When Havas and Horizon Media launched Horizon Global on Monday, an independent joint venture between the two rival agency groups, it was a sign of the times.
The tie-up underscores the pressure facing mid-tier networks in a consolidating market. Omnicom’s $13.5 billion acquisition of IPG, expected to close before the end of the year, will narrow the field of global media giants while creating a new largest player. Publicis began consolidating its media business more than a decade ago. Meanwhile, WPP is restructuring its media arm by merging operations across its agencies, and the future of Dentsu’s international business hangs in the balance.
Horizon and Havas—each strong in their home markets but smaller on the global stage—see the joint venture as a way to compete for global media briefs they would otherwise struggle to win.
Operating out of New York and Paris, Horizon Global manages $20 billion in billings and has a presence in more than 100 markets. The new entity also scales each agency’s access to data by merging Horizon’s Blu platform with Havas’ Converged.AI into a unified system called BluConverged.
The JV highlights the pressure on independents and mid-sized networks to grow as media reviews balloon in size. In the past year, brands including Bayer ($720 million), Mars ($1.7 billion) and Coca-Cola ($785 million) have launched launched sprawling reviews that require global scale and cross-market coordination.
Horizon Global is an acknowledgement that consolidation is reshaping the market. “Client centricity…has been a huge driving force for us,” said Peter Mears, Horizon Global board member and global CEO of Havas Media Network.
Bulking up
Led by Horizon president Bob Lord as interim CEO and Havas’ Renata Spackova as COO, Horizon Global will operate independently from both agencies under a single P&L. Lord and Spackova will report to a board led by Mears, Horizon founder and CEO Bill Koenigsberg, and Havas chairman and CEO Yannick Bolloré. Havas and Horizon will split profits from the JV equally.
While the goal is to compete globally, Horizon Global’s sweet spot will be U.S.-centric clients with global reach—business Horizon couldn’t credibly win on its own, but now can support with Havas’ international footprint.
Horizon Global is also a data and tech scale play. Combining both agencies’ data platforms “allows us to run a much leaner operation from a human perspective than some of our competitors are,” said Mears.