Accenture launches programmatic arm to help brands bring buying in-house
Professional services firm Accenture has launched an in-housing media planning and buying service catering to the growing trend of marketers taking their programmatic spending inhouse.
Accenture’s Michael Buckley, managing director of Accenture Interactive for Australia, told Mumbrella the offering is part of the company’s strategy to provide end-to-end marketing and customer experience for clients that saw the firm acquire Maud and The Monkeys last year.
Buckley: “What clients are trying to achieve is bringing together the brand promise and customer experience”
Install Doubleclick and dream team. Charge $250k. Dream team get bored and leave. Return to agency.
I cant wait for more clients to bring media strategy. planning, buying, technology and data services in house. Nothing will more effectively show them the actual cost efficiency and general effectiveness of employing an agency to perform those functions for them.
nobody to yell at
“Buckley was unable to comment on how many staff Accenture Interactive is currently employing locally or name any Australian clients.”
Strap yourself in….this is going to get funny.
The fear from the Agency bosses is awesome.
Claiming conflict when they’ve had years of being doctor and chemist. Amazing!
Accenture has something the holding co don’t – trust and respect.
Um.. nope.. been on agency side where Accenture has come int oour clients and “advised them” on how to increase their ROI on marketing and agency relationships. Each left the client with a $250k bill and apart from some minor improvements in briefing, nothing really to justify the cost. Clients once bitten twice shy. 3/3 feel this way
When you audit a company and its services, then provide advice on how to solve those problems and then recommend your own company to provide the services to solve those problems its called a ‘conflict of interest’.
There’s no grey area here. Its black and white.
Anyone who knows programmatic can look forward to a good salary bump as there really aren’t enough of us to go around.
I’m really battling to see what the Accenture strategy is here. You can’t trust agencies because they are conflicted, so what we are going to do is copy them, and hope like hell that nobody notices that we are even more conflicted than they are! Oh, and more expensive. I do hope I’m missing something…
Yep completely conflicted reminds of when Naked were channel agnostic because they had no vested interest in any part of the plans execution , until they did and then suddenly questions arise about neutrality , I’m not inferring that their plans changed but it just raises questions of bias, never a good thing in a any relationship
Accenture Interactive clients
– Scentre Group
– Samsung
Keep it going..
This is nothing to do with trust. Programmatic done well by anyone is a fantastic tool and method
Make no mistake – this is about money – These consultancy brands only focus on high margin areas. Market Mix Modelling, Creative consultancy and now programmatic. They are certainly not here to do a public service for clients and save them from agency evils. They are an agency evil!
Agencies need to start charging consulting fees for when in-house programmatic turns bad. (which it will)
People still assume programmatic is knowing how to tick a few boxes in DBM..
Client bringing programmatic in-house:
– We want to use a DCO partner that’s not DoubleClick? “Not our problem anymore”
– We want a bespoke data partnership! “Not our problem anymore”
– The wrong creative is running can the person who trafficked it change it instantly? “Not our problem anymore its manged offshore”
There’s so many components that work together at an agency level, you cant just take out the buying one and expect it to work perfectly.
We’ve built an internal desk. It works well. I’m not sure perfect exists either internally or via partners.
If you have the right level of spend, good first party data, a motivated team, a good brand to work with and an opportunity to take a little risk it may work for you. We also had a lot of help from our existing agency, Periscopix, whose model supports this kind of move.
We’ve seen better ROI, we know what properties work (and don’t), built a new product for clients, increased performance from existing partners, increased brand safety, increased ability to see & react and we’ve all learnt a lot. We now know which of our partners add good value and we no longer work with those who don’t.
Excellent Ben. I would guess a better ROI is a no brainer as you are not paying for agency margins, and as long as you have good people it makes sense.
Challenge over next 2-5 years will be to hang onto those good people who are working on the same brand month after month. Also to keep up with technology improvements, insights and thinking to remain competitive.
I agree its not perfect either agency side or client side – but I also think the “better ROI” argument works for 1-3 years. After that there is the challenge and risk of losing key people and falling behind what others are doing in the industry
Interesting. I expected more comments bashing programmatic. It is the favorite punching bag of Mumbrella & the industry. Usually the comments are
afrom people not working in programmatic: push your own agenda or fear whay
Interesting. I expected more comments bashing programmatic. It is the favorite punching bag of Mumbrella & the industry. Usually the comments are
from people not working in programmatic: push your own agenda or trash it / fear it because you don’t know enough about it – and that makes you feel better
I guess this is … Buckley’s chance (hope he acquaints himself with his staff and learns a few client names – that would be a good start).
Accenture not have a partnership to promote and run Saleforce DMP (Krux)? Ie… Saleforce goes in and do what they do best and sell stuff and leave the servicing to consultant type “agencies” to do.
Given Accenture have a media agency partner they use globally, I’m really curious to see how this plays out.