Cari Weisberger, who had helmed Levi's digital ad efforts as global digital director on the jeans maker's account at agency OMD, split with her agency in December. She says she's currently looking for a new gig, possibly on the client side:

I am no longer with OMD and currently looking for greater pastures on the client side of the business.

I have spent my entire career on the agency side and now feel I would like to take on a marketing role with an established publisher or go client side.

I am very passionate about this business and feel I can be of significant value to any company with my vast experience and knowledge of this ever changing and exciting field.

Weisberger had been at OMD, the digital media arm of Omnicom, since January 2011. Her departure follows the arrival of a new chief marketing officer at Levi's, Rebecca Van Dyck, who began at Levi's in April 2011. Van Dyck was previously at Apple.

Levi's saw increased sales in the first nine months of 2011, from $3 billion a year ago to $3.4 billion.

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Fast-food chain Arby's has fired its ad agency, BBDO, just two weeks after praising its record on the $100 million account and telling Business Insider that the agency will "be great for us" as the company prepares a total relaunch of its brand in Q3. Arby's recently saw five consecutive quarters of sales growth following BBDO's work.

Chief marketing officer Russ Klein has instead tapped Crispin Porter + Bogusky for the account. The move was somewhat predictable, as Klein hired CP+B to run the Burger King ad business when he was the chief marketer at that company from 2002 through 2009.

The agency switch comes after Klein told BI that he wasn't the type of client who switched agencies simply because he was new to the job (Klein arrived at Arby's in January). He said at the time:

"Although some of my behavior may indicate otherwise, I don't think of myself as someone who feels the need to go chasing agencies just because I'm in a new post." (Klein changed Burger King's agency from Y&R to Crispin Porter + Bogusky six months into his job there.) "We help agencies be great by being great clients. I hope BBDO can be great for us."

In an email to BI, a spokesperson for Arby's insisted Klein was telling the truth back in early February:

"He meant what he said when he said it."

The U-turn came quickly. On Feb. 16, Arby's svp/marketing Bob Kraut talked up BBDO's record at the Association of National Advertisers' conference in New York. Among the slides he showed covering the period served by BBDO, Kraut noted that awareness of Arby's "Good mood food" tagline was up 60 percent in 10 months and in 2011 the company saw its "highest sales increase in 10 years."

BBDO New York CEO John Osborn told B.I. he expects the agency to jump back into the fast-food category with another client, and wished Arby's well.

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The Q1 2012 earnings season begins with a majority of the big ad agency holding companies as potential acquisition targets—and the three biggest networks enjoying the plight of their smaller brethren.

There is always chatter about whether one or more of the major networks will get bought or merge with another, especially since the top three—WPP, Publicis and Omnicom—have pulled so far ahead of the others in size.

I'm not saying a deal is imminent. Just that it's strange that the industry—which has a history of aggressively acquiring and consolidating within itself—has entered a semi-permanent period in which a majority of the participants are potential M&A targets of the minority.

In the last year, the four smaller Western networks—Interpublic, MDC Partners, Aegis and Havas—have all been named as either potential acquisition targets (or in need of exploring their "strategic options," as Wall Street M&A people like to say).

And that's not counting surprise attacks from Eastern agency networks such as Dentsu, which came into a cash windfall earlier this year and may want to invest it in the U.S., where post-recession ad revenues are growing like spring daffodils.

Here's a look at each of the major agency networks, and the circumstantial evidence that they may either acquire or be acquired.

WPP Group—too big to fail.

WPP, which owns venerable agency brands such as Ogilvy, Y&R, JWT and the research giant Kantar, is the largest of the advertising companies by revenues.

CEO Martin Sorrell is an aggressive acquirer of new agencies and loves to make triumphant, category-transforming deals. He has occasionally suggested that his arch-rival, Publicis, ought to acquire Interpublic, but it's not clear whether he really thinks that's a good idea or if he just wants to see his two immediate rivals hobbled by merger turmoil.

One thing is sure: If either of the other Big 3 networks makes a deal to create a network bigger than WPP, Sorrell will be unlikely to sit idly by.

Omnicom—higher digital profile needed.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the second biggest network, but Omnicom (which owns agencies such as BBDO, TBWA and DDB) has always suffered from the impression that it lacks the equivalent digital assets that WPP and Publicis have acquired in the last decade.

