• by September 13, 2004

It's all over the business pages today. WPP Group, the big, bad British holding company acquired U.S.-based Grey Global for $1.3 billion in a combination cash and stock deal.

So what does it mean for you?

Well, depending on where you sit in the interactive universe, it means facing more agency consolidation. It means facing big, deep-pocketed global players. Of course, consolidation has occurred recently in the online world as well - aQuantive and Razorfish; Digitas and Modem Media; and Advertising.com/America Online, for starters.

With the WPP gobbling Grey though, you have just six major holding companies. And if you subscribe to MediaPost editor Joe Mandese's theory in today's MediaDailyNews, soon there might be just five major advertising companies, as French-owned Havas could be the next takeover target. Havas was outbid by WPP in the quest for Grey and is generally considered vulnerable on several fronts. Consolidation forces changes for the media networks within the holding companies as well. At Omnicom, you have OMD and PHD; at WPP, you have Mediaedge:cia and MindShare. Will WPP merge Grey's MediaCom media arm into Mediaedge:cia, or MindShare, for that matter? What would such a configuration look like, and who benefits?

If you're an online player, you should be watching these moves closely because it won't be too much longer before you're dealing with the "offline" media teams or, at least, merged teams. That's if you aren't already.