Google In Major Display Partnership With Ad Holding Company Omnicom

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Google will announce a deal with Omnicom Media Group, one of the major global ad holding companies. The Google-Omnicom deal is focused on display advertising and the DoubleClick Exchange specifically. According to the WSJ Ominicom will be spending “hundreds of millions of dollars to buy display ads for its clients through Google over the next two years.”

For its part, “Google will  . . .  build a global ‘trading desk’ [for Omnicom] that allows the company to buy display ads more easily.” Google will also provide additional analytics services to Omnicom to track the performance of display ads.

Omnicom owns SEM firm Resolution Media, among many other ad agencies. As part of this relationship Google will probably be able to wrest new or additional search-ad dollars from Omnicom’s more than “5,000 clients in more than 100 countries.”

The deal is not exclusive for either side the article said. Another of the agency holding companies, Publicis has a smaller deal with Google.

Online ad exchanges, such as Yahoo’s RightMedia Exchange, have historically represented “remnant inventory” and have been accused (along with social networks) of keeping display ad prices low, which publishers don’t like.

The Online Publishers Association, for example, keeps coming out with research that argues ads on premium publisher sites perform better than on ad networks. But this argument in some respects is really about who gets to and can sell the inventory because exchanges and networks often offer “backfill” to publishers unable to sell parts of their inventory. Exchanges also offer efficiency and reach to media buyers.

The combination of search + display on Google should prove to be a very powerful one for Omnicom brand clients. Also expect that AdMob will get into the mix here to promote display advertising on mobile devices.

Display is the “next billion dollar business” for Google, which continues to see search advertising grow incrementally in the US and at higher rates internationally.

Google reports second quarter earnings later today at 4:30 Eastern.

About The Author

Greg Sterling

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes about the connections between digital and offline commerce. He previously held leadership roles at LSA, The Kelsey Group and TechTV. Follow him Twitter or find him on LinkedIn.