• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, January 12, 2004

Ad agencies pride themselves on being expert brand stewards, but when it comes to their own brands, they don't always practice what they preach. Rarely, if ever, do they advertise themselves, and what little resources they put into their own marketing tends to fall in the public relations or event-speaking mode. One of the few media outlets that ad agencies routinely employ on their own behalf, however, is the Internet. All of the major ad shops, including dedicated media agencies and especially interactive ones, maintain their own web sites. The depth and breadth of their online presence, however, varies considerably, according to a recent review of major agency sites, as well as a special analysis of their traffic compiled for MediaDailyNews by Hitwise.

The data also reveals some intriguing activity surrounding certain agency sites, particularly among media shops that appear to be generating traffic levels that might be expected of major consumer destinations, not business-oriented sites created to fill a relatively narrow B-to-B role. After digging into the data, MediaDailyNews and Hitwise came up with a surprising revelation: Many agencies appear to be suffering from a significant amount of brand confusion -- especially among consumers.

"They keep confusing us with the cable company," says Jon Mandel, co-CEO of Grey Worldwide's MediaCom Worldwide unit, who says he personally receives "50 to 60" emails a week intended for the CEO of Mediacom Communications, a major cable TV operator.

"And from what I can tell, it must be the single worst cable company," adds Mandel, who says consumers are mistakenly emailing him by going to the MediaCom agency site and looking up his email address, thinking that he is the CEO of the cable TV company.

"I now have that guy's number on a Post-It on my computer," says Mandel, referring to his corporate email doppelganger, Mediacom Communications' CEO Rocco Commisso.

"Most of the people are [emailing messages saying], 'On your web site and I see you're the CEO and I'm having problems with my cable service.' I'm getting messages from little old ladies in Ames [Iowa] who are complaining that their cable TV is out and when's it going to get fixed."

The brand confusion is no surprise to MediaCom Worldwide executives, who trademarked their name first and actually filed an infringement suit against the cable company on the basis that people might be confused between the two names. Mandel says the suit ultimately was dropped, but the confusion apparently has not stopped. When Hitwise attempted to rank the traffic generated by the top media agencies during December 2003, it found that MediaCom had an 81.3 percent share of media agency Web traffic that month - a startling share, considering that by Mandel's own admission the current version of the agency's site is "horrible."

As high as MediaCom's share among media agency web sites is, it would probably have been greater still except for another probable -- albeit less dramatic example -- of consumer brand confusion. Omnicom's OMD unit, which stands for Optimum Media Direction, appears to be getting confused with the services of another major cable TV player, Cablevision System's Optimum Online broadband service. During the month of December, OMD had a 12.5 percent share of media agency traffic, and if MediaCom's hits were removed from the analysis, OMD's share would have been 66.7 percent.

A different kind of brand confusion likely was a factor generating exceptional traffic for another media shop, MPG. MPG, which stands for Media Planning Group, likely captured traffic from users looking for generic references to the field of "media planning." MPG attracted a 6.3 percent share of traffic to media agency web sites in December. Traffic to all other media agency sites -- including the likes of Starcom MediaVest Group, MindShare, Zenith, Carat, and Universal McCann -- were statistically insignificant relative to the volume generated by MediaCom, OMD, and MPG.

Brand confusion also appears to be at play in the interactive agency field. Modem Media, which generated a 98.9 percent share of traffic to the top ten interactive agency web sites in December, likely attracted hits from users searching for information about computer modems and modem-related media. The next most significant traffic went to Digitas, which generated a paltry 0.5 percent share, followed by Foote, Cone & Belding (0.4 percent), Ogilvy (0.2 percent), and Carat Interactive (0.1 percent). The share of traffic to other interactive shops was less than 0.01 percent.

Traffic patterns for the major full-service agency web sites, which do not seem to have been impacted by any brand confusion, show Foote, Cone & Belding on top with a 7.9 percent share of market, followed by BBDO (16.6 percent), J. Walter Thompson (14.4 percent), Leo Burnett (13.5 percent), Euro RSCG (11.8 percent), DDB (9.6 percent), Ogilvy (9.2 percent), and Saatchi (7.0 percent). Traffic to other major full-service agency sites was not statistically significant. That's puzzling, considering that the McCann-Erickson site, which houses Bob Coen's official ad spending data (by medium) going back to the beginning of the twentieth century, is usually heavily trafficked. But the McCann-Erickson site has been down for some time, while undergoing retooling.

McCann-Erickson's parent, the Interpublic Group of Companies, however, dominates traffic among ad agency holding company web sites with a 27.7 percent share of that market. Publicis ranked second (21.7 percent), followed by Hakuhodo (18.1 percent), Omnicom (16.9 percent), and WPP Group (15.7 percent).

Hitwise spokesperson Lizzie Babarczy notes that the firm's estimates only include traffic to agency sites collected directly from Internet service providers and certain opt-in panels, and that a significant share of the visits to agency web sites likely emanate from business intranets. Still, the patterns revealed by this analysis do reveal some surprising activity -- especially among consumers -- to agency sites.