WPP and Publicis at loggerheads in data wars
Unusually for a company preparing to change its leader, WPP has been on the front foot recently in the PR stakes, relentlessly plugging its AI capabilities at the same time as it’s been fending off criticism about Mark Read’s four days in the office edict (even though it doesn’t have enough room in some places) and the reorganisation of GroupM into WPP Media with possibly thousands of job losses.
Now it’s launched an all-out attack on Publicis Groupe claiming its Epsilon supply-side platform has been foisting low quality (or no quality) ad inventory on its clients. Epsilon is deemed to be one of the factors which has propelled Publicis to the top in the data-driven world of ad holding companies. WPP made a minor placement via Epsilon and claimed the results showed lots of “made for advertising” sites showing up.
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Publicis, which could easily have loftily disregarded this, hit back strongly: “WPP continues to claim innovation, this time by inventing their own ‘audits’ of their competitors. They’re doing it in a domain where they’ve recently excelled — throwing mud at their peers rather than focusing on their clients and their people.”
The full story is in Ad Age (subscription required.) It’s been the opinion of many pundits for years now that the whole internet ad boom is a massive structure built on pretty wonky foundations: fraud is rife and the clever tech designed to validate supposed results is usually one step at least behind the scammers. But the ad holding companies’ media operations need clients to believe they’re (more or less) on top of it which is why this seemingly minor test by WPP has provoked such a storm. We haven’t had mud exchanged between the holding companies on this scale since the vintage days of WPP founder Sir Martin Sorrell.
The seemingly inexorable rise of Publicis (largely but not exclusively built on media) is perhaps the main reason for the demise of Mark Read as CEO of WPP. On the one hand shareholders are prepared to accept that WPP is operating in a tricky market and it’s never easy for an incoming CEO to take over from one, Sorrell, who built the company in his own image for decades. The Alex Ferguson at Man United syndrome if you like.
But Publicis’ growth, largely founded on tech and data businesses Sapient and Epsilon, seems to indicate that it is possible for such companies to grow, despite wider geopolitical issues. Publicis is now bigger than WPP. So there’s a lot riding on this particular spat and it’s easy to see why WPP, finally, seems to have snapped and Publicis has responded so vigorously.
Read (who’s staying on to the end of the year) and Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun will both be in town for the Cannes Lions. Should be an interesting encounter.