In 2011, for instance, CEO John Wren ordered all his staff to finally become au fait with Facebook and Google. Wren has been gunshy of digital acquisitions since a disastrous foray into the sector in the late 1990s.

Fast forward to 2012, and London and New York are littered with successful new mobile and social media agencies like TBG Digital, Buddy Media and Millennial Media. Why not roll a few of them up?

Publicis—new CEO will want to make his/her mark.

The big corporate strategy news at Publicis (which owns Leo Burnett, Saatchi & Saatchi and Digitas) is who will succeed longtime CEO Maurice Levy? He is set to retire under controversial circumstances due to the size of his compensation package. There's a great deal of speculation as to his successor.

Whoever succeeds him faces the unenviable task of differentiating his or her reign from that of Levy, and keeping pace with WPP and Omnicom. One potential solution: A dramatic takeout of another company.

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Ad agency holding company Omnicom had a ho-hum 2011—revenue and net income were up and the stock barely moved—but that wasn't reflected in CEO John Wren's compensation. He got a 43 percent pay raise, to $15.4 million, according to an SEC filing.

The company justified this by pointing to Wren's historic track record of managing ad agencies such as BBDO, DDB and TBWA Worldwide:

Over the past ten years under Mr. Wren’s leadership, the Company has doubled its revenues and net income while returning 95% of its cumulative net income during that period to Omnicom shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases. Since becoming Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Wren has built and led a management team that has averaged greater than 23% return on equity annually.

Last year—the year actually reflected in Wren's pay, not "the past ten years"— OMC fell 3 percent to $44.58 on a revenue increase of 10.6 percent to $13.8 billion; and a net income increase of nearly 15 percent to $953 million. Of the revenue increase, only 6.1 percent was organic—the rest came from acquisitions.

Wren has a history of out-sized compensation for modest performance, usually through leveraging in his incentive pay that rewards him even when he sucks at his job. In 2009, when OMC hit historic lows, he was given options on the stock which became worth nearly $8 million once the recovery kicked in.

As part of Wren's 2011 pay, he received $4.3 million in "performance restricted sock units." But as this disclosure makes clear, he still receives 50 percent of his target PRSU's even if his company is the worst performer of all its peers.

Also note that the cash bonus portion of Wren's pay has risen from $5 million in 2009 to nearly $10 million today.

Wren also gets paid if he dies: A $20.4 million "golden coffin" death benefit kicks in if he kicks the bucket (see page 33).

It doesn't stop there.

Wren also took $136,319 of personal time in the company's private aircraft last year—that's vacation travel, not schmoozing clients.

Here's the summary table (click to enlarge):

SEE ALSO: 4 Of 7 Major Ad Agency Networks Are Now Acquisition Targets

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WPP, the world's largest ad agency holding company, reported earnings this morning. While its total growth is healthy—revenues up 7.6 percent to £2.392 billion—its organic, like-for-like growth excluding acquisitions, went up only 4 percent.

That's a warning signal for GDP growth generally, as I've argued previously. Revenue at advertising agencies tracks GDP growth broadly, in an exaggerated way. When ad revenue growth softens, it can be an indicator that corporations are expecting slower sales, because many companies pin their ad budgets as a percentage of total sales and reduce marketing spending if they expect sales to slow.

WPP was the last of the major holding companies to report, and they all—Publicis, Omnicom, and Interpublic—cited declining organic revenue growth.

At WPP back in Q4, organic growth was a robust 5.3 percent, and that was down from Q4 2010 when the company grew fiercely, at 8.5 percent. Some of that is due to tougher comparables. It was easy to look good immediately after the recession. Not so easy to beat 2011.

But some of it is just underlying weak growth in the ad economy. Buried in WPP's disclosure is a datapoint that might chill the heart of an economist: Like-for-like growth in the U.S., WPP's biggest market, was just 1.4 percent in Q1. That from a company whose agencies (Ogilvy, JWT, etc.) serve big clients such as Walmart, Nestlé, Ford, and Coca-Cola.

Yikes.

Here's our totally unscientific chart of agency revenue growth vs. GDP. Don't take it seriously; it compares agencies' year-on-year growth to GDP's sequential growth (apples v. oranges, in other words). But still, the pattern is obvious.

It's especially worrying when you consider that the agency numbers are final, whereas the Bureau of Economic Analysis' GDP number is currently just an estimate. It won't produce a final "real" number for several weeks.

