French advertising giant Publicis Groupe and age-old internet service provider AOL have joined forces to launch the industry’s ‘first global live advertising partnership -’ for today’s multi-screen marketing era.
The freshly coined Publicis AOL Live (PAL) will be co-managed by both companies and will offer marketers an end-to-end solution to deliver and manage live advertising on a global basis to digitally connected consumers.
Bob Lord will join AOL from Publicis Groupe on August 1 and will manage the partnership, as part of his new role as chief executive officer (CEO) of AOL Networks.
Lord will co-chair the partnership with three top Publicis Groupe executives: Rishad Tobaccowala, chair of Razorfish and DigitasLBi; Laura Desmond, CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group; and Tom Bernardin, CEO of the Leo Burnett Company.
PAL, which will include employees from each company, will provide advertisers and publishers with a full suite of live advertising services.
One Billion Video Views a Month
From real-time consumer connection tools and metrics, to four-screen distribution (mobile, tablet, desktop, Smart TV) – including connected over-the-top (OTT) devices.
The new offering features a set of leverage-able technology platforms spanning all Publicis Groupe companies and the AOL Live, AOL On and Be On platforms. These platforms will have the combined ability to reach more than one billion video views a month and 100 billion web impressions.
“Live advertising is the future of marketing on the internet,” said Tim Armstrong, AOL CEO and chairman.
“Based on the consumer and brand demand, we formed PAL and identified Bob to manage a cross-agency team that will aggressively build out the first live advertising platform for the internet on the planet.”
AOL and Publicis Groupe, which owns the likes of global advertising agency network Saatchi & Saatchi, digital and media agency Rosetta, and interactive agency Razorfish, began testing live advertising on AOL’s leading content brands earlier this year.
The two companies are currently running live advertising across AOL, AOL-owned – The Huffington Post (which also runs live-streaming network HuffPost Live ) TechCrunch, Engadget, Patch, Mapquest, and more than 250 publishers in the AOL Networks syndicated network.
Live Ads Give Brands Immediate Live Connections
Publicis Groupe’s leading digital agency DigitasLBi partnered with Huffington Post in 2012 to bring its live advertising solution exclusively to the agency’s real-time content platform, BrandLIVE; and its media network Starcom MediaVest Group has also been testing live advertising with AOL for several months.
Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe, Maurice Lévy, said: “Live advertising gives brands the immediate live connections that consumers expect in our digitally connected world, and AOL is the ideal partner for this partnership precisely because live advertising is such a core part of its strategy.
“Together, AOL and Publicis Groupe have impressive scale, talent and technology solutions, and a deep understanding of how to develop and drive content. By creating a shared development team – and leveraging VivaKi as a Groupe accelerator – we can ensure advertising and marketing travel at the speed of consumers.”
PAL will move the partnership from testing to the development of a global platform that will offer live advertising to all Publicis Groupe clients through the exclusive partnership for the first six months, beginning on the launch date of the partnership, currently anticipated to be September 1.
PAL will operate in New York and Paris and will hold a live advertising symposium during 2013 Advertising Week in New York City.