by Diana Mandia
(Reuters) – Publicis reported better-than-expected first-quarter revenue on Thursday, driven by its digital and data-driven businesses, amid rapidly changing market conditions and with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
The communications group has benefited from shifts in client advertising spending toward data management, commerce and business transformation as the COVID-19 pandemic has reshuffled the advertising cards.
The digital and data-driven businesses, Sapient and Epsilon, grew organically by 11% and 10% respectively in the first quarter.
The group’s net turnover rose by 7.1%, to 3.08 billion euros, a growth higher than the 4.5% of the consensus.
“To date, some projects are a bit delayed because the medium banks want to see what happens, but our large customers, who represent the majority of our income, do not stop their transformation,” Arthur Sadoun told reporters. , Chairman of the Board.
Publicis is also studying developments in the artificial intelligence sector, which, according to Arthur Sadoun, has been at the heart of the group’s activities for many years thanks to the Marcel AI platform, resulting from a partnership with Microsoft.
Publicis signed in 2022 a partnership with OpenAI, at the origin of the conversational robot ChatGPT, said Arthur Sadoun.
Publicis’ annual organic growth should be at the high end of the range, set between 3% and 5%, the group said.
(Report Diana Mandiá; Camille Raynaud, edited by Bertrand Boucey)
Copyright © 2023 Thomson Reuters
I have over 8 years of experience working in the news industry. I have worked as a reporter, editor, and now managing editor at 247 News Agency. I am responsible for the day-to-day operations of the news website and overseeing all of the content that is published. I also write a column for the website, covering mostly market news.
