By Diana Mandia
(Reuters) – French ad group Publicis’ revenues beat forecasts in the first quarter, driven by its digital and data-driven businesses amid rapid market changes and with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
The company has relied on the evolution of its clients’ ad spend towards first-party data management, commerce and business transformation, as the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the shift away from traditional advertising.
Publicis’ digital and data-driven businesses Epsilon and Sapient recorded organic growth of 10% and 11% respectively in the quarter.
Net revenue jumped 7.1% organically to 3.08 billion euros in the first quarter, above a company-compiled consensus of 4.5%.
Data and tech account for one third of Publicis’ revenues.
Ad groups such as Publicis and WPP are confident that clients’ spending will be sustained even if the recent banking crisis in the U.S. has raised alarm bells.
“To date, we can see projects that are a little bit delayed, because some of the mid-sized banks want to look a little bit at what’s going on, but our big clients, who represent the vast majority of our revenues, are not stopping their transformation”, chief executive Arthur Sadoun told journalists.
Publicis is also keeping a close eye on developments in artificial intelligence, which Sadoun said has been at the heart of the group’s operations for years thanks to the Marcel AI platform, created in 2017 from a partnership with Microsoft.
Publicis also signed a partnership with ChatGPT owner OpenAI in 2022, Sadoun said.
“Our data is optimised every nano-second and this is done by artificial intelligence, so we are able to know that if you have already bought a shampoo on Walmart.com, the challenge is not to offer you another shampoo, but an after-shampoo”, he said.
Publicis’ annual organic growth should reach the top half of the 3-5% range previously forecast, the group said on Thursday.
(Reporting by Diana Mandiá; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
