OMC
#I will take the first one.
On Accuen, Julian, the growth number for the fourth quarter was $33 million In terms of the contribution, which brings the full year to (technical contribution) in terms of revenue growth from that business.
And as we said before, the programmatic business continues to evolve beyond just the original core group of advertisers who were focused primarily on achieving in ROI.
And overall we expect the programmatic business to continue to grow, whether it is through the bundled offering we have or the more traditional model.
We're happy to take the business growth either way, whatever our clients would prefer.
But we wouldn't be surprised if we continue to see reduction in the share of programmatic that is executed on a bundled basis and growth in programmatic that is executed on the traditional basis.
And to answer your second question Julian, I have anticipated the consulting firms attempting to pick up some aspects of what we do for at least (technical difficulties) seriously for the last 20 months.
We have not run into them, though, in terms in pitches or serious pieces of business as of yet but it's something that we are very vigilant about.
And we also have plans to start to hire, and we have been hiring people with similar skills to the ones that they have to supplement the normal work that we do.
So we have a lot of competitors, but so far our batting average has been very good, but we are very vigilant on the topic.
I'm not sure I've got your question completely, but our business has changed completely over the last five years.
And I expect it's going to - that pace is just to continue.
We make significant internal investments in mass data, data analytics and that as we go into 2017, those are only increasing, also the type of people and the type of skills that we have.
One major advantage that Omnicom has that we are able to capitalize on is, we have built most of what we win on internally or we have hired and incorporated these people into the Omnicom DNA.
When a company starts trying to gather these skills through acquisitions, it doesn't normally play very well within groups when you go in, and clients don't want to see people who are just meeting each other for the very first time or have different cultures.
We capitalized on that quite a bit.
I know that eventually when I'm gone it will been remembered as a strategy.
I don't know if it was a strategy or just good luck, but that's what I believe.
So we are going to continue on the pace.
That's where I spend my time, looking, talking, learning, both from clients from their needs and from where we think the marketplace is going.
I won't pretend to speak for Marc, but I will tell you what I believe he was saying because I've heard it not only publicly in Marc's comments but I have heard it in any one of a number of places.
The amount of spending that is being done on digital is increasing and has been, and will continue.
But we have to be able to measure the effectiveness of the media.
And we have to be able to have a standardized, or get close to a standardized add verification strategy to track and to measure, and to eventually value what we are willing to pay for, or what our clients are willing to pay for.
The other challenge is the varying devices in which you can receive messages.
And it's I think most people's guess that mobile will be the largest platform because it is the most mobile platform for people to get their content.
In terms of what we do, we've personally installed integral add science verification to make sure that our client has default protection.
We've been doing that for several years now.
On the margin front, we certainly expect ---+ first on the dispositions.
As far as the dispositions that we've completed to date, we expect they will have a small positive impact on margins.
But the vast majority of the margin improvement that we expect, that <UNK> talked about in his prepared remarks, are not based on assuming acquisitions.
We are going to incur it, but it's largely going to be continue to be driven by our efficiency initiatives.
To the extent that we are able to dispose of a couple of businesses that we go through in our evaluations which will start in a couple of weeks, incremental dispositions in 2017, they are largely going to be businesses that have margins on average because of performance issues, largely.
The type of businesses they are, the revenues may come down more as <UNK> had referred to, and there maybe some margin improvement as a result of that.
That is not really factored into a significant portion of the margin improvement that we expect that <UNK> referred to in his earlier remarks.
I don't know if I speak about what happens in my Board meeting, but we had concluded one last week.
I have my own wish list within we're interested in growth and we are interested in profit.
I made a prediction about how fast I could move.
<UNK> just sat there very politely and grinned, and said that you may not be that lucky.
But it's a serious earnest review, and we still think there is value in the companies that we are targeting, but I'm of a firm belief that 36 months from now that value will be greatly depleted from where it is today.
So it's time to act.
We are trying to grow as fast as we can, is the answer.
There's elements that we speak about on these calls and that you see that make up organic growth.
The first one and the most obvious one is when we win new business, obviously, because that can be calculated and other people speak about it and reporters report on it.
What also comes out of that is where clients have a decline or change their spending habits a little bit.
We have a lot of clients so a little bit of amount of money can drag that down a bit.
So it's a net number that you are seeing, not a gross number.
But we been doing very well and our clients, I think especially the US clients, and they tend to be multinational, they are bullish.
They are hopeful.
There is confidence out there.
So as long as something geopolitically doesn't get screwed up, or ---+ India didn't have the greatest quarter for the Indian economy because of the change in currencies.
There are some decisions which get made which impact other parts of the business from time to time, quarter to quarter.
It's very difficult to look at it on a 90-day basis.
In terms of the wins themselves, though, the more important part of the wins of say P&G, AT&T and Volkswagen, were how we have been able to establish or significantly enhance the platforms we have for growth Within PHD in the case of Volkswagen and Hearts & Science newly created in the case of P&G and AT&T.
So we think those platforms provide us with some significant growth opportunities.
The actual amounts of revenue on the initial win, while very helpful and certainly very helpful to the businesses that won the work, they are not in and of themselves material to our overall results.
There's certainly a lot of other factors that add and some that detract from our organic growth profile.
<UNK> touched on them, certainly.
So we are more bullish about the benefits that we got from those wins on what our future growth profile can be going forward.
But we've got to look at the overall portfolio, which is pretty diverse and hopefully balanced.
And not everything is always going to be hitting on all cylinders.
Sitting here today, and the platforms and the agility that we have brought into our ability to go to market, changes all the time.
You can ever get too comfortable with it.
But it's working today and we continue to evolve.
We certainly have, two things we have.
We have some of the greatest agencies in the world in our major European markets.
So they are very attractive to clients.
We also, if we dissected our client base, we don't have large banks and things that are highly regulated that some of these recent changes will probably impact going forward.
So we are not going backwards, we are going forwards for the most part.
And we have to see what is going to happen with the elections that are coming up in Europe.
This time last year I would have never predicted the day before Brexit we were in Cannes.
I didn't predict that vote.
I certainly didn't predict the presidential outcome.
God knows what is going to happen in France and in a lot of other key markets in Europe.
So all we can do is make sure we maintain the quality of our agencies, continue to be agile as hell, and fight for every single dollar of revenue we get.
And that is what we are doing.
Operator, I think we have time for one more call, one more question.
Sure.
We do go to market differently, and the one client you point out is one where we certainly have.
We have brought people in from different skills, we are working differently.
Some of our media scientists are the people briefing creative people as to what audiences we should be attacking as opposed to traditional type of account people that you would have had in the past.
Everything is a bit more bespoke in some of the larger wins.
They're working much more closely in fewer silos than ever before.
And it wasn't so much the Googles and the Facebooks, although they are very supportive of Omnicom.
It was more like other vendors that the client had selected and used, like In some cases Adobe, in some cases it is salesforce or CRM.
To date we have been able to draw lines in figure out this is what your role is, this is what our role is; by the way, here is your desk because I need to speak to you every day and we want to improve communications.
We've just gotten better at it.
We were always pretty good partners, but I believe not just top management, but also upper middle management and middle management has gained confidence in the way that we can interface and work with some of these people.
So we are just building it for the client, with the client's interest in mind, not necessarily the traditional, and I've been around a long time, silos, or particular agency brand.
It is morphing, it is changing because the marketplace has.
You're welcome.
Thank you all for joining the call today.
We appreciate it.
And we will talk to after the first quarter is over.
Thanks.
Thank you.
