outlook on 2009 and other points of interest December 11, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentSorrell Feels the Heat December 9, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentAuto, retail and travel ad budgets under ‘intense pressure,’ WPP chief tells UBS conference
Dec 8, 2008
NEW YORK WPP Group CEO Martin Sorrell, speaking at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference today, reiterated concerns about the advertising marketplace next year given the recession and massive fluctuations in the stock market.
“I do think that the financial markets, which always go down or go up before the real world — of which we are part — will recover … by the middle of next year,” Sorrell said. “The real world, I don’t think will change for the better until 2010. And it will be helped by the fact that comparatives are going to be against a down market.”
Such comments echoed remarks Sorrell made last month in a video interview with Adweek.
Asked by an industry analyst how automotive and retail clients in particular are budgeting their marketing dollars for next year, Sorrell said all client categories are pressured, though auto, retail and travel are under “intense pressure.” Automotive business supplies about 10 percent of WPP’s global revenue and Ford is its No. 1 client.
“Every piece of evidence we find to be produced shows that those [clients] that cut in these times suffer and the costs of getting back to where they were are greater than if they continued to invest. But easier said” than done, said Sorrell, addressing a ballroom full of Wall Street analysts at the Grand Hyatt in New York.
Read The Rest—> Sorrell Feels the Heat
WPP Bid Garners 82% TNS Shareholder Approval October 8, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentNEW YORK WPP Group said today that it would proceed with its $1.9 billion acquisition of market research firm Taylor Nelson Sofres now that shareholders representing 82 percent of outstanding shares have agreed to the buyout. The offer, WPP declared, was now “unconditional.”
WPP said that its offer would be extended until Oct. 22 so that shareholders who have not yet agreed to the sale can do so. The holding company also said it would provide notice to TNS shareholders shortly that TNS stock would be delisted from market exchanges, a move that would “significantly reduce the value” of any shares remaining uncommitted to the WPP offer, the holding company said.
WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell, said in a statement, “We are delighted to be a step closer to welcoming such a fine company with strong people, clients and brands that will enhance our client offering.”
READ MORE BY CLICKING HERE WPP Bid Garners 82% TNS Shareholder Approval
WPP's Sorrell Hails Dell As New Agency Model, Acknowledges Fear Of Google's Mobile Plans December 6, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentby Joe Mandese, Thursday, Dec 6, 2007 8:45 AM ET
SHIFTS IN MEDIA TECHNOLOGY – and the way advertisers and agencies apply it – a reordering in the dominance of global markets, and the volatility of the economy, are all chief issues for the advertising industry, but the No. 1 problem facing Madison Avenue and its clients is “internal communications,” Martin Sorrell, chairman-CEO of WPP Group, the largest buyer of media worldwide said Wednesday during a presentation at the UBS media conference in New York. Sorrell, who reiterated his ongoing mantra about the roles of the Internet, digital media at large, and fast-growing markets like China, Russia, and various third world economies, singled out client/agency communications as WPP’s chief concern and cited the WPP’s win of Dell’s global advertising account as an example of how the ad agency holding company is addressing it, and offered it as a model for the industry at large.
Sorrell said that for all the challenges facing the ad business, it is the simply the ability to communicate effectively that is stymieing most agency/client relationships, and their ability to tackle the broader issues that confront them. “The biggest problem that ourselves and our clients experience is the waste of time,” he asserted, citing the organizational structure of WPP’s Dell assignment as a model for the future.
Instead of winning the business based on integrating existing services and teams within WPP’s vast array of marketing services shops, Sorrell said, WPP agreed to create a new, custom-designed agency for Dell, much the way the computer manufacturer might for someone ordering a PC online.
Describing as a “new ethos” in the advertising world, Sorrell said, “The Dell thing is a new approach. It’s really taking a radically different point-of-view. It’s really building an agency from scratch, which Dell and ourselves will prove to be a model for other clients to use.”
Sorrell did not provide details on the actual structure of the new agency model, but he did talk about some of the other pressures confronting WPP and its clients, and the “application of technology” was chief among them. He reemphasized his concerns that by applying technology faster, more efficiently and more innovatively than Madison Avenue traditionally has, companies like Google, eBay and Yahoo represent real potential for “disintermediating” traditional advertising agencies.
“I think it’s unrealistic for people in our business to think these are not threats. They are threats,” he said, once again signaling out the success Google has had applying superior technology to the advertising business.
Noting that Google’s market capitalization of more than $200 billion currently is more than four times greater than Madison Avenue’s Big 4 agency holding companies – Omnicom, WPP, Publicis and Interpublic – Sorrell pointed out that its estimated $20 billion in revenues are still only two thirds of the $33 billion generated by the Big 4 holding companies annually.
