Credit: Barthelemy de Mazenod via Unsplash
Publicis Groupe upgraded its full year growth guidance to 5.5%, up from 5%, after a “strong” September quarter with active account pitches.
The France-based global advertising company posted 5.8% organic growth for the September quarter as it reported continuing market share gains, and is expecting momentum to continue in the December quarter.
“Once again, we were able to gain market share by capturing a disproportionate amount of client demand for personalisation at scale, with our combined media and (international data business) Epsilon activities growing at almost +10%,” said CEO Arthur Sadoun.
Publicis is the second of the big global advertising groups to report September results. Omnicom reported better than expected 6.5% organic revenue growth. However, analysts said comparing the two was difficult because they had different ways of calculating organic growth.
All regions performed for Publicis. The US grew 4%, Europe 4.9% and APAC 6.4%, with China accelerating by 12.4%.
Australia and New Zealand were up by a low-single digit.
Sadoun said global economic conditions were still challenging but, thanks to new business tailwinds, Publicis is in a position to confidently raise the floor of growth guidance to plus 5.5%.
However, uncertainties that affect client spend still weigh on Publicis Sapient, like other technology consulting firms.
“The strength of our model is also reflected in our net new business performance,” said Sadoun.
“Not only have we topped new business league table since the beginning of 2024, for the fifth year in a row we also led the ranking in Q3 which was a very active quarter when it comes to pitch activity.
“Despite an increasingly challenging macroeconomic environment, we expect to sustain our momentum.
“We are in a position to upgrade our organic growth guidance for the full year. This means that we should outperform the industry by close to 400 basis points on average in 2024.
“We are now clearly leading on three critical expertise for our clients: addressable media, Creators and Commerce. We are then able to directly link this expertise with Epsilon’s identities around the world to create a connected media ecosystem that we can build transparently within our clients’ owned environments.
“Our ability to fuel this unique and breakthrough connected ecosystem with intelligent content through our creative and production capabilities, and power it with the technology of Publicis Sapient, makes us confident in our ability to continue to outperform the market in 2024, and in the years to come.”
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