Interpublic Group claims the recent acquisition of Acxiom has given it a major competitive advantage and is already paying dividends for clients, allowing them to make data work harder and delivering more efficient marketing.
IPG boss Michael Roth unveiled his plans for the data business at this week’s results announcement, which showed that the marketing services giant – which owns MRM McCann, R/GA, UM, Mullen Lowe and FCB – saw organic net revenue grow 5.5% year on year to $8bn in 2018.
The $2.3bn Acxiom deal was completed in October last year, and IPG has already earned $181.7m from the company since the acquisition. Its part in IPG organic growth, however, will not be announced until the fourth quarter of this year.
Roth noted that the integration is not just IPG clients into Acxiom; it is also Acxiom clients into IPG. He added: “We expect to see revenue synergies from Acxiom begin to come to life over the course of 2019. Acxiom provides the data foundation for many of the world’s largest and most sophisticated marketers, including about half of the Fortune 500. These are deep relationships with long average lifespans and high renewal rates.
“All of us operate in an increasingly data-centric ecosystem, which means that most of media and marketing will be centred around precision marketing, especially the ability to manage first-party data to create deeper, direct consumer relationships where we can connect with individual consumers at scale.
“[Acxiom gives us] a strong competitive advantage in our market. As we continue to fully integrate Acxiom, we’re able to make our clients data work harder for them and can deliver more efficient marketing. We’re beginning to see this play out in pitches now, with sophisticated clients, initially in the media space, asking us to pressure-test our ability to link their first-party data with an external data stack to deliver better business outcomes.”
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