The AI race among agency groups is hotting up and Publicis Groupe is buying Lotame, which it calls “the world’s leading independent identity solution.” This follows WPP’s investment, alongside other shareholders, in image generation specialist Stability AI.
Lotame’s proprietary identity solution is said to deliver consistent and relevant addressable audiences built on 100+ data sources and activated through more than 1.6 billion IDs, for over 4,000 of the world’s leading brands and publishers.
Aligned with Publicis’ existing Epsilon data business it brings the group’s unique profiles cache to almost 4 billion, extending global coverage to more than 90% of consumers worldwide.
And here’s CEO Arthur Sadoun to tell you all about it.
Sadoun says: “In the age of AI, the name of the game is connect or die.”
As ever, Sadoun seems to have stolen a march on his competitors. Omnicom/IPG is trying to brings its data businesses together as the key rationale for its proposed $30bn merger. WPP, which doesn’t have an owned data business any more, having shipped out of Kantar, reckons the best way to handle data is to connect various sources through its Open system.
Publicis clearly reckons ownership is the key and it’s determined to be the biggest. Will it be big enough to challenge the “walled gardens” of Google and Meta? That seems to be the plan.