Noting that financial markets guru Warren Buffet recently predicted that Google’s capitalization would reach $400 billion in four years, Sorrell said he was most concerned by Google’s bid for wireless spectrum and is plans to dominate mobile search.
“They are very difficult to deal with,” he noted, and should is acquisition of DoubleClick be approved by regulators, as Sorrell believes it will, Google would become an even more formidable adversary and a “long term enemy,” Sorrell predicted.
But Sorrell also offered hope that Madison Avenue could get out in front of this disintermediation by doing what it has always excelled at – coming up with the “big ideas” that help differentiate clients and brands – and by figuring out superior ways of using technology to apply them.
“It’s not about building server farms or hiring 100 PhDs a week as Google is doing,” Sorrell asserted. “It’s about the application of technology to our business.”
He cited WPP’s acquisition of new media and technology firms such a Schematic and its investments in companies like Spot Runner and Visible World, as examples of its diversification, but he also noted that “legacy” WPP brands like Ogilvy and Wunderman have successfully made the transition from the old world of direct marketing to the new world of digital, interactive marketing – a story that has largely gone unsung by Wall Street or the trade press.
Meanwhile, he said WPP would continue to expand its role in digital media both organically and through selective acquisitions and investments, and would also continue to diversify geographically into fast-growing markets, and into new other forms of marketing services and research that are generally more recession-proof than traditional advertising.
Joe Mandese is Editor of MediaPost.
SORRELL CONTINUES TO TALK-UP ONLINE May 30, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentSORRELL CONTINUES TO TALK-UP ONLINE
LONDON: Sir Martin Sorrell’s famously cautious view of future events (think ‘bath-shaped’ recessions) ensures that his frequent forays into prognostication are faithfully reported in the media, rarely disappoint, and deliver consistently pleasant surprises to WPP Group stockholders.
Recently, however, the adland knight has been in uncharacteristic rah-rah mode about online advertising. With regard to which his recent pronouncements at industry talkfests and in interviews with the press suggest (perish the thought!) that he is talking up the medium.
Not entirely surprising, perhaps, given WPP’s recent $649 million (€482.46m; £327.03m) acquisition of US-headquartered digital media specialist 24/7 Real Media. Plus its investment of unknown (but probably significant) value in the digital capabilities of WPP’s media arm GroupM.
In an interview with Britain’s The Times, Sorrell drew attention to the increasing switch of advertising funds from traditional media to online, creating a “fundamental shift” that will irreversibly change the way in which TV broadcasters earn their crusts.
Nothing new about this, of course, as every sixth-grade business studies student has been aware for the past five years.
What is new, however, is this year’s inferno of hype, sparked by fire-raisers from the various national outposts of the Internet Advertising Bureau, fanned by print media’s apparent death wish, and massive vested digital interests.
But Sorrell is hedging his bets: “Television is under severe pressure at the moment from the internet. There has been a fundamental shift and the pace will quicken, but predictions of a depression in traditional media have gone too far. Television advertising is not going to disappear. It still has pulling power, but the balance will switch.
“Definitions are difficult now. The boundaries between what is the internet and what is TV are becoming more blurred. As a result, media decisions are becoming more complex and puzzling. It is not that simple to separate the two any more.”
Meantime, the IAB’s UK office – in Panglossian mode as its remit requires – is predicting that online could overtake television in revenue terms by 2010.
Given that the medium currently accounts for slightly more than 10% of all UK marketing spend, compared with TV’s 24.1%, this is unlikely but not impossible.
Claims IAB/UK ceo Guy Phillipson: “The internet is the most accountable medium ever invented – that is why it is so attractive.”
A claim with which quaint olde-worlde direct mail marketers would probably disagree.
Data sourced from The Times (UK); additional content by WARC staff, 30 May 2007
WPP, IPG, Omnicom All Work on Smaller Scale as Publicis Shells out Billions May 14, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentBuying Into Digital: A Look at the Holding Companies
WPP, IPG, Omnicom All Work on Smaller Scale as Publicis Shells out Billions
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–> By Lisa Sanders
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Digital is the future. On that point, industry executives agree.
Consider Publicis Groupe CEO Maurice Levy’s comment last December: “Digital is becoming the core marketing tool. … It is, and we should have no doubt about this, a fundamental and irreversible evolution.”
