Horizon launches new global media contender Canvas with $700m Innocean

There’s a new player on the world media agency stage, Canvas Worldwide, a joint venture between Hyundai agency Innocean and Horizon, the biggest independent media agency in the US. Innocean will move its $700m Hyundai and Kia media business into the new agency in January. Interpublic’s initiative loses out.

Inmocean is backed by Hyundai and acts as its in-house agency although Hyundai’s Kia uses other agencies too. But Innocean has big ambitions of its own. It completed its intitial IPO in Seoul recently, saying it planned to use $134bn of the $300bn or so it raised to diversify its global client base.

Innocean/Hyundai is just one of up to $30bn of media accounts seeking new homes this year and a key factor is so-called ‘transparency,’ the fear among many clients that their media agencies are, in effect, ripping them off by concealing margins and trousering media rebates.

Hyundai says: “Hyundai has been impressed by Horizon’s existing ability to offer fully a transparent system for media buys and understands this will be a key component of the Canvas philosophy. This transparency, and the accountability that goes with it, are critical to Hyundai Motor America.”

Horizon CEO and founder and CEO Bill Koenigsberg (left) says: “I’m interested in building out a new entity. I think there’s enormous white space here. The $26 billion that’s up for review now in the market (is) pointing to the fact that the old models are broken.

“Marketers are looking for a clean slate, new opportunity for invention, new creativity. I believe that with the success I’ve had with Horizon I can build another entity with a strong global partner to create two of the best-in-class agencies in the world.”