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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.”

bill-koenigsberg-horizonmedia-hed-2014Horizon 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.”

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