MediaCom has won an expanded remit from Sky across Europe, extending its media planning and buying relationship with the Comcast-owned TV and broadband giant for another three years and winning digital media duties in the UK.
Sky, one of the biggest advertisers in the UK and western Europe, carried out a six-month review in what is thought to have been a closed process.
MediaCom will handle pay-per-click, programmatic and search engine optimisation as part of its expanded digital media remit in the UK. Dentsu’s Merkle previously had some of those responsibilities.
WPP’s MediaCom already managed the lion’s share of Sky’s media planning and buying in the UK, Austria, Germany and Ireland.
As part of the review, GroupM sister agency Wavemaker, which previously handled offline media buying and planning in Italy, has added digital media in that market.
Industry sources estimate Sky spends north of £40m on digital advertising in the UK each year and its total media spend across Europe is around the £470m mark.
Sky last conducted a full-blown media review in 2018 – its first in the open market for 13 years – when a MediaCom-led team consolidated WPP’s hold over the account in Europe in a three-way contest against Publicis Groupe’s Zenith and Dentsu’s Carat.
Key role of digital and performance activation
MediaCom has been seeking to build its digital credentials in the UK, launching a specialist Google Practice led out of its Manchester office in 2021, and said the Sky expansion demonstrated the importance of its capabilities in digital and performance activation.
The agency said it aimed to “grow Sky into the most digitally advanced advertiser in Europe, demonstrating the sophistication of the Sky offer to consumers across the region”.
Jennifer Day, managing director of digital at Sky in the UK & Ireland, said: “We’re extremely pleased to be extending our partnership with MediaCom. We’ve got big plans to further advance our digital strategies at Sky and we look forward to working with MediaCom and their Google Practice team to deliver great results.”
Kate Rowlinson, UK chief executive of MediaCom, said: “The win shows our depth of digital expertise and is testament to our Google Practice – a group of experts in the Google stack based across all five UK offices – and our One MediaCom approach. We’re looking forward to realising the potential of this extended relationship with one of our longstanding clients.”
Sky is MediaCom’s biggest UK client and has worked with Britain’s biggest media agency for 19 years.
Josh Krichefski, MediaCom's worldwide chief operating officer and EMEA chief executive, who previously played a lead role in the 2018 account retention, said: “This new brief is a testament to the relationship we have developed with Sky in the UK over the past 19 years.
“We’re proud of our work and look forward to using our expanded remit to see the bigger picture for the client and identify opportunities for better message integration across a multitude of markets in EMEA.”
Sky Glass 'opens up new headroom'
Dana Strong, group chief executive of Sky, previously told investors at Comcast’s annual results in January that she was “very confident about our growth prospects” in 2022, partly because of its move into hardware with the launch of its new connected TV set, Sky Glass, which “opens up new headroom for us”.
US-based Comcast, which bought Sky in 2018, also uses WPP for media duties in North America.
Retaining and expanding the Sky relationship will be a tonic for MediaCom, which lost Lloyds Banking Group in the UK last year.
WPP told investors at its annual results in February that retaining and expanding major international accounts, including Coca-Cola, Google and Unilever last year, was a key strategic aim.
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