IBM Builds Largest Digital Agency, Interactive Experience

Ad Age, the trade publication, has dubbed Big Blue Interactive Experience (iX) division as the world’s largest digital agency network for the two years of its operation. The division has a colossal 10,000 employees working dedicatedly on analytics and digitals for the impressive clientele, such as Air Canada, L.L.Bean, Nestle, and Visa. In the course of just one week, the unit was able to acquire three digital design and advertising companies last month. The step brought the number of studies of the unit across the world to an impressive 30.

The revenues of the unit were said to be around $1.9 billion last year, according to Ad Age. iX’s global leader, Paul Papas, cited the estimation to be an “understated number.” The exact figure of the revenues was not given, as IBM didn’t report segregated revenues in its financial statements in the division.

Almost eight years ago, after the launch of iPhone and the subsequent smartphone era, the company started the division that has now taken over the advertising agency holding groups. It is at the summit of global digital agency.

Papas expressed that the clients of the iX have realized that in today’s world, rising up the consumer products is not enough; they should also provide some experiences to their employees and business partners.

The most recent and the appropriate example of the division is its worth with the Canadian basketball team, Toronto Raptors, through which the agency offered incredible experiences to the entire business. The technology, which initially started as a mere fan-experience project, had now revolutionized the methodology of player management by the Raptors. The technology is built on the premises of Watson –IBM’s cognitive-computing platform and touchscreen tech – and it is dubbed as IBM Sports Insights Central.

Through the technology, the staff and team can skim through a touchscreen table and analyze the real time statistics of the different players – statistics for the opposition is also available. They can also slide through multiple avatars to look at different aspects. The Raptors also uses the technology to look into the matters relating to contract expirations, salary concerns, and social sentiment.

The company believes that this technology has an edge over the traditional digital agencies as the division is taking the initiative of focusing on message creation and “trying to bolt on digital.”

Boasting about the initiative taken by the tech giant, Papas added, "Agencies are trying to learn digital. Traditional consultancies are trying to learn creative and design. For us, we've built this from the ground up."

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Created on Dec 31st 1969 18:00. Viewed 0 times.

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