Click to enlarge:

See Also:

This Google PowerPoint Details Android's Mobile Ad Revenues

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Miles Nadal, the CEO of a little-known and—in the grand scheme of things not terrifically significant—ad agency company, got a staggering pay raise in 2011, according to this SEC filing. His pay went up 278 percent, from just over $6 million to just under $24 million.

MDC owns small agencies such as Crispin Porter + Bogusky and Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners.

The stock declined over the year (from ~$17.52 to ~$12.98) even as revenues grew 37 percent to about $1 billion. More than half that growth came from acquisitions, however.

The company isn't even profitable. It lost $77 million.

In a statement, the company noted that a minority of his compensation was in cash and the much of the rest was stock that will only vest if MDCA performs:

"Notably, less than 10% of Mr. Nadal’s overall compensation in 2011 was in cash.  As a result, over 90% of Mr. Nadal’s compensation is tied to future stock price performance and aligned directly with shareholders’ interests."

• Read MDC's full statement below.

Nadal is now better paid than the CEOs of Omnicom (John Wren, who got $15 million) and Interpublic (Michael Roth, who got $13 million). Both those agencies are large multinationals that dwarf MDC. He's even richer than WPP CEO Martin Sorrell, who got the better part of £8 million in 2011.

WPP is 10 times the size of MDC, which should give you an idea of how disproportionate Nadal's pay now is.

The raise came from nearly $22 million in stock awards. Nadal has an unusual agreement with his board. He's not actually an employee of MDC. Rather, the proxy form states, "The personal services of our Chairman and CEO are provided to the Company through Nadal Management, Inc."

Nice work if you can get it. Here's the summary chart. Click to enlarge:

Here's MDC's statement:

In determining MDC Partners’ Chairman, CEO and President Miles Nadal’s
compensation for 2011, the Compensation Committee took into account
the Company's strategic and operating plans and how Mr. Nadal
performed against those plans. For the three years ending 12/31/11,
MDC shares appreciated 345% or at a compound annual growth rate of
64%.  Including dividends, the total return to shareholders was 532%
or a CAGR of 85%.

While the significant expansion strategy that Mr. Nadal has
spearheaded has already translated into positive financial results,
the Compensation Committee understands that additional growth will
only come over time.  As such, Mr. Nadal's compensation is primarily
paid in the form of restricted stock awards. The long-term equity
incentive awards - that will be paid, depending on performance, over a
number of years - ensure that Mr. Nadal will only benefit as the
business grows, and as the Company’s stock value appreciates.

In addition, $8.4 million of the Chairman’s compensation relates to
equity incentive awards as part of a new management performance
incentive plan (EVARs).  While SEC regulations call for the potential
sum total of stock awards to be reported in the year they were
granted, unless MDC Partners’ stock appreciates to at least $20 per
share, these EVARs - along with those awarded to management overall -
will have no value.

Notably, less than 10% of Mr. Nadal’s overall compensation in 2011 was
in cash.  As a result, over 90% of Mr. Nadal’s compensation is tied to
future stock price performance and aligned directly with shareholders’
interests.

See Also:

Guess How Big McCann CEO Nick Brien's Annual Car And Driver Bill Is

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It's often said that the advertising business is all about relationships. But what happens when those relationships turn sour?

Here are 10 huge fights, all involving CEOs—such as WPP's Martin Sorrell and Deutsch's Donny Deutsch—where the hatchets remain unburied.

Some are just petty. In others, like those involving Walmart's Julie Roehm and Lowe Worldwide's Frank Lowe, huge sums of money were lost.

Julie Roehm v. Walmart: The lapdance heard 'round the world.

Julie Roehm, Walmart's former advertising chief, was fired in 2006 after she was seen sitting in the lap of an exec at ad agency DraftFCB, which had paid for a $2,000 dinner at New York's trendy Nobu restaurant.

Walmart had hired Roehm to bring some rock 'n' roll to the conservative company, but Roehm's antics—the bottle-blonde once wore leather pants while pregnant—was too much for the retailer.

Roehm then sued the company claiming wrongful dismissal. She also claimed Walmart CEO Lee Scott took gifts from vendors including a number of yachts and a large pink diamond. The suit was eventually dropped.

WPP's Martin Sorrell v. Publicis' Maurice Levy: bickering like an old married couple.

The years-long rancor between WPP chief Sorrell and Publicis boss Levy is easily the most colorful fight in advertising. The pair never tire of needling each other.

