Essence is Campaign US’ Media Agency of the Year

GroupM is the world’s biggest media buyer. Essence, one of its flagship agencies, has made its name as Google’s digital media agency, and for being a business with a culture and approach that is more akin to that of a technology or data company. Alongside Google, Essence’s other clients include BT, L’Oreal and T-Mobile.

Billings grew to $4.3bln, up 5% globally and 6% in the US, increasing overall revenue by 12%, the agency said. It attributed 59% of the revenue growth in 2019 to clients beginning work that year, while 41% is down to the growth of work with existing clients.

2019 also saw a shift in Essence’s senior management, with longstanding global CEO Christian Juhl becoming global CEO at GroupM and APAC CEO and chief client officer Kyoko Matsushita promoted to Essence global CEO.

But it’s in the area of technology that the agency believes it has made its biggest impact, creating a new way to target specific web pages with specific ads, and combining this process with machine learning. “This instantly gave us the ability to save hundreds of hours of time in trafficking individual placements for specific pages, as well as targeting ads using publisher data instead of user data,” the agency said.

Please read the full article in Campaign US here.