Martech: Martech is Marketing Logo
  • Topics
    Digital Transformation
    Marketing Operations
    Data
    Customer & Digital Experience
    Performance Marketing
    Marketing Management
    Special Reports
    All Topics
  • Conference
  • Webinars
  • Intelligence Reports
  • White Papers
  • What is MarTech
    Mission
    Staff
    Newsletter
    Search Engine Land
    Third Door Media

Processing...Please wait.

MarTech » Performance Marketing » Twitter renewed its upfront deals with these three agencies

Twitter renewed its upfront deals with these three agencies

Omnicom Media Group, Publicis Media and Dentsu Aegis Network were the three previously unnamed agency groups that renewed their upfront deals with Twitter.

Tim Peterson on May 11, 2016 at 9:00 am

twitter-dollar-signs-money-ss-1920

Twitter didn’t have a great first quarter. Its monthly audience grew, but not by a lot. Its revenue grew, but not by as much as Wall Street analysts had expected. And its brand advertising business didn’t grow by as much as Twitter itself had expected. But there was at least one bright spot.

Twitter got three global agency holding companies to renew their upfront deals with the social network with a 40-percent increase year over year in money coming to Twitter from those deals. While Twitter mentioned those deals during its most recent earnings call, it hasn’t said which agency groups were the ones to re-up with the social network. But multiple people with knowledge of the renewals have told Marketing Land their names: Omnicom Media Group, Publicis Media (née Starcom MediaVest Group) and Dentsu Aegis Network.

Spokespeople for Omnicom and Publicis Media confirmed the renewals but declined to comment on specifics. Spokespeople for Dentsu and Twitter declined to comment.

All of the three agency networks are heavy hitters, especially among big-budget brand advertisers. Omnicom’s client roster includes Procter & Gamble, Delta Airlines and Apple, while Publicis Media’s network has Kraft Heinz and Visa, and Dentsu’s has Mondelēz, Pernod Ricard and Nestlé.

Being able to keep close ties with those marketers — all of whom are major TV advertisers — is a particularly good thing for Twitter right now. Brand advertisers are Twitter’s largest source of revenue, but that part of Twitter’s ad business was weaker than expected in the first quarter of 2016. That’s not great, especially since Twitter is trying to build up its video ad business, which would cater more to brand advertisers looking to get attention than direct-response marketers looking to push product. But the renewals — which Twitter COO Adam Bain said last month were “centered around video” and signed before Twitter’s NFL deal was announced — might suggest that things aren’t as bad for Twitter’s brand business as its earnings report would indicate.

“We don’t spend our clients’ money without a lot of thought about it. Twitter works,” said one agency exec involved the renewals. That exec is “overall bullish” on the social network. While Twitter’s ad business and audience size isn’t growing as fast as Google or Facebook, it’s still growing, and its ads generate positive enough results for brands, which is why that exec’s agency holding company did the deal.

There are other advantages to signing an upfront deal with a company like Twitter. Like buying in bulk at Costco or Sam’s Club, agencies can get discounts on their ad rates in exchange for committing up front to spend a lot of money on ads. At least one of the agencies that re-upped with Twitter got exactly that kind of wholesale pricing, according to one person familiar with the deal.

But at least one of the other two agencies didn’t make any kind of hard spending commitment to put a set amount of money toward Twitter ads, according to another person familiar with the matter. Instead, that agency signed the two-year deal in order to get early looks at new Twitter products and better access to Twitter’s data and sales teams. Of course, to take advantage of that access would mean eventually buying ads — and making a hard commitment can fetch the same perks — so that deal could be characterized as a soft commitment: show us what you’ve got, and we’ll tell you what we want to buy. Apparently, that means video ads for the agencies’ brand clients.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


New on MarTech

    AI and machine learning in marketing: Are you deploying the right models? 
    Google, NBCUniversal duking it out to be Netflix adtech provider
    My stack is bigger than your stack, so what?
    ActionIQ rebrands and launches CX Hub
    Old Navy to drop NFTs in July 4th promo update

About The Author

Tim Peterson
Tim Peterson, Third Door Media's Social Media Reporter, has been covering the digital marketing industry since 2011. He has reported for Advertising Age, Adweek and Direct Marketing News. A born-and-raised Angeleno who graduated from New York University, he currently lives in Los Angeles. He has broken stories on Snapchat's ad plans, Hulu founding CEO Jason Kilar's attempt to take on YouTube and the assemblage of Amazon's ad-tech stack; analyzed YouTube's programming strategy, Facebook's ad-tech ambitions and ad blocking's rise; and documented digital video's biggest annual event VidCon, BuzzFeed's branded video production process and Snapchat Discover's ad load six months after launch. He has also developed tools to monitor brands' early adoption of live-streaming apps, compare Yahoo's and Google's search designs and examine the NFL's YouTube and Facebook video strategies.

Related Topics

Performance Marketing

Get the daily newsletter digital marketers rely on.

Processing...Please wait.

See terms.

ATTEND OUR EVENTS The MarTech Conference logo.

September 28-29, 2022: Fall

Start Training Now: Master Classes

Start Discovering Now: Spring



The SMX Conference logo.

Start Training Now:: SMX Advanced

November 14-15, 2022: SMX Next

March 8-9, 2022: Master Classes

Webinars

Protect Your Paid Advertising Spend Against Ad Fraud and Invalid Traffic

Build an Integrated Search Strategy Across Google, Amazon and YouTube

Get a Jumpstart with Google Analytics 4!

See More Webinars
Intelligence Reports

Enterprise SEO Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

Enterprise Identity Resolution Platforms

Email Marketing Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

See More Intelligence Reports
Featured White Paper

Organic Search Industry Benchmarks

See More Whitepapers

Receive daily marketing news & analysis.

Processing...Please wait.

Topics

  • Transformation
  • Operations
  • Data
  • Experience
  • Performance
  • Management
  • All Topics
  • Home

Our Events

  • MarTech
  • Search Marketing Expo - SMX

About

  • What is MarTech
  • Contact
  • Privacy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Marketing Opportunities
  • Staff

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Newsletters
  • RSS

© 2022 Third Door Media, Inc. All rights reserved.