Publicis Offers Global Revenue Snapshot

Advertising agency conglomerate Publicis pulled in $1.55 billion in revenue during its most recent third quarter, a 5.3% drop from the $1.64 billion it realized during third-quarter 2008. The company has not yet reported its earnings for the quarter.

Within its European operations, Western Europe and Poland showed strength, while United Kingdom and southern Europe operations reported “sharply declining” numbers. Overall, Europe recorded a 9.5% decline in revenue.

In North America, strength within the healthcare and digital communications sectors partly offset declines in other areas, and this market took a 5.3% revenue hit.

China was the sole bright spot in its Asia-Pacific results, and the region’s results reflect this: Asia-Pacific revenue was off 12.4%.

Latin America, on the strength of Argentine, Venezuelan and Colombian results, took only a 3.1% decline from third quarter 2008’s numbers.

The conglomerate’s Middle East and Africa operations were nearly at parity with last year’s results – the strongest among all regions.

In comments released by Publicis, CEO Maurice Levy said “the good news is that I believe that the decline has been stopped somewhere during the summer. As far as Publicis is concerned, the trough has been reached there in the month of June which has been one of the most terrible months we have ever seen and since that period we have seen an improvement month after month in our numbers.”

Levy added that the company is investing in transforming Publicis into an all-digital agency, and that while it did not have any plans for large acquisitions (it recently acquired digital agency Razorfish from Microsoft), it is open to possible acquisitions in emerging markets, with attractive targets including agencies, advertising agencies, PR agencies, marketing services, digital - obviously - or media.

“And we are still interested across the board by digital operations,” Levy added.

Publicis anticipates that digital marketing will make up more than 25% of its revenue in 2010.