AdWanted is not just a media group – it’s a symbol of what you can achieve, as an entrepreneur, when you hit rock bottom and start again from scratch. Today the enterprise is a flourishing provider of data and tools to the ad industry, as well as news and analysis via The Media Leader. But it took a while to get there.
Emmanuel Debuyck ran an agency called Sioux, in the French city of Lille, for over 16 years. In 2011 he slammed into what he calls “the three Ds”: dépot de bilan (bankruptcy), depression and divorce. With the agency in ashes, he started figuring out a comeback. After raising a modest amount of capital from friends, he began AdWanted, an ad space marketplace. “I wanted to bring digital advertising technology to traditional media, starting with print.”
At first there was resistance from both sides: before signing on as clients, the media owners wanted to know up front who the buyers would be, while the media buyers wanted more clarity on inventory. The nascent operation remained small fry – until he made his first acquisition.
“I got in touch with a guy in Paris who was providing media planning software to media agencies. I told him: ‘You have a tool that creates the shopping list, I have a tool that does the transaction, we should work together.’ He was 72 years old, so after a few months he suggested I buy his company.”
That was the beginning of the turnaround. “Until then I’d had a hard time raising funds for the company because we were not making decent revenue. But when you go to a bank and tell them you want to acquire a business that has revenue and profits, that’s a whole different story.”
From knowledge to tools
But the transaction fees for selling print space were painfully low – 1% as opposed to 15% for digital – so AdWanted would clearly have to evolve. In five years, it made seven more acquisitions, enabling Emmanuel to close the original media marketplace (“which was still bleeding cash”) and focus on the profitable areas of software and data.
“Media buying and selling used to be done by people with a tremendous amount of knowledge about the media landscape and audiences,” he explains. “Now there are so many platforms, you can’t possibly know everything. Today the focus is on people who know how to use the kind of tools and data we provide.”
He emphasizes that, true to the group’s print heritage, “we remain completely counter trend – 95 % of our assets are still traditional media”. By that he means TV, radio and outdoor. “But of course, today TV is all about connected TV. Radio is all about podcasts. And outdoor companies are only building digital billboards. So we’ve become digital organically.”
In 2021 the group acquired Mediatel, including the news platform now rebranded as The Media Leader. “To thrive in the online world, any company today needs to communicate, to promote, to create content. Our reach enables us to attract sponsors, which bring additional revenue.”
The value of experience
The group is headquartered in New York, with offices in Paris and London. Emmanuel knew from the start he wanted to be based in the US.
“I admit it was partly ‘the American dream’ and the influence of TV when I was a kid.” But it was also a strategic necessity. “In France, there’s a cautious attitude to wealth, which can sometimes limit the perception of success. Similarly, facing failure might be stigmatizing. However, in the US, they highly value experience, acknowledging the valuable lessons learned from both success and setbacks.”
He's always had an international outlook: when he was at school, he visited an English pen-pal in Yorkshire every summer. “In France I was a timid kid, but in that small village I was a sort of hero,” he laughs. He also studied for a BA at a university in Glasgow. “If the first experience made me love the English language, the second made me love the business mindset. I knew then that I wanted to use the language – and to travel.”
He's discovered over the years that distance, like ambition, is a matter of perspective. “Most people think as ‘far’ as being one hour from their homes. As I began to travel, I began to think in terms of flying hours, which changes your mental geography. I’m six hours from my parents in New York. My brother is six hours from my parents in Marseille!”
It's a motivating philosophy for an entrepreneur: think on a bigger scale, and there’s no telling how far you might go.