Global social media agency We Are Social has launched a new paid media offering and has appointed David Gilbert, TBG Digital’s former sales and client services director, to lead the new service as media director.
We Are Social is known for its research & insight, strategic and creative work in the owned and earned social space for clients such as Heineken, adidas and Heinz. The agency’s expertise in engaging with clients’ communities and creating content that resonates puts it in a unique position to deliver a sophisticated paid media offering. The service is designed to amplify the right social content at the right time.
The service will help marketers deal with the increased blurring of the lines between paid, owned and earned media by the social platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter asking brands to pay to promote their social content, rather than buying conventional display advertising.
It will plan and buy media across all of the relevant social platforms, from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, to Tumblr and Sina Weibo, and will become a key pillar of We Are Social’s strategic offering across all of its eight offices worldwide.
The offering will help brands evolve their approach to social media, ensuring their social content creation and community management activities operate in tandem with their media buying for social media.
Gilbert has spent the last seven years helping TBG Digital to become one of Facebook’s largest media buyers. He will work with a newly recruited team of media analysts to embed the new offering within We Are Social’s existing social content and community management teams in each of its eight offices. A central team will handle stand-alone media clients and social display advertising, using advanced micro-segmentation and optimisation techniques to drive effectiveness.
David Gilbert, media director at We Are Social, said: “We Are Social has built up an impressive client base around the world and produced great results over the past five years with a focus on earned and owned social media. By combining this with market leading paid-social thinking and execution, we’re delivering a paid promotion offering that will create even better results for our clients, something that no other agency currently offers.”
Robin Grant, global managing director of We Are Social added: “Today’s social environment demands that media planning be integrated into brands’ social media strategies and for media buying to operate in real-time and in synergy with always-on social content creation and community management.
Traditional media agencies, hampered by legacy structures, just aren’t geared up to take this approach. We’ve designed We Are Social’s new paid media offering from the bottom-up to solve this problem for brands. With David’s leadership, we’re confident that this offering will change the game for our clients.”