In an effort to bolster their reach into the digital or ‘interactive’ side of the industry, Publicis Groupe SA has just announced their purchase of Microsoft’s award winning interactive firm Razorfish for a reported $530 million. Part of the agreement also guarantees cheaper advertising rates on all Microsoft owned properties for the french advertising giant. Surprisingly this is not the first major purchase for the french advertising conglomerate, two years ago they bought Boston agency Digitas for close to $1.6 billion. In a statement released today, Publicis Group hopes that their digital assets will account for 25% of their over-all revenue in the next year. They previously only accounted for roughly 20.8% of the total earnings.
So this means cheaper media buys for Publicis clients. It also probably means a rough series of conversations with current clients explaining why that doesn’t translate to a smaller bill from the agency (not to mention putting out fires related to what next years media plan will look like). I’d love to be a fly on the wall for those conference calls.
