By Allison Leigh

I’m being completely honest, if we were to launch a blog simply covering every new ad network that launched we would have a full time job.  Today’s announcement came from the advertising agency Publicis.  This is a marked difference from the other ad network announcements that have come from the technology sector.  The new network will be called VivaKi and the participants will be: Starcom, MediaVest, Zenith Optimedia and Digitas.  This is a twist on the typical advertising network that relies on agency relationships for the majority of their sales.  So this may mark a significant step in the advertising industry since this is one of the first times that a group of large agencies have effectively cut out the middle man.

What will this new venture allow Publicis to accomplish?  Well, if the advertising rates remain where are they presently, Publicis will be able to retain a high profit margin since it will be decreasing its cost of distribution.  And in the event of a further economic downturn, Publicis will be able to, theoretically, maintian their current profit levels.  In other words, since Publicis will no longer be paying an ad network for distributing the banners or video commercials, it will be able to keep more of the total advertising buy.  Advertising Age had this to say about the announcement,

“Publicis Groupe clients will still work with the individual agencies — ‘We’ll still have multiple faces for clients,’ said Mr Kenny — but VivaKi will aim to create a unit agencies can tap into to put together the kind of large-scale integrated media deals that some marketers look for today, and to build the right technologies and tools for a world in which, to quote Mr. Kenny, ‘we’ll buy audiences, not media.’ ”

This could also speed up the process of how quickly ads can come to the online market since there would not have to be multiple RFP’s created and analyzed for the client.  When I worked with a video ad network last year, the process was very slow and if they would have been working directly with the client it would have, in my estimation, eliminated 25% of the overall time.  So this could be a very intelligent move for Publicis.