The holding company that has spent the better part of a decade telling anyone who would listen that it was building the advertising industry's most sophisticated data and technology infrastructure now finds itself in a familiar position: being proved right, slowly.

Publicis Groupe reported its 21st consecutive quarter of growth on Thursday, with net revenues rising 4.8 percent compared with the same period a year ago. The company also raised its guidance for the full year, a vote of confidence that would have seemed unremarkable in an earlier era but now qualifies as genuine optimism in a business where clients have become notably cautious about spending money on anything that cannot be immediately measured.

The source of that optimism, according to the company, is artificial intelligence — or, more precisely, the growing belief among marketers that they will need to do something about artificial intelligence eventually, even if they are not entirely certain what that something is or when they will get around to doing it.

(This is the advertising industry's version of joining a gym in January.)

Arthur Sadoun, the chief executive of Publicis, has positioned the company as taking what he described as a "polar opposite" approach to its competitors, a phrase that suggests either genuine strategic differentiation or the kind of competitive framing that holding company executives have been deploying since the days when interpublic was still two words.

What appears to be happening is that clients are embracing the idea of transformation while delaying the actual transforming — a dynamic that benefits companies like Publicis, which can sell the planning and the promise while waiting for the budgets to follow.

Twenty-one quarters is a long time to sustain growth in any business. Whether the twenty-second will arrive on schedule may depend on how long clients can continue to be enthusiastic about the future without actually paying for it.

Original story published in adweek.com: "Publicis Boosts Full-Year Guidance as Clients Embrace AI, But Delay Transformation"