• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, July 6, 2004

Media Analysis Plus, the burgeoning media auditing firm founded by media planning guru Jim Surmanek, is getting out of the media services account benchmarking business -- on a public basis, anyway. MAP, which has been compiling and reporting media account activity and volatility since January 2002, will cease publishing its so-called MAP Barometer with its June 2004 edition.

The main reason for the move has been MAP's rapid growth and its recent acquisition of Hawk Media, and the company's decision to focus its resources on servicing and growing client business. But the shutdown of MAP is the loss of another publicly attributable source of information on media billings data, at a time when publicly held companies have grown loath to report such information in the aftermath of the Sarbanes Oxley Act, which requires public companies to certify the public release of financial data.

Over its two-and-a-half years of tracking, the MAP Barometer demonstrated that there generally is no seasonality to media account turnover, but that over time, the rate of account volatility has generally moderated. Through the first six months of 2004, $2.621 billion in media billings have changed media shops, a volume that is down 18 percent from the same period in 2003 and down 47 percent from the same period in 2002.

MAP's Surmanek has speculated that moderation has been due to the fact that many of the biggest media accounts have already been consolidated and that many marketers are turning to media auditors as a means of working internally with their media service agencies, in lieu of opening the business to a public review.

June, Year-To-Date Media Account Turnover

Advertiser          Loser
Winner         Billings 
Amazing Savings     In-house            Zimmerman      $10 million 
Home Depot*         Cassanova Pendrill  Vidal          $30 million 
Oracle              MediaCom
Starcom        $30 million 
Rubbermaid          McCann-Erickson     Red Cell       $15 million 
Stouffer's Red Box  Euro RSCG           JWT            $35 million 
Illinois Lottery    NA
RJ Dale        $19 million 
Walgreen            Euro RSCG           DDB           $125 million 

Total                                                 $264 million 
Vs. June 2003
+68% 
Vs. June 2002                                                 -32% 

First Half                                          $2.621 billion 
Vs. First Half 2003
-18% 
Vs. First Half 2002                                           -47% 

Source: MediaAnalysisPlus' June MAP Barometer. NA = Not available.