Publicis CEO on Acquisition Rumors, AI, Difficult Google

“We went by way of a really painful and hard transformation that’s positively paying off at the moment,” Publicis Groupe world chief government Arthur Sadoun informed Adweek, as he mirrored on the trail that has led the promoting company community to organically outperform its opponents lately.

The group, which owns advert companies comparable to Sapient, Leo Burnett, Epsilon and Saatchi & Saatchi, has invested closely in rising its knowledge and synthetic intelligence choices over the previous six years. Sadoun mentioned it’s reaping the rewards now after going through business derision for the course. Within the second quarter of 2023, the corporate revealed natural development of seven.1% and $3.6 billion, whereas in H1 its internet income was 45% forward of pre-pandemic ranges throughout the identical interval in 2019.

To this point this 12 months, the enterprise has reported $7.97 billion in income (7.1 billion euros), main Sadoun to confidently predict he’ll ship circa 5% natural development for the 12 months, having beforehand estimated between 3% and 5% in February.

By comparability, Omnicom, which launched its Q2 figures the day earlier than Publicis Groupe, revealed natural development of three.4% for the quarter and matching revenues of $3.6 billion. WPP and IPG will announce their quarterly figures within the coming weeks.

The impression of AI

The corporate’s wager on synthetic intelligence, together with a partnership introduced with Microsoft in 2017 and with Adobe to create content material manufacturing resolution PX, has given it a historical past of working in an area that arguably has solely come to the fore with shoppers within the final 12 months with the daybreak of generative AI.

The massive distinction with our shoppers is that they don’t wish to turn out to be an AI firm. Nobody desires to turn out to be an AI firm.

Arthur Sadoun, world CEO, Publicis Groupe

Earlier this 12 months WPP, nonetheless the biggest company community by scale, fashioned an AI partnership with tech firm Nvidia whereas on the identical time Omnicom entered right into a strategic AI partnership with Google Cloud.

Publicis has claimed that its AI providers—together with integrating the know-how inside Sapient and Epsilon in addition to the event of in-house platform Marcel—have introduced in main enterprise offers with the likes of Pfizer, Disney, Walmart, LVMH and Stellantis within the final 12 months.

“Our shoppers are targeted on how they should handle their companies in what remains to be a persistent macroeconomic uncertainty,” underlined Sadoun when discussing AI.