Digitas, Boston

Despite Publicis Groupe's $1.3 billion purchase of Digitas recently, Havas-owned Euro RSCG said it was more focused on hiring people with specialist internet skills than carrying out internet acquisitions of a "major scale," according to the Financial Times.

Euro RSCG chief executive David Jones also questioned the price ($1.3 billion) that its rival paid for Digitas, which posted net profit of $34.2 million in the first nine months of 2006.

"Digitas is a great company, but there is a danger that [Publicis is] playing very expensive catch-up," he said. "Whereas [the digital market] is growing rapidly, the profitability of digital agencies is not that great."

Jones spoke at a Euro RSCG get-together in Paris, where the agency had just won two awards from trade magazines for winning major contracts in 2006. Among the issues discussed was the evolution of user-generated content, not least because it was generally of poor quality.