Google has been Essence’s partner for digital and programmatic media buying for more than a decade

Google has reportedly consolidated its multi-billion global media account with WPP owned Essence.

Google has been Essence’s partner for digital and programmatic media buying for more than a decade. But, Omnicom Media Group had managed the offline part of the business.

PHD handled the U.S. business and OMD had the rest of the world, which is likely worth hundreds of millions of dollars in billings.

According to the media reports, the tech giant moved the account without any formal review in an attempt to simplify its relationship with the agency.

Google spent $5.4 billion on advertising and promotional expenses in 2020, according to the most recent 10k report for parent company Alphabet. Sources estimate that overall media billings are worth roughly $2.5 billion.

As per media reports, Google Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Lorraine Twohill, said in a statement: Like all marketers, we regularly evaluate assignments across our agency partners. Omnicom has been a strong partner for us over many years and we look forward to continuing our relationship with them across other services.

Essence already held 80% of their business globally.

Essence, which started as a digital and programmatic agency, has been positioning itself to buy offline media for the past few years to grow its remit with global clients. Winning the offline portion of Google’s media buying account is a feather in the cap of that strategy.

Essence has taken on growing importance within parent company GroupM, WPP’s media buying group, as linear formats become more addressable. Its CEO Christian Juhl was elevated to global CEO of GroupM in 2019.

Essence’s relationship with Google was a major reason GroupM acquired the agency in 2015.