Publicis Groupe has kicked off its Advertising Week, New York, activity announcing a six-year tie-up with AOL that will see the ad tech firm  provide programmatic video and linear TV services to the France-based advertising behemoth, building on its Adobe deal announced earlier this month. 

The announcement comes as programmatic technology is poised to take centre stage at Advertising Week, New York, and media reports claiming that AOL and Yahoo are being encouraged to merge by sections of the investment community are beginning to surface.

AOL is now 'preferred programmatic video partner' 

Under the terms of the deal, AOL will be a "preferred partner for programmatic video  and private video marketplaces", in a move that will provide all Publicis entities (primarily Vivaki) better access to premium-reserved, and non-reserved, video inventory across all AOL web properties for the period of the agreement.

This comes as the digital video advertising market is tipped to approach the $6bn mark this year, and increase further to $7.8bn in 2015, according to reports from eMarketer.

Maurice Lévy, Publicis Groupe, CEO & chairman, said the group, whose entities include Audience on Demand (AOD), Vivaki, Starcom MediaVest and Zenith OptiMedia, said its spend on such media would increase accordingly.

Stephan Beringer, VivaKi CEO; and AOD, global president, said: "Just two years ago, there were 54.7 million connected TV users, and that number will more than double in 2014.

"That’s why our partnership with AOL is so valuable: It requires true collaboration to deliver value for consumers and advertisers by creating a video marketplace that wins the attention and engagement of the consumer.”

 Vivaki's partner strategy & take on consolidation

Publicis' participation in the deal builds on its unveiling of the Publicis Groupe Always-On Platform earlier this month at the Dmexco conference in Germany – a partnership with Adobe. This partnership will see Publicis use Adobe’s stack to help improve marketing attribution, and automation, plus improve data sharing capabilities across the group across all channels.

In a recent piece for ExchangeWire that assessed the offering of the ad industry's "five-to-six big digital ecosystems", Danny Hopwood, Vivaki, head of platform, EMEA, said: "AOL’s recent announcement that it is going 100% programmatic was maybe to some a strange move but to most in the programmatic industry a welcome change.  

"It is aiming for the same result as Google.  An ecosystem where you can see a user through its technology across multiple channels.

"AOL has a strong video proposition with the Adap.tv acquisition last year but its mobile area is either going to have be built out, bought or borrowed.

Read here for a more in-depth insight to Hopwood's take on the market.

Meanwhile, Tim Armstrong, AOL, CEO and chairman, said: "AOL is transforming as a company and as a partner into a programmatic advertising platform, and today’s announcement is another big step in our strategy.

"Publicis is a global leader in digital advertising and we are excited to advance our global partnership into video and linear TV on the ONE by AOL platform.”

AOL tips further programmatic video growth

AOL recently released a report looking into the European programmatic video sector (via its Adap.tv arm) indicating that media-buyers are set to increase their spending on such ad formats by 42% year-on-year in 2014, mostly at the expense of their traditional TV budgets.

The report also forecast that in 2015 86% of digital ad buyers will carry out their cross-screen campaign activity using programmatic technology, and further indicated such media professionals preferred private marketplace buys, over publisher-direct deals.

AOL has also been touting its AOL One Platform, as helping to rid the industry of a "technology tax", as its unified platform helps advertisers rid themselves of “the inefficiencies, ineffectiveness and expense of managing multiple teams, tools and metrics for display, mobile and video, across all devices, are stifling”. Click here for further detail.

AOL, Yahoo merger?

The AOL and Publicis tie-up comes at the start of Advertising Week, New York, where programmatic companies are set to take centre stage. It also comes as Yahoo (which was recently the recipient of a windfall estimated to be worth approximately $6bn after the Alibaba IPO) was publicly urged by activist investment Starboard to merge with AOL.

Reports surfacing over the weekend claim the investment fund wrote to Marissa Mayer, Yahoo, CEO, recommending the move as it would significantly shore-up its ad tech and video capabilities. Neither party has commented publicly on the reports.