Two years after bringing its partners together under the same roof, the world’s largest media agency is hitting its stride. MindShare—a WPP Group company that is the world’s largest media agency, with annual billings in excess of $18.4 billion—is the result of the 1997 merger of two of the most prestigious media departments in the world: those of J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy & Mather. The goal was to pool the media planning, buying, and research operations of both these agencies into a single client resource, and in the second year of being under the same roof, they are meeting …

MODERATOR, Michael Drexler, executive vice president, Mediasmith: The effects of the recession and the aftermath of September 11th have really put the advertising business in a state of great uncertainty for 2002. What do you think advertisers will expect from the various media this year, and what do you think buyers and sellers will be doing differently? Steve Greenberger, executive vice president, media convergence and print media, Initiative Media: From the print community, it looks like there might be more room for negotiating on an ongoing basis. As advertisers hedge their print budgets and roll out on an as-needed …

Smirnoff’s ads on NBC are testing the waters, but the other networks and distillers seem reluctant to wade in. Waiting for liquor advertising on network TV to take off? It’s probably going to take a while. Surrounded by controversy, NBC has aired more than 30 Smirnoff Vodka PSA commercials since December, and although the advertiser, Guinness-UDV, appears to be pleased with the results, the network has been unable to entice other liquor advertisers to come on board. Moreover, the first ad, on Saturday Night Live, generated so much negative publicity that all other networks continue to say they won’t …

Last year, Wilmington, Del. This year, Philadelphia. Is it ready for market yet? That’s what the media-buying community is asking about Arbitron’s Portable People Meter, a media measurement system that is still being tested, with an uncertain launch date. Arbitron has been working on the system for more than ten years and began testing it last year, with astounding but uncertain results: Astounding because it reports much higher media usage than the standard measurement devices; uncertain because the new data hasn’t been confirmed, since the preliminary sample size in Wilmington was too small. (continued on page 25) (cont. from …

The New York area battle pitting Cablevision against the YES Network and the mighty Yankees has stirred emotions among Yankees fans and Mets fans alike. Our editors each take a swing at this media controversy. As a lifelong Mets fan, I have watched with amusement the baseball battle that’s been brewing here in New York for most of the spring. Not Mets vs. Yankees — Cablevision vs. YES Network. For those who haven’t been following this headline-grabbing skirmish, Cablevision has blocked carriage of the YES Network, the new Yankees organization cable channel on which most of the team’s games …

In March, I wrote an article for MediaPost’s MediaDailyNews (see MediaDailyNews Archives at www.mediapost.com for 3/4/02) titled "A New Planning Organization." In it I discussed the concept of the new independent media (planning) agencies taking over the account planning function. In this article I will expand on the concept and talk about "The New Media Agency" from a global standpoint. A little history is in order here. Media planning and buying always used to coexist within the same organization as creative. Yes, kids, it’s true. They were called full-service agencies. In the late ’60s and through the late ’80s, …

Usually, MEDIA’s Behind the Numbers section features a report on timely data, with perspectives from additional sources describing the limitations or biases of the study. But a new advertising measurement model being released by the ARF (formerly the Advertising Research Foundation) lays important enough groundwork for how advertising and media should be measured that it’s worth writing about here — even though the report is more of an outline of what will constitute future numbers than a presentation of the numbers themselves. The new ARF monograph, entitled "Making Better Media Decisions," has been approved for publication by the ARF …

In the unlikely event that the network upfront could talk, it might quote Mark Twain. In a media industry that’s been battered, consolidated, and revolutionized beyond all recognition, even the upfront — the annual dance (or brawl) between buyers and sellers — has often been declared to be on its deathbed. But just as it was with Twain, accounts of the upfront’s demise seem premature. In this MEDIA debate about the coming swap meet, its viability isn’t really questioned. Rather, the panelists — drawn from several networks and media buying agencies — seem more concerned with how to navigate …

The media has been rife with reports in the past year about the burst of the famous — or infamous — Internet bubble. But a funny thing happened on the way to bankruptcy court. As Internet ad spending and Internet companies went into a tailspin, studies were showing that people might not be interested in clicking on banner ads, but they were spending more time online. Thus, it’s time to take a closer look not only at Internet consumption itself, but how it is impacting other media. At least one thing is clear: with access to the Internet growing …

We’ve all seen charts of who the top 10 advertisers are, and that year-to-year list barely changes. But it’s not quite as often that people get a good look at who rules the spending roost among the nation’s big advertisers on a medium-by-medium basis. However, with some data-retrieving help from CMR, MEDIA has been able to compile a year-end 2001 look at who the top 10 advertisers were across six different media: network TV, magazines, network cable, newspapers, out-of-home, and network radio. It makes for a much more complex look at who the big spenders are. The differences …