Martin Sorrell, the CEO of WPP, today laid out a stark picture of how significant a role digital is playing for the advertising giant. Speaking at the FT Digital Media Conference in London today, he said that digital now accounts for 34% of WPP’s revenues, amounting to some $72 billion, rising “from zero to over one-third in about ten years, the age of Google,” he said. → Read More
The advertising giant WPP continues its strategy to build up its digital business through acquisitions: today Possible Worldwide, a WPP-owned digital agency that has strong operations in emerging markets, announced that it has purchased Fortune Cookie, a 190-person, UK-based firm with operations also in Poland, the U.S. and Australia. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The deal… → Read More
WPP today has announced a major development in its strategy to have 40 percent of its business coming from digital in the next five years: it is buying AKQA, one of the biggest — and independent — digital agencies around. WPP says that AKQA will continue to operate as an independent agency, and its current chairman will also head up a new investment arm, WPP Ventures, to back more digital… → Read More
The heat is on to migrate more digital marketing activities into the cloud, and while we have seen a lot of movements from smaller, fleet-0f-foot startups in this area, the big players don’t want to be left out in the cold, either. Enter WPP, which today announced a partnership with the Bangalore-based outsourcing and IT specialist Infosys for a new cloud-based digital marketing… → Read More
Possible Worldwide, a WPP Digital company, this morning its acquisition of a majority stake in Gringo, a Brazilian digital agency. The deal is meant to expand the global footprint of Possible Worldwide, which counts companies like Microsoft, Nokia, Dell, Google and BBC among its clients.
Grïngo, which has 65 employees, works for clients like Coca-Cola, Absolut Vodka and Microsoft and has racked… → Read More
Blue State Digital, the communications firm responsible for coordinating President Barack Obama’s online fundraising and social networking campaigns in the 2008 election, has been acquired by advertising giant WPP. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Blue State Digital is a digital agency that helps form online strategy, and advocacy, membership and fundraising campaigns for nonprofits… → Read More
Sir Martin Sorrell, the New York City based co-founder and long-serving CEO of WPP, a global communications company that employs over 140,000 people in 121 countries, is arguably the world’s most powerful advertising executive. Unlike many other CEOs of global enterprises, however, Sir Martin is sensitive and, in some ways, sympathetic to the disruption of the digital revolution. Not only does… → Read More
Twitter walls are nothing new but, given England’s dire start to the World Cup and a few other European nations I could mention (*cough* France), this one could be particularly cathartic.
Brand agency, The Brand Union, is projecting a giant World Cup themed Twitter wall on one side of its Farringdon, London offices. Dubbed ‘The Footwall‘, tweets via the @thefootwall account are being sent to the… → Read More
Slightly off-topic, but likely worth a look to anyone with a vested interest in how the global economy fares (which means pretty much everyone reading this blog): Millward Brown Optimor has compared the financial performance of its list of most valuable brands – you know, the one that pegs Google to be the most valuable at a whopping $100 billion – with the S&P 500 as a whole.
The analysis… → Read More
TV advertising startup Spot Runner really is running on fumes. According to a lawsuit filed by one its irate investors, advertising giant WPP, Spot Runner has “expended all but approximately $20 million of its investor capital, while losing money at the rate of $35-$45 million a year.” The company has raised $100 million since 2006, and at one point employed more than 500 people before a string… → Read More
Yet more evidence that the future of media is digital (in case there are still any doubters out there). In a report released this morning, boutique investment bank Jordan, Edmiston Group estimates that between 88 percent of the publishing and advertising industry’s revenue growth over the next few years will come from four sectors: Database & Information, B2B Online Media, Consumer Online… → Read More
Advertising conglomerate WPP is looking to increase its Web advertising revenues through more acquisitions. Last year it purchased 24/7 Real Media for $649 million, and is currently making a run at Nurun, a Montreal-based interactive ad firm. But it may try to boost its Advertising 2.0 cred even further with more small acquisitions. The NY Post, not always the most reliable source but pretty good… → Read More
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