Media Buying Briefing: Why Dentsu Japan and the rest of the holdco just don’t fit well together

There’s a certain irony when an agency holding company is winning clients but its global CEO puts the majority of its agency holdings into play for possible sale. In fact, to some it may be downright puzzling. Such is the case with Dentsu, the Japanese-owned holdco that’s always been a bit of an enigma relative to its primary rivals. 

Last week, one of Dentsu’s media agencies, iProspect, said it had expanded an existing relationship its sibling Merkle has with BJ’s Wholesale Club to now include performance media duties handled by iProspect. The news follows wins of BMW Group’s media across Europe, also led by iProspect, back in July, and Dollar General (along with its retail media network) in May. The wins came right after a management shakeup at the performance-driven and a successful global defense of the Pandora jewelry account. Other wins over the last 18 months wins include eBay, Principal Financial Group and supermarket chain Hy-Vee. 

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Inside the ‘grand bargain’ to reconcile ad tech’s warring middlemen

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The latest transparency saga to engulf the ad tech sector, or transaction-IDs or TIDs, has thrown up several terms that have had some of the industry’s most erudite names debating terms such as auction density, bidding rings and deduplication.

It all bubbled to the surface in mid-August when Prebid, the open-source consortium responsible for much of the internet’s programmatic advertising infrastructure, quietly altered how TIDs are generated in its 10.9 update, sparking impassioned debate over transparency.

It’s left those in the middle arguing over just what is, and what isn’t a fair way to do business, but now (it seems) there may be some light at the end of the tunnel, with a “grand bargain” recently tabled as a potential resolution.

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