IBM interactive experience named largest global digital agency by AdAge

ARMONK, USA: IBM on Thursday announced that Advertising Age (AdAge) named IBM Interactive Experience the largest digital agency worldwide in its Agency Report for 2014, an evaluation of more than 900 advertising, media and marketing services agencies.

AdAge's Agency Report states that traditional agency models face increasing competition from the technology world - with IBM Interactive Experience the foremost example. Additionally, the report, based on 2013 revenue estimates, observes that digital work accounted for more than a third of U.S. agency revenue in 2013 and points out that digital continues to overtake non-digital work at agencies.

The announcement reinforces IBM's investment of more than $100 million in the global expansion of IBM Interactive Experience with 10 new labs, for a total of 14 globally, and plans to add 1000 employees to create new personalized models of engagement for IBM clients worldwide. The labs provide clients with the industry's first hybrid model - spanning business strategy, experience design and analytics to harness valuable insights from data that can be applied to design. Clients work side-by-side with IBM researchers along with experts in experience design, mobile and digital marketing.

In addition to recognition as the largest worldwide and U.S. digital agency:

• IBM Interactive Experience is ninth on AdAge's list of worldwide largest agencies from all disciplines, up from 13th last year.

• IBM Interactive Experience maintained third on AdAge's list of U.S. largest agencies from all disciplines.

• IBM Interactive Experience was 15th on AdAge's list of consolidated agency networks.

The acknowledgement from AdAge follows recognition of IBM Interactive Experience's work with Jaguar Land Rover, which was named the 2014 Innovation Project of the Year by the Management Consultancies Association (MCA), the representative body for management consultancy firms in the UK.

IBM helped Jaguar Land Rover transform the car buying experience with the Jaguar Land Rover Virtual Experience, a digital application that provides customers a fully interactive, immersive experience of choosing and configuring any model from hundreds of thousands options of Jaguar Land Rover vehicles.

"IBM Global Business Services made an outstanding contribution, helping us not only build a technical solution, but more importantly transform the whole culture and mind-set of our business towards a more digitally informed and oriented model," said Jeremy Vincent, CIO, Jaguar Land Rover in the recognition for the MCA Awards 2014 winners.