Former Publicis Chairman: French president pushing AI growth
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Yahoo
04-08-2025
- Yahoo
Shein Fined 40 Million Euros for Fake Discounts by French Competition Authority
PARIS – France is continuing to take aim at Shein, this time from another angle. The ultra-fast fashion giant has been fined a record 40 million euros by the France's anti-trust authority, the French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud (DGCCRF). More from WWD Nouvel Héritage Marks 10-year Anniversary With Debut High Jewelry Collection Maison&Objet's Managing Director Mélanie Leroy Resigns Shein's Donald Tang Makes His Case in France, as Company's Sustainability Report Shows Rising Emissions The authority claimed that the Singapore-based Chinese brand's pricing practices were deceptive, offering customers 'discounts' which didn't exist. The DGCCRF alleged that Shein would raise prices before lowering them to appear as if they were giving customers a good deal. It follows a nearly year-long investigation by the DGCCRF which found that Shein had misled customers between October 2022 and August 2023. The authority found that 57 percent of Shein promotions did not represent a lower price; 19 percent offered discounts smaller than advertised, and 11 percent were price increases disguised as sales. The findings are based on French regulations that require any advertised discount must reference the lowest price offered by the seller in the previous 30 days. Investigators found that Shein repeatedly broke this rule, inflating original prices before applying discounts or referencing prices that were not valid. In a statement to Agence France Presse, the company said that its French subsidiary, Infinite Style E-commerce Limited (ISEL), had been notified of the violations in March 2023, and taken corrective measures within two months. 'This means that all identified issues were addressed more than a year ago,' the company said, emphasizing its commitment to regulatory compliance in France. Shein has been under scrutiny in France. In June, the French Senate passed a bill targeting Shein and other 'ultra-fast fashion' players, including Temu, by proposing a tax on small parcels shipped from outside the European Union ranging from 2 to 4 euros per package. The fee is intended to slow the influx of packages from Chinese platforms to France. In 2024, Shein and Temu together shipped 800 million packages to France — more than half of all parcels sent to the country. A few days later, Shein executive chair Donald Tang took to the stage at Paris' VivaTech conference to defend the company's business model. During his appearance, he said Shein is 'not fast fashion;' instead it is 'fashion-on-demand' and only produces what the market wants. The bill needs to be validated by the EU, then will return to the Assembly where a stronger version passed in 2024, for a reconciliation process and final vote. That is expected to take place around October. Best of WWD Pandemic Has Stoked Appetite for French Luxury, Survey Finds U.S. Sets Strategic Vision for China Trade Policy Furmark's Farm-to-Shopfloor Tracing Tags Set for International Debut Solve the daily Crossword
Business Insider
25-07-2025
- Business Insider
Ad giant Publicis is shopping for AI companies. Here are 6 targets industry insiders think could be on its wish list.
French advertising giant Publicis Groupe is flying high. Now, it plans to go shopping. Last week, Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun said his company was "doubling down" on its AI strategy by "further accelerating on bolt-on acquisitions." Bolt-on acquisitions refer to targeted purchases that reinforce its existing companies and operations, rather than transformative deals that would shift Publicis into an entirely new area of business. Publicis, the advertising industry's top performer by revenue, has already spent around 600 million euros, around $705 million, on acquisitions this year, and has set aside a further 300 million euros for M&A in the second half. Across Madison Avenue, companies are grappling with how to harness AI to offer new services to clients while trying to prevent the tech from upending their existing businesses. Publicis said in 2024 it intended to invest 300 million euros over the following three years in its AI strategy, which centers on an internal platform called Core AI. What will it buy? Tristan Rice, head of the European M&A practice at advisory firm SI Partners, said Publicis would likely make some early, speculative bets on emerging tech. That would help it avoid an intense bidding war once an acquisition target scales up. The pitch to startup founders, Rice said, is that Publicis' client base can help fuel the growth of their business. The agency group would also likely put a long earn-out on the table with the aim of enabling the founders to realize more value from the sale over time, he said. Business Insider spoke with five advertising and M&A insiders, who shared their predictions on what Publicis could target. Here were a few themes: AI startups with expertise in creating agents to handle the workflow of marketing campaigns Companies that use AI to transform big data into useful analysis Other technologies that improve the efficiency and effectiveness of agency disciplines, such as content production or strategy They also named some particular marketing-focused AI startups they think could be on Publicis' radar. (This doesn't mean that Publicis is in conversations with these startups.) A Publicis spokesperson declined to comment. AI-powered ads could come from Persado or Superscale AI Brands ranging from Toys "R" Us and Coca-Cola to Kalshi have used AI to create TV ads, with mixed consumer responses. But generative AI tech has been constantly improving, helping to reduce the time and costs involved in creating campaigns. Karsten Weide, principal and chief analyst of W Media Research, said Persado might interest Publicis. The company automates the production of marketing messaging based on emotional triggers and other data. Founded in New York in 2012, Persado has raised $86 million in funding to date. Weide said Persado's tech could be combined with Publicis' Epsilon data arm to help it create more personalized and persuasive marketing messaging. Persado president Assaf Baciu said that while advertising companies would be wise to seek out AI solutions as a point of differentiation, the company has expanded its capabilities beyond the advertising sector into areas such as financial services. Elsewhere, Superscale AI could be an interesting fit for Publicis, said Andrew Buckman, chief growth officer of the adtech company Azerion. The startup pitches itself as a kind of "AI CMO." It allows brands to enter the URL for the product they want to sell and then can almost instantly generate a campaign for TikTok or Instagram using a library of realistic AI-generated actors and characters. Superscale raised a $5 million pre-seed funding round in June, led by the VC firm Creandum. Superscale cofounder Patrick Haede said that while the company was not