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Mark Read, CEO WPP Digital, says that the boundaries between digital and everything else will be irrelevant within the next five years. |
Or this, from Mark Read, CEO of WPP Digital, on his definition of success: “We’ll be successful when we won’t need to exist anymore. Particularly in five years’ time, the boundaries of what’s digital and what’s not will be irrelevant.” In a call with Wall Street analysts last month, Omnicom Group Chief Financial Officer Randall Weisenburger said: “We’re not seeing any slowdown in the push toward digital. We see digital in a broader perspective, not just in online advertising. We see it as online marketing and branding.”
Varied approaches
But how best to tackle this fundamental shift to creating communications to a digital world is a matter of debate, as the differing strategies of Omnicom, WPP, Publicis and Interpublic Group of Cos. attest. In the past 18 months, each has invested in digital companies to strengthen its offerings in creative and media, but the amounts of money spent and deal structures vary widely, as does each holding company’s use of acquired assets.
Publicis in January made the biggest financial commitment to the area with its $1.3 billion purchase of digital-marketing-communications company Digitas.
WPP also has been active in the space. In the past year it has made eight investments in companies specializing in mobile-marketing search, online-advertising production and building online communities. But unlike Publicis, WPP’s move is not the billion-dollar sort; the total amount it’s spent is “meaningful, but not significant in the scheme of WPP,” said Mr. Read, who heads the company’s investments in the discipline.
His boss, WPP Chief Executive Martin Sorrell, is quite outspoken about valuations of digital companies being rich — too rich, for the most part, for his liking. But the holding company understands how a few dollars well spent with a startup can open up dialogue. “The investments help to cement the relationships,” Mr. Read said, and generally are minority stakes.
Taking it slow
Omnicom, like WPP, has shied away from big-dollar commitments; its focus, said Jonathan Nelson, the former co-founder and chairman of digital agency Organic who now advises Omnicom chief John Wren on digital strategies, is “on the assets we have.” The holding company invests according to its networks’ needs.
“We’ve not focused on our venture-capital portfolio as the others have,” Mr. Nelson. “If a market is resurging, the question we ask is: What do we have there? Do we need to make an acquisition?” In the past year, Omnicom bought an interactive agency in the Netherlands and merged it with Tribal DDB’s offices in Amsterdam; in the U.K. it added Weapon 7, a digital-interactive-TV consultancy, to bolster Zulu Group.
Of all the Big Four holding companies, Interpublic’s been the least acquisitive. It bought partial stakes in social-networking site Facebook and in internet-based media-and-ad-production shop Spot Runner in 2006. This year it’s taken an equity stake in an online event-planning and promotion company and bought 100% of search-marketing firm Reprise Media.
“We look for partnerships and strategic investments that allow us to learn about and bring emerging technologies or new business for our clients. Some capabilities are so central to our offering that we will seek to acquire them outright,” said Bant Breen, president, Interpublic Futures Marketing Group, a recently created unit that provides resources to all Interpublic companies.
The Google wildcard
Many believe acquisitions will increase in the coming months. “It is more important than it was two years ago,” WPP’s Mr. Read said. A contributing factor to the agency’s activities in the digital arena is Google’s increasing forays into advertising. “As companies like Google enter new industries where they’ve not been in before, it changes the dynamics of what’s being applied there,” Mr. Read said. “It’s hard to predict how things will play out.”
But certainly some of the industry’s top minds are giving the future a lot of thought. After Google announced its plans to buy DoubleClick in late April, WPP’s Mr. Sorrell described the move as “game changing.” The announcement “forced us to accelerate our thinking” on the company’s digital strategy, he said.
WPP Dips into Digital Marketing Technologies May 2, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , 1 comment so farWPP Dips into Digital Marketing Technologies
Martin Sorrell seeks Myspace miracle
When Rupert Murdoch snagged MySpace in 2005 for $580 million, no one thought analysts would be predicting that it could be worth between $10 and $20 billion in just a few years. For this reason WPP Group CEO Martin Sorrell is seeking his own megaconglomerate “MySpace,” according to AdWeek.
Having already demonstrated an interest in DoubleClick back when it was for sale, Sorrell is now talking to 24/7 Real Media, an ad server just a fraction the size of Google’s recent acquisition.
In the past WPP focused its expansion on agencies and talent. However, while human talent sleeps, automated ad powerhouse Google continues to roll in the dollars.
WPP has already spent over $200 million on Google’s ad servers in 2006, making them Google’s largest customer.
WPP plans to aggressively purchase new marketing technologies in the coming months, and have already begun dipping toes into some sectors: mobile search network JumpTap, online gaming network Wild Tangent, and VideoEgg, a video ad network startup.
An automated ad purchase like 24/7 may even the score, but the company has a long way to go before it is even considered competition by the Google Goliath.
