A month after Publicis Groupe told clients to pull spend from The Trade Desk, it still hasn’t told them where to put it instead. The directive — the result of an audit that surfaced transparency concerns serious enough to warrant client notification — left clients in limbo. On today’s earnings call, CEO Arthur Sadoun said they’ll stay there a little longer. What he was clear on, though, is what the answer won’t be: a Publicis-built rival. That path, he said, would pull the company too far off its current roadmap.
“Our number one priority is to build products and services that can help our clients grow in this AI world, and it’s not by building another platform that we’re going to help our clients more,” said Sadoun.
Which leaves Publics pointing clients toward rivals — none of which are models of transparency themselves. If the best case it can make is that those platforms are at least transparent about their opacity, marketers are going to have questions.
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