• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, September 22, 2009

“It’s a great time to be in the media business… unless you’re a media person,” is what one colleague recently told Scott Hagedorn, CEO US, Omnicom’s PHD. Partly as result, Hagedorn is “feeling a pull to become more of a lead agency.”

Bant Breen, President of Worldwide Digital Communications at Initiative, says he is seeing this (i.e., industry transformation largely driven by “social” trends) as a huge boon for business. "There’s a false perception that advertising was really simple before social media," he said, adding, "Behind all this is a ton of data that is making advertising much more exciting ... It’s opening the door to a new age of advertising."

Oh, and Hagedorn wasn't impressed with this morning's news that Facebook will work with Nielsen to develop consumer insights. "We're already doing it," he said, explaing that PHD is already using the Facebook community to conduct extensive research.