Imogen Hewitt. Credit: Publicis Group
The media plan is still important, but clients are increasingly asking agencies to solve a much bigger problem: how to connect audiences, data, technology, creativity, commerce and measurement to drive business growth.
Publicis Groupe ANZ chief media officer Imogen Hewitt has seen the change build over the past three to four years, with the shift accelerating over the last 18 months as data, technology and AI have moved closer to the centre of client growth conversations.
A few years ago, a typical brief was more linear. A client had a campaign, a budget and a target audience and wanted the best media plan to reach them.
Now, the media plan is often one answer to a question that starts much further upstream.
“We're increasingly being asked to build growth systems,” Hewitt told AdNews.
Clients are asking how to identify their next growth audience, connect first-party data across channels, improve customer lifetime value, or join up commerce, content and media to create a better customer experience.
The change does not mean media buying has become less important. Hewitt rejects the idea that it is now a hygiene factor. Media quality, transparency, governance and efficiency remain fundamental expectations in a fragmented and complex media market.
The shift is in what those measures are being asked to achieve.
“However, if as an industry we view media buying only through the lens of isolated channel metrics or rates alone then we limit its impact by failing to recognise the full story of the value strategic media can create,” Hewitt said.
The starting point, she argues, should be the client's commercial objective rather than the media metric.
That could mean growing market share, acquiring higher-value customers, increasing conversion, improving retention or increasing average order value.
CPMs, reach and efficiency still matter, but they sit inside a broader question about the contribution marketing is making to the business.
“The agencies creating the most value today are the ones that can connect media to the broader growth agenda,” Hewitt said.
Retail and commerce provide a good example of how the change plays out.
A question that appears to be about media can quickly become a data, commerce and measurement problem.
Before channels are considered, agencies can be looking at how customer identities connect, how audiences are built and how success will be measured across the customer journey.
That changes the role of the media agency.
The job is no longer simply to determine where an audience should see a message. It is to understand the audience, identify an opportunity for growth and connect the disciplines needed to act on it.
“The conversation often starts with CPMs, reach and efficiency metrics when it should start with the client's commercial objectives,” Hewitt said.
Publicis has spent years building a model designed to connect those specialist capabilities. Its offering spans media, creative, commerce, CRM, customer experience, technology, AI, identity and creator strategy.
Hewitt points to Publicis Sapient for enterprise AI platforms and services, Razorfish for technology consulting and owned-channel optimisation, Digitas and Mars United Commerce for connected commerce, Digitas for CRM and customer experience, Influential for creator strategies and Epsilon and Lotame through Publicis Edge for identity.
The point, she said, is not to remove specialisation.
It is to make the specialisations work together around a single client problem.
“I think that's where the industry is heading. Not fewer specialists, but better connected specialists,” Hewitt said.
That connection is harder than it sounds.
The advertising industry spent decades building organisations around specialist disciplines: media, creative, commerce, influencer, technology, analytics and CRM. Each created its own expertise, processes and measures of success.
The challenge now is joining those capabilities without losing the expertise that made them valuable.
“The challenge today isn't creating expertise, it's connecting expertise,” Hewitt said.
The same problem exists on the client side, where marketing remits are expanding and roles are shifting towards broader growth responsibilities.
Technology and AI can make those connections easier, as can better data environments, but Hewitt does not see technology as the answer on its own.
The harder job is organisational: getting specialists to work around a client's growth opportunity rather than remaining inside functional lanes.
Publicis' connected model is intended to provide that structure, with platforms including Growth OS and Marcel used to connect expertise across the group.
For a client, Hewitt describes the result as an infrastructure for growth: a system that allows the business to know more, connect more and act faster than competitors.
Identity sits at the foundation.
Publicis Connected Identity gives different capabilities a shared audience foundation, creating a common understanding of consumers across media, CRM, commerce, content and measurement.
“Once that's established, you can build a far more connected operating model,” Hewitt said.
That can mean more relevant communications, connected channel planning, better customer experiences and measurement of business outcomes across the customer journey.
The difference can be seen in the way a brief is framed.
A traditional request might have been ‘we have a product launch now build us a media plan’.
Today, the question may be about identifying the next growth segment, or how to reduce acquisition costs without sacrificing growth.
Those are business questions before they are media questions.
The move towards broader business outcomes does not mean clients have stopped caring about media performance.
Hewitt is clear that efficiency, governance, transparency and investment quality remain critical.
What is changing is the hierarchy of the conversation.
Media performance can tell a client whether investment is being delivered efficiently. It does not, on its own, answer whether the business is growing.
“To me, the more interesting question isn't just who can buy media most efficiently,” Hewitt said.
“It's who understands audiences with greater precision. Who can translate that understanding into better decisions. Who can create a more sustainable competitive advantage for the client.”
That distinction is also starting to affect how agencies and clients discuss value.
Clients remain focused on operational performance, but Hewitt is seeing greater interest in customer growth, revenue contribution, retention, lifetime value, conversion and overall business performance.
Some clients are exploring broader measures of value and more outcome-based approaches, although the model varies from organisation to organisation.
“The strongest partnerships increasingly look less like supplier relationships and more like business partnerships,” Hewitt said.
That puts more pressure on agencies to understand what happens beyond the media dashboard.
It also changes what clients need from the people sitting around the table.
AI has accelerated the shift because it is changing the role of data, technology and decision-making across the marketing system.
But Hewitt's argument is broader than AI.
The underlying change is that clients increasingly see media as part of an interconnected system rather than a standalone discipline.
That system needs to connect audience understanding to strategy, creative, commerce, customer experience, technology and measurement.
Publicis has built its model around that connection, but Hewitt sees the broader movement as an industry shift.
“The most successful modern businesses aren't operating in silos, and increasingly neither are the partners that support them,” she said.
The agency challenge is therefore no longer simply to have the best specialist capability.
It is to know which capability is needed, bring it into the problem at the right time and connect it to everything else required to deliver a commercial result.
“The future won't be won by the agency with the biggest media buying operation,” Hewitt said.
“It will be won by the agency that can turn audience understanding into a connected growth system.”
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