considering being acquired, he understood why it might be identified as a potential target. "AI capabilities will fundamentally transform advertising in every possible way, especially in terms of content generation, in which we are building a leading platform," Haede said. AI agents built by Newton Research or Akkio could be of interest OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said that 2025 will be the year that AI agents"join" the workforce, as companies embrace the trend. AI agents generally refer to virtual assistants that can complete tasks autonomously. Startups are betting that AI agents will be big in the advertising space, too. Ana Milicevic, principal of the digital consultancy Sparrow Digital Holdings, said Newton Research is "already making a lot of headway with agencies." It creates AI agents to handle data science projects and also works with brands and publishers. Newton Research's founder and CEO, John Hoctor, was behind the media-measurement company Data Plus Math, which was sold to the publicly listed data company LiveRamp in 2019. Founded in 2023, Newton Research has raised around $13 million to date, according to PitchBook. Newton Research declined to comment. Milicevic also said Akkio, which creates AI agents to help media agencies better understand their data, might be a good fit for Publicis. Founded in 2019, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company has raised around $18 million in funding. Jon Reilly, Akkio's cofounder and COO, said the company is building an operating system that automates "grunt work" so agencies can win pitches, safeguard margins, and stay focused on strategy. "Agencies urgently need a next-generation AI operating layer to modernize their fragmented stacks," Reilly said. Speaking generally about the AI space and without naming specific startups, Eric Franci of the VC firm Aperiam said companies that create agentic tools for marketing workflow would be the category to watch for M&A. He imagines a scenario where AI agents could drive processes like ad optimization, campaign planning, and measurement. The result would be "faster turnarounds, better performance," and teams that focus on "higher value, client-success oriented tasks," he said. AI optimization and modelling from the likes of Cassandra or Prescient AI could provide value Ad optimization used to involve humans watching ad campaigns like hawks, and adjusting spend, targeting, and creative messaging depending on how the ads were performing. AI could automate a lot of these "hands-on-keyboards" tasks. Weide said Prescient AI, an ad optimization platform that predicts the return on ad spend for e-commerce ads, could be an acquisition target for the likes of Publicis. Miami-based Prescient has raised $20.9 million in funding to date. "It's exciting to be mentioned in such a critical area of growth," Prescient AI CEO Mike True said. "With some of the brightest minds in the field, we're now focused on advancing the technology we believe will define the future of compound, intelligent measurement," he added. Italy-based Cassandra could also be a contender for a smaller bolt-on acquisition, Azerion's Buckman said. It specializes in a marketing technique called MMM — marketing mix modeling — to help advertisers assess how much and where they should be allocating their advertising budgets. The company has raised 2.3 million euros, around $2.7 million, in funding. Cristian Nozzi, Cassandra's cofounder and CTO, said the company is close to achieving $2 million in annual recurring revenue, three times the amount it registered last year. He added that the company aims to deliver "incrementality measurements at scale and with little to no effort to every organization in the world, no matter the size or budget." In marketing, incrementality refers to measuring the impact an ad campaign has had in driving additional sales.
New York Post
21-07-2025
- New York Post
Tesla CEO Elon Musk back to ‘sleeping in the office' ahead of earnings this week
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is back to 'sleeping in the office' as he tries to reassure shareholders that his companies have his full attention following the end of his controversial stint in the White House. 'Back to working 7 days a week and sleeping in the office if my little kids are away,' Musk wrote in a post on X, his social media platform formerly known as Twitter, in the early hours Sunday morning. Tesla is scheduled to make its first earnings report since Musk stepped down from his White House role on Wednesday. 3 Tesla CEO Elon Musk and President Trump speak to reporters as they display Tesla vehicles in the White House driveway. REUTERS His time at DOGE left behind lasting brand damage, as protesters against his severe government spending cuts set Tesla vehicles ablaze and demonstrated at showrooms. But the world's richest man also saw shareholders grow concerned that his time was split between too many responsibilities – the White House role and his five other companies, including X, SpaceX, xAI, Neuralink and The Boring Company. It's been this wobbly public opinion around Musk that has rocked the stock, which stood at around $250 a share when the Tesla founder endorsed Trump in July 2024. It soared to a record high of $488.54 a share shortly after Trump's inauguration – even as the automaker continued to report flailing sales. The stock boost was thanks to optimism that Musk's close friendship with Trump could result in EV-friendly White House policies. That trend reversed course in April, when Tesla stock traded below $215 as the automaker reported a decline in sales and fears that Trump's tariffs would reheat inflation worsened. A full-blown meltdown between Trump and Musk on social media in early June didn't help matters. 3 Elon Musk stands near President Trump during a press briefing in the Oval Office. AP Musk agreed with a call for the president's impeachment and claimed Trump was in the Jeffrey Epstein files, while Trump wrote that Musk had gone 'CRAZY.' Tesla sold 721,000 vehicles in the first half of the year, down 13% from the same period last year – flaming fears that Musk's Trump-aligned politics were turning off left-leaning EV customers. Wall Street analysts had expected sales closer to 970,000 in the first half, according to FactSet. Tesla sold about 384,000 cars in the second quarter, which came in line with reduced expectations. 3 Elon Musk speaks at the Vivatech fair in 2023. AP On Wednesday, analysts are expecting earnings of about 40 cents a share, down from about 50 cents in the same quarter last year. If earnings fall again, it will be the sixth quarterly decline in a row for Tesla. Investors are hoping to hear updates on Tesla's recent robotaxi launch in Austin, Texas and its planned rollout of AI humanoid robots, which it plans to start selling in significant volumes next year. Shareholders are also eager to hear details on a long-awaited Tesla vehicle sold at a lower price point. Yet it's arguably most important for investors to hear that Musk is back to actively leading Tesla and plans to stay there for a while.
