Rolling up an Online Ad Agency Powerhouse: AKQA CEO Tom Bedecarre (Part 9)

As more and more media moves to a digital format, the role of digital advertising firms will continue to increase. Firms which have hybrid experience, who truly understand brand management and are able to capitalize on online efficiency (buy more ad space for fewer dollars) are going to excel. AKQA will be an interesting firm to watch over the next several years.

SM: Do you think all forms of media are moving to a digital platform? TB: Are all media becoming digital, addressable, and quantifiable? Perhaps, and if so there is the promise there could be more of a rational play, more analytics placed against those decisions. The more information one has about who your target audience is, what messages and what kind of package your message is, in terms of what are they seeing online, what are they seeing broadcast, the more it will be a very powerful marketing exercise to harness all of that information.

When you said trillions of dollars, one of the other things that I find very interesting is just if you take a look, there is probably more than a trillion dollars taken out of the market with all of these buyouts both in terms of companies buying other companies as well as private equity firms buying other companies. If you take a look at Digitas, 24×7 and this Google aQuantive purchase, I think more than $11 billion dollars of capital was taken out of the market by people who wanted to get into this space.

That is exciting for a company like AKQA that is already at $100M in revenue, growing rapidly, has the financial resources to grow through acquisition if we find the right kind of partners to bring into our company. I think that the potential down the road for taking the company public is a very real prospect that we are looking at.

SM: Absolutely, the market is completely in your favor. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me. TB: Great talking with you.

[Part 8]
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[Part 6]
[Part 5]
[Part 4]
[Part 3]
[Part 2]
[Part 1]

This segment is part 9 in the series : Rolling up an Online Ad Agency Powerhouse: AKQA CEO Tom Bedecarre
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