Mediabrands Ventures Revamped As 3 'Brand' Groups

Matt-Seiler

Eight months into the job, Mediabrands CEO Matt Seiler continues to put his stamp on the Interpublic media management arm with new initiatives and restructurings. The latest unit to get a revamp: Mediabrands Ventures, which houses a number of the holding company's specialty units, including search and social agency Reprise, hyper-local operation Geomentum and mobile agency Ansible. 

As an organizational entity, the name Mediabrands Ventures is being discarded. In its place, three new specialist groups are being formed. Each group will contain clusters of offerings based on how broadly or narrowly they're designed to reach audiences.

For example, the so-called "Brand to Many" division will house operations designed to reach broad audiences, like the demand-side digital ad platform Cadreon. The "Brand to Some" division will serve as the umbrella unit for shops Geomentum and Shopper Sciences. And the "Brand to One," operation is where units targeting individual consumers, such as direct firm ID Media and Ansible, will be parked.

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Plus, those three clusters will adopt the global organizational structure put into place a few months back for Mediabrands' media agency networks Universal McCann and Initiative.

Instead of being grouped geographically as most global advertising and media networks are today, they will be clustered in three main groups determined by strength and maturity of market, as well as their relative importance to clients.

The so-called G-14 division includes geographically disparate markets, such as Brazil, China, Russia, parts of Western Europe and Australia. The North America group counts the U.S. and Canada, while the World Group includes parts of Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and parts of Asia.

According to Seiler, the reorganization is designed to make sense of the myriad specialist offerings housed within Mediabrands and to better align them with client goals and results. "We have a responsibility to recognize not only how our clients address their global structure, but also in how they speak to global audiences," he stated.

Liz Ross, who joined IPG earlier this year as president, Mediabrands Ventures North America, will continue to run that region under the new setup. Anand Verma, formerly president, Mediabrands Europe, Middle East and Africa region will now oversee the firm's new G14 operation. A top priority for both executives will be business development --getting new and existing clients to utilize more of Mediabrands' diversified offerings within their clusters.

Many of the specialist units have little or no presence in the World division yet. And until there is significant expansion there, a leader is not expected to be named for that Mediabrands cluster.

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