IPG Mediabrands Merges Kinesso With Media Agency Reprise
Advertising

IPG Mediabrands Merges Kinesso With Media Agency Reprise

Ad giant IPG has officially figured out what to do with its embattled data and technology unit Kinesso, which went through a massive shakeup over the summer that saw many of its top execs depart, as Insider first reported.

Kinesso has now been merged with Reprise, an agency within Mediabrands, IPG’s group of media-buying agencies. Reprise CEO Jarrod Martin will oversee the combined unit, rebranded as KINESSO.

First launched in 2019, the original Kinesso bought digital ads for IPG’s advertiser clients. It contained the media-buying platform Matterkind as well as other data and adtech solutions to make the ads it bought better targeted.

While the original Kinesso worked directly with advertisers, the new KINESSO won’t focus on that, and will largely supplement IPG’s other media-buying agencies, such as UM, Initiative, and Mediahub, with expertise around AI, digital performance, or retail media.

“We’re trying to create an end-to-end media engine that fuels the rest of IPG Mediabrands,” Martin told Insider.

Martin added that there might still be some instances where the new KINESSO works with advertiser clients directly, such as on projects focused on retail media — one of Reprise’s focus areas that is also a major growth area for the advertising industry.

Situating the new KINESSO as an “ingredient” to help drive the performance of other Mediabrands agencies is meant to make it easier to harness data, media, and technology together, so IPG’s advertiser clients can see better return on their advertising investments, or more quickly activate marketing campaigns, said Eileen Kiernan, global CEO of IPG Mediabrands.

“The world of media is powered by the combination of data, media, and any friction we bring to the party where advertisers are expecting more value to be driven on their behalf just didn’t make sense,” Kiernan told Insider.

IPG has struggled this year because it has a large amount of tech clients that have paused ad spend due to the economic uncertainty, the company has said during its July earnings call. Revenue declined 2% from the same period last year, and IPG reduced its growth expectation to 1% or 2%, down from the 2% to 4% it had previously anticipated.

But the areas where the new KINESSO specializes in — like data expertise, technology, and AI — are expected to be a means for growth. AI, said IPG CEO Philippe Krakowsky during a Bank of America media conference in September, is “going to give us the opportunity to get paid for business outcomes or take some of the technology and think about whether it’s licensable to clients.”

KINESSO has about 6,200 employees, roughly a third of the 18,000 staffers Mediabrands has across its global network.