In the past, Sorrell has called Levy an "amateur,""callous," and "hysterically funny." In return, Levy has called Sorrell "a little Englishman trying to stir things up" and "totally wrong" on corporate strategy issues. (The "little" barb was likely deliberate—Sorrell stands 5'4".)

More recently, in February, Sorrell's people were so angered by growth claims made by Levy that they put together a slide-by-slide rebuttal to Publicis' 2011 full year results.

Peter Arnell v. Omnicom: Give my stuff back!

Once upon a time, Peter Arnell was one of the most sought-after brand aesthetes in New York. Then his ego got the better of him. He wrote a book about how he eats 50 oranges a day and was crowned one of New York's worst bosses by Gawker.

After a string of bad calls—his Tropicana makeover was met with universal revulsion and had to be reversed by PepsiCo, for instance—Omnicom ousted him from the agency he built, Arnell Group. To make matters worse, they replaced him with his wife, Sarah. Awkward!

Arnell then sued Omnicom, demanding the company return to him his collection of vintage books and movie memorabilia. The suit was settled this year.

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Who are the best-paid people in the advertising business? Sure, the usual suspects are here—WPP's Martin Sorrell and Omnicom's John Wren, for instance—but you'll be surprised by some of the names among the 33 most richly compensated execs in the business.

Skip to see the list >

When MDC Partners—an agency network most people have never heard of—disclosed its management compensation this year, people were shocked that CEO Miles Nadal received a 278 percent pay raise, to just under $24 million.

That made him one of the best-compensated CEOs in the ad business.

He's not, it turns out, the best-paid ad executive in the world, however, according to our ranking. (Our methodology is explained at the end of the slideshow.) Before we reveal the most lucrative CEO compensation package of the year—it's a staggering $26 million!—it's worth noting some other highlights:

• Which adman uses his agency's private jet for personal vacations the most?
• Which fantastically wealthy media-buying veteran gets paid only $5,000 in cash every year?
• Who is the only woman on our list of the top 33 best-paid people in advertising?
• Whose limousine bill is $16,000 a year?
• And while it's not surprising that the list is dominated by CEOs and agency founders, it is a shock that only one of the 33 is a chief creative officer—but who is it?

Paul Hodgson, senior research associate at the corporate governance consultancy GMI Ratings, reviewed compensation practices at each company and added commentary.

No. 33 Hervé Philippe

Compensation: $540,678

Company: Havas (CFO)

Notes: His compensation was largely flat from the year before.

No. 32 Jean-Michel Etienne

Compensation: $1,175,682
 
Company: Publicis (CFO)

Notes: His 2010 pay was $991,307.

No. 31 Dennis E. Hewitt

Compensation: $1,240,000

Company: Omnicom (treasurer)

Notes: His 2010 pay was $954,000.

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WPP's new deal with Buddy Media—in which the company will become the "preferred social ad management partner" for GroupM, WPP's media-buying arm—could signal an era of consolidation in the social media ad buying world.

It is the second recent deal in which a large ad agency holding company has locked in a relationship with an agency that specializes in Facebook ad management.

Further consolidation won't be cheap: With valuations in the social media/tech sphere currently through the roof, agencies like TBG Digital, AdParlor, and Adaptly, which also manage media buys on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, are likely to price themselves expensively.

WPP's Buddy media deal could be earth-shaking: WPP spent $200 million on Facebook in 2011, and CEO Martin Sorrell expects that to rise to $400 million this year. With Sorrell wanting to see his $5 million stake in Buddy Media pay off, there will be pressure on GroupM buyers to move their business from rival agencies—TBG, AdParlor, Adaptly, Blinq Media, 22Squared et al.—to Buddy Media and the Brighter Option unit it bought in February. Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazerow believes this will eventually make his agency the single-largest Facebook ad management platform.

But the Buddy Media deal isn't exclusive—meaning WPP's various buyers will still be able to place Facebook ads through rival agencies if they or their clients want to.

Those agencies have their own relationships with clients and, in terms of Facebook ad buying, they have larger staffs and (arguably) greater expertise than Buddy Media does (the Brighter Option buy only gave the company 21 staffers; TBG, for instance, has about 140 employees, of which 90 are analysts).

In other words, there will be fierce resistance in some quarters.

Also:

• The deal comes after Omnicom made a similar non-exclusive pact with Blinq Media.
• And Interpublic Group, famously, owns a stake in Facebook.

