Digital Marketing Investment Paying Off for Publicis

After several years of investing heavily in digital marketing companies, marketing company Publicis Groupe, which is based in Paris, feels like all of its investments are paying off, reports the New York Times in a recent article.

Maurice Lévy, the CEO of Publicis, is a very strong advocate of digital marketing, and he started purchasing Internet ad agencies as early as five years ago.  Now it looks as though all of the time and money spent on buying these companies is paying off.  Software giant Microsoft gave a big portion of its advertising account in North America to Publicis, which amounts $600 million of Microsoft’s ad spending in North America that the company will manage.

Lévy bought the Internet ad agency, Digitas, for $1.3 billion five years ago, and in 2009 bought Razorfish for $530 million.  After buying Digitas, some thought he paid too much for the company, but Publicis is now is reaping the rewards of this and other digital marketing purchases.

In a report given by Publicis in February, in 2010 its revenue increased by eight percent, and it also had a 30 percent increase in earnings.

Says Lévy, “We looked at digital and we invested in digital early on. We then decided that the shift would be huge, so we invested massively. It happens that we were right.”