GroupM streamlines tech partnerships with new strategy to deal with ‘cluttered’ landscape
Whitfield
Australia’s largest media agency group GroupM is banning ad tech suppliers from approaching its agencies directly as it looks to implement what it is calling a One Voice Tech strategy.
Newly promoted director of technical operations for GroupM Timothy Whitfield told Mumbrella the new approach was necessary to deal with what is a “cluttered” landscape.
“We identified the challenge that the mediascape is very cluttered, at the moment, and that this creates a lot of confusion and it leads to sometimes making some bad choices,” said Whitefield. “There is a knock on effect by slowing projects down.
“This is based on the recognition that it is just a little too complicated at the moment.”
Whitfield said GroupM’s One Voice Tech strategy would act as a central hub for assessing new technology solutions and would be overseen by him and John Miskelly, who yesterday took the title of chief digital officer of GroupM.
Click to enlarge Source: Mediasope
As programmatic marketing continues its double digit growth each year the number of technology and data vendors has exploded, with Mediascope’s latest digital media trading landscape listing hundreds of vendors, publishers and suppliers.
“What we have identified is that there is an opportunity to create a centralised hub – a bit like an internal tool – for us to look at independent views on each one of the pieces of technology in the Australian landscape and be able to understand how they will benefit our clients,” said Whitfield.
“Rather than the tech vendors going directly to the agency groups – and it’s not just new vendors but existing vendors as they update their roadmaps – filtering all that through a centralised role allows us to understand what the best tech is in the market for each one of our clients.
“I report in to John [Miskelly] now and he will look after the commercial side of the operation and I look after the technical,” he said. “It is a ying and yang relationship.”
Asked if this was attempt by Australia’s largest media group to centralise its tech partners among preferred supplies, Whitfield said that GroupM would still be open to other players “as we need it.”
“The reward for us is to create a very very solid WPP tech landscape that is built off the back of our own tech stack and then plugs-in to other technology as we need it,” said Whitfield.
“That will be a strong benefit to our clients.”
Nic Christensen
the old ying and yang eh
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So all technical expertise is to be ripped out of the agencies? Why would a client not just align with Groupm then or is that the whole point of the strategy ?
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Makes sense, a lot of this adtech works in silos but someone needs to take a step back to map out which vendors can work together. Just bolting on the shiny new toy often isn’t the best approach
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How exactly do you ban someone from
Speaking to an agency?
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will they publish a list of who’s banned ? How does one get on the list ???
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My question is, how is GroupM investing so much time and money into this space, building and aligning new technology, hiring the so called ‘experts’, etc? [Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy]
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I’m sure there’s some form of strategy behind this stance but given the 12 months groupm have had why would they want to come out and antagonise vendors and clients . Seems a very strange approach.
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I wonder if the contracts they strike with these limited number of vendors will be visible to clients ? or is the crowded lunascape an excuse.
btw…80% of the tech companies in the USA LUNASCAPE don’t have operations in Australia.
Still crowded ?
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…let me guess, the partly owned group M (WPP / Xasis) tech platform app nexus is on the approved list?
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Thanks for highlighting the digital MediaScape to support this story.
Spiffy is right in saying most of the US digital vendors do not have a footprint in the Australian market. While many do, there is also a strong presence here of digital businesses from Asia and the Sub-Continent. There are also several Aussie home-grown businesses. There are still vendors entering, acquiring &/or launching in our market.
The LumaScape is one example of the US digital landscape – the Chiefmartec slide (another US guide) is actually scary in the number of vendors it highlights. Take a look – http://cdn.chiefmartec.com/wp-.....an2015.png
The digital MediaScape was launched over 5 years ago as a guide to our unique Australian market – and continues to evolve and be updated in real-time to reflect this fast changing landscape.
This year on year comparison (since 2010) outlines how quickly the digital media market has changed – http://www.mediascope.com.au/d.....comparison
From the 19 MediaScapes I now produce the digital MediaScape is the one which keeps me on my toes. There is never a dull day in digital – though the media agency & TV MediaScapes have been busy of late too 🙂
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Always confuses me why groupm come out so publicly with these sorts of stances when they seem to spark so many questions about their motivations being superior to those of their clients. Why publicise this?
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As a competitor to GroupM, I’m pleased to see the group activate a ‘China Policy’. This process will slow the evaluation process, curtail the number of points of view and decimate the value derived from an important validation process of ‘test and learn’ amongst agencies and their clients. Brilliant.
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@worlddomination – of course it will be!
I wonder if clients get the opportunity to view/approve this list?
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so many naysayers here..
Groupm, like all big agencies, are trying to improve the digital product offering and prices for clients. otherwise clients will leave them and go to other places to get better value. the losers here will be the smaller digital players who do not have a big or cost effective audience (unless a client is looking for a particular niche).
At the end of the day, it doesnt matter what anyone things about the strategies or motivations of groupm – their clients will decide. So if something isnt working or proves to be an inferior product / inferior value, clients will simply walk.
Tell me any agency group that isnt trying to corral vendors into providing better value and prices for clients..
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This makes perfect sense for GroupM, I appreciate that they’ve invested in tech.
But their interests have diverged from their clients.
No doubt they’ll be approving their own tech platforms like Plista or AppNexus but do they have an interest in running campaigns through these platforms rather than the best platform for the client’s campaign?
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It’s great – media agencies are constantly complaining about how procurement are now deeply involved in the selection of agencies and how this process slows everything down and means that the people who actually need the services don’t get a voice in the process, and yet this is effectively GroupM saying that they’re setting up a cross company tech procurement process for ad tech.
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