Clearly, Madison Avenue isn't just sitting idly by while all these new startups siphon off Facebook ad-buying cash for themselves. That signals further deals to come.

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The incentives Google gives to ad agencies who buy media space on its properties are, in part, fueling a cesspit of conflicts of interest among those agencies, and hurting clients as a result, to hear the trade press tell it.

Ad Age, DigiDay, and TechCrunch normally treat adtech executives like gods. But over the last year they've kept up a drumbeat of stories suggesting that the way ad agencies use their own trading desks to buy online ad inventory—from Google and elsewhere—is somehow unseemly, verging on the fraudulent, or possibly even illegal.

The stories threaten to tarnish the names of the agency holding companies' trading desks, which include Interpublic Group's Mediabrands Digital Exchange, WPP's Xaxis, Publicis' VivaKi and Omnicom's Accuen.

The world of agency trading desks—the automated buying systems that ad agency holding companies use to buy ads for clients—is a complicated one. They compete for advertisers' business against so-called "demand-side platforms." DSPs are independent and develop their own ad buying technology; agency trading desks are owned by ad agencies and often license their ad buying technology from someone else, often a DSP.

What clients don't know

The agencies, naturally, deny they're doing anything wrong and generally argue that their negative reputation stems largely from clients' lack of understanding of how online ad buying works—and propaganda from their DSP rivals, against whom they compete.

(It is, to be fair, extremely complicated. In 2010, for instance, the ad chiefs at Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, Honda and Volkswagen were caught on video confessing that they didn't know what DSPs or agency trading desks were, even though they spend money through them.)

The nut of the complaint against agency trading desks is this: Agencies take fees from their clients to buy ads on the web. Those agencies then pass a portion of those ad budgets to trading desks, which are owned by the same parent company. The desks then take another cut for buying the ads. That's double-dipping, critics say, and clients should pay more attention to it.

The person who has perhaps been loudest in making that accusation is Zach Coelius, CEO of Triggit, an independent DSP.

His accusations are "bullshit, bullshit" says Mac Delaney, vp/brand relations at VivaKi, who angrily debated this issue with Coelius last year at an industry conference. "Clients approve their plans. It's naive and insulting to say they don't." Delaney got so angry that near the debate's end, he called Coelius a "preschooler."

Google's "incentives"

To make matters murkier, Google—the largest single seller of ad space on the web—offers financial incentives for agencies and DSPs to place ads on its properties. At least one agency, Publicis, has been accused of taking “kickbacks” or “rebates” from Google. Publicis has denied that it does anything wrong, but Google told TechCrunch last year that it invests in the VivaKi trading platform at Publicis, and offers the agency co-marketing deals and training.

Lots of businesses offer incentives or discounts to bulk-buyers. The problem in this case is if the incentives go to the agency, not the client whose money is actually generating the incentives in the first place. On top of that, Google's incentives imply that ads might get placed on its properties even though they may perform better with other media providers who don't offer Google's incentives.

A source on the DSP side of the business tells us that agencies get away with this because they provide so many deeply embedded services for clients, across multiple media, that it is onerous for a client to opt out of using an agency's trading desk.

What they're saying

Here's what the trade press is saying about agency trading desks:

Ad Age: Presenters and questioners raised issues of transparency, kickbacks and agency self-dealing surrounding the digital-ad-buying phenomenon. Yet the biggest problem may be lack of information. In a fairly sophisticated crowd largely composed of corporate marketing procurement managers, fewer than 10 said they had extensive knowledge of agency trading desks.

More broadly, [ANA group vp Bill] Duggan said some marketers see trading desks as "double dipping," since clients pay agencies to manage media and then also pay agency trading desks a margin to buy it.

DigiDay:There is double-dipping within many agency/trading desks, and your advertising dollars are not as impactful as they have been. The tires need to be violently kicked at a trading desk before agreeing to allow your dollars to go through there. Also, the big publishers need to man up, regain their integrity and pull out. Madoff pulled off his scheme under the watchful eye of the SEC. You think the same thing isn’t happening under the oh-so frightening eye of the IAB?

DigiDay: Many holding companies have opted to take financial positions in the vendors they do business with, for example. They charge advertisers once at the agency level, but they also stand to see upside at the vendor-level, too, through their investments.

DigiDay: After all, there’s something inherently fishy about an agency that’s supposed to be unbiased funneling money through a vendor that’s a sister company.

