Dive Brief:
- Publicis Groupe is training its media buyers in programmatic advertising via its Vivaki IQ Academy, according to the Wall Street Journal.
- The training involves online courses that more than 800 employees have signed up for in order to achieve Vivaki Programmatic Certification.
- The name comes from Publicis’ programmatic specialist agency, Vivaki.
Dive Insight:
The Vivaki IQ Academy is offering courses to U.S. employees and will expand globally over the next few months, according to Kristen Robinson, global director of capability for Starcom MediaVest Group, who spoke with the Wall Street Journal. The Journal reports that some agencies in the Publicis network are making the training mandatory while others are just strongly encouraging employees to take advantage of the education opportunity.
The academy is part of Publicis’ overall move to decentralize programmatic buying across the network of agencies.
In a statement, Vivaki CEO Stephan Beringer said, "We are launching the industry’s most advanced programmatic training and certification to ensure we provide uncompromised capabilities, and our content roadmap will evolve so that we continue to expand our competencies ahead of the market."
According to eMarketer, programmatic ads were expected to make up over $14 billion of the approximately $58.6 billion total digital advertising spend in 2015, with projections that by 2017 buyers will have shifted almost 60% of all ad budgets into digital.