• by March 23, 2004

MADISON AVENUE DUMPS AD MONITORING BUSINESS -- At a time when advertisers and agencies are eying new means for accounting for their media buys, Madison Avenue is cashing out of one of the oldest ad monitoring services, and one that was initially backed by and jointly owned by the industry's largest ad shops. Video Monitoring Services, a company that tracks advertising across the major media, has acquired AIS (Advertising Information Services), the granddaddy of the advertising monitoring field, which was formed as a cooperative by the six largest agencies in 1964. AIS, which still produces a variety of media market intelligence for major ad shops and marketers, originally was known for its Competitive Advertising Expenditure Reports, a market that has since been dominated by Taylor Nelson Sofres' CMR unit and Nielsen's Monitor-Plus division.

These days, AIS may be best known for its content screening services. Many top marketers and agencies rely on it to screen programs of shows they are considering airing in to make sure they have the appropriate content. AIS also provides on-air monitoring of TV programming and other services. Terms of the VNS acquisition of AIS were not disclosed, but prior to the deal, AIS said it still operated as a cooperative owned by ad agencies - 16 of them at last count, including the biggest.

VMS also announced a concurrent acquisition of Broadcast News Clips, a unit of the PR Newswire that monitors TV and radio broadcasts for the public relations industry. The immediate implication of the deal is that VMS will have a larger database of electronic and print media advertising and PR clips, not to mention a bigger base of clients.

How it will leverage, that is unclear, given the rapid transformation of the industry, which is dominated by CMR and Monitor-Plus on the competitive expenditures side, and which is seeing the emergence of a new crop of electronic verification services such as Audio Audit and Verance.