More than two years after launching his own independent consulting
and publishing practice focusing on the economics of advertising and media, Brian Wieser has added another long-time agency forecaster to his Madison and Wall team, IPG Mediabrands's Magna's
Luke Stillman.
The move represents an expansion to the independent practice at a time when some big
agency holding companies have been throttling back on their economics teams, at least as public industry resources.
Wieser himself launched Madison and Wall in February 2023 after leaving the top role
in GroupM's (now WPP Media's) business intelligence unit, which he originally founded in 2019, and later brought in Kate Scott-Dawkins who succeeded him as global president when he left.
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While
Wieser never worked with Stillman previously, Wieser got his start in agency forecasting when he joined Magna in 2003, ultimately succeeding legendary advertising forecaster Bob Coen, who created the
foundation of modern ad industry economic analysis and forecasting.
Vincent Letang succeeded Wieser as head of Magna's
forecasting unit, and Stillman joined that team in 2016.
Both Wieser and Stillman had previously been long-time Wall Street equities researchers covering the advertising and media industry,
and brought that financial industry discipline to the Madison Avenue analysis.
While WPP Media remains committed to a high-profile industry role publishing regular analyses and podcasts by
Scott-Dawkins, Publicis' Zenith Media unit has retrenched considerably from the days when it became the second big agency holding company to create a dedicated economics teams to compete with IPG's
long history of ad forecasting.
Over the past several years, Zenith has
deprecated that practice, and no longer even publicly publishes annual and semiannual forecasts.
Wieser's recruitment of Stillman to Madison and Wall's team, meanwhile, builds out
the advisory service's capabilities and will enable it to expand its area of focus into other areas of ad industry expansion, including more international coverage.
Watch the video interview
above to learn more about their plans.