In this week’s Week in Charts, Publicis vs Omnicom market caps, UK gambling ad spend, and European adoption of addressability solutions.
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Charts of the Week
Publicis Retains Top Spot Following Omnicom/IPG Merger
When Omnicom announced it had reached a deal to acquire fellow holding group Interpublic Group just under a year ago, it was a move that was set to create the largest agency group in the world when measured by market value. The timing was slightly unfortunate for Omnicom’s French rival Publicis Groupe, which had only just claimed that title for itself.
As it happened, however, when Omnicom formally completed the merger last week, Publicis remained top of the pack. While Publicis itself has had a year of ups and downs, Omnicom and Interpublic both saw significant falls in their share prices over the year — now they’re combined, their market value sits more than $1.5 billion below Publicis’s.
Data Clean Rooms and Unified ID Solutions are Europe’s Most Popular Addressability Solutions
While Google’s plans to sunset third-party cookies on Chrome ended up amounting to nothing, the industry-wide panic sparked by Google’s announcement did at least encourage companies to invest in new addressability solutions. And many now use data clean rooms and Unified ID solutions, according to IAB Europe’s survey of its members.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the methodologies used in Google’s now shuttered Privacy Sandbox, including probabilistic cohorts and PAIR, are somewhat less popular.
European FAST Channel Growth Continues at Pace
There’s plenty of enthusiasm on the sell-side for free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST), according to new data from Gracenote, as the number of channels available to audiences in both the UK and Germany rose significantly between January and October.
While this growth suggests more choice for audiences, it can also make it harder to sift through content and choose something to watch. This won’t be nearly as big a headache as it is in the US, though — American audiences had 1,396 channels to choose from in October, according to Gracenote.
Marketers Say News Outperforms Other Inventory Types
The majority of marketers say that ads shown alongside news inventory outperform campaign baselines, according to new research from DoubleVerify this week. And while 53 percent of marketers surveyed by DV said they currently invest in news content, an additional 28 percent said they intend to in the future.
Publishers will hope this promising data bears out in practice. Many have reported that ad revenues have been hit by news avoidance from advertisers, and those that have managed to deliver ad growth, like the New York Times, have generally done so through growth in areas outside of hard news (such as sports and lifestyle content).
The Week in Stocks
Agencies
The biggest change to this week’s chart is the exit of Interpublic Group, following the completion of its merger with Omnicom. Omnicom’s market cap has gotten a roughly $8 billion boost, though its share price is down almost five percent since last week.
TV
Most TV businesses saw their share prices rise this week, while speculation around potential M&A continues. Warner Bros. Discovery asked for suitors to submit raised bids by December 1st, with Paramount, Netflix, and Comcast in the running. Comcast-owned Sky, meanwhile, is sizing up a bid for ITV.
Publishers
Future PLC’s share price rose by over five percent over the past week, as it announced the completion of a share buyback programme which has cost over £50 million.
Ad Tech
Most ad tech stocks returned to growth this week, after having fallen the week prior. Viant was the biggest riser, up by over 12 percent, and its share price has grown by nearly 30 percent over the past month.
Tech
Revelations about the level of revenues Meta generates from scam-related ads don’t seem to be hurting the company’s share price at the moment. Despite multiple groups threatening legal action over the past week, Meta was this week’s strongest riser out of all the big tech companies.