“A lot of the clients I speak with are becoming more and more concerned about the mandates and conflicts of interest,” said Joanna O’Connell, a senior analyst at Forrester who helped build Publicis’s AOD trading desk technology during her time working at Razorfish.

TechCrunch: Publicis, is pushing a ton of advertising dollars through Google in return for what two industry insiders independently refer to as “kickbacks” or “rebates.” Kurt Unkel, an SVP at Vivaki (the digital arm of Publicis) flatly denies there are any payments of this kind.

What Google says

Here's Google's ad policy. The search giant is clear that it provides incentives to advertisers:

Google offers incentives to accelerate the adoption of and investment in Google's advertising programs. These incentives are offered to participating advertisers and persons who place advertising on behalf of others. Advertisers and those who place advertising with Google on their behalf may receive financial incentives, including but not limited to credits to help fund their campaigns.

We also talked to an insider on the agency side this week, and he confirmed it was complicated and that there was potential for abuse. "Double-dipping" was a particular issue, this exec said, but "sophisticated clients won't tolerate it."

However, the source noted, DSPs such as Triggit have a vested interest in running down agency desks because they compete for their business.

And DSPs have their own dirty laundry, our source says: One way DSPs can make money is by promising clients to increase ad performance. In that scenario, the DSP simply buys the same media at a lower cost, and keeps some or all of the difference. The ads themselves don't actually perform better, they just look as if they do because they're cheaper. The ads are cheaper because they're lower quality exposures. (An ad that's being shown to a consumer for a 15th time in succession costs a lot less than one that's shown the first or second time.)

A shakeout is coming to the business. At a recent Association of National Advertisers' conference, a panel on trading desks was attended largely by client procurement executives—the advertiser audit staff tasked with rooting out excessive payments to ad agencies. They heard that, already, some advertisers are refusing to work with agency trading desks, "owing to a host of concerns that can be summed up broadly as 'lack of transparency.' Among them are allegations of 'double dipping,' publisher kickbacks, and holding company mandates,"according to AdExchanger. 

They are not likely to tolerate that kind of behavior, should they find it.

See Also:

• EXPLAINER: What Microsoft's deal with 24/7 Media really means

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The most interesting thing about the recent acquisitions of Buddy Media (by Salesforce.com) and Vitrue (by Oracle) is who didn't do the buying: The big Madison Avenue ad agency holding companies like WPP, Omnicom, Interpublic Group and Publicis.

On paper, Buddy Media (which sells Facebook campaign management software) and Vitrue (social media customer relations management software) would be perfect fits inside these businesses. Indeed, WPP had a $5 million stake in Buddy Media.

About $1 billion in advertising is placed on Facebook every quarter alone. Clearly, social media is a huge area of growth for marketers and advertisers. There are plenty of other small social media marketing and advertising companies that could be snapped up by Madison Avenue—TBG Digital, TBG, AdParlor (and its parent AdKnowledge), Adaptly, Blinq Media, 22Squared etc. But they haven't been.

Rather, two of the most significant and innovative social media marketing shops are now tucked into companies whose profile in the traditional advertising world is non-existent. Oracle is a sales software and customer support company; Salesforce.com is one of its main rivals. While both companies are huge in their fields, they're known for handling the non-glamorous, nitty-gritty back-end of the marketing mix.

Suddenly they're in charge of its sexy, leading edge.

Hold that thought ...

Madison Avenue has a history of outliving new competition bent on destroying it. Every couple of years, someone comes along and announces that their new thing will kill off the agency business. The business press keeps declaring that "advertising is dead," but revenues only keep on growing, year after year.

The holding companies may be playing the long game: There is no law that says the ad money rushing into social media will always increase. There are already huge questions hanging over the effectiveness of Facebook's ads, for instance.

More importantly, Facebook, Pinterest and their like are improving their offerings for advertisers, giving them more measurement and dashboard tools, and generally making it easier for advertisers to do business on them: LinkedIn improved its targeted follower tools; Twitter improved its brand pages. Most smaller brands get along just fine without the need for publishing apps.

If Facebook's dashboard tools start to approach the usefulness of those offered by Buddy Media, what's the point of owning Buddy Media? And if Facebook wants to keep advertisers interested in it, won't it make a lot of sense to do exactly that?

So this could go two ways: WPP et al. could come to regret not moving fast enough to snap up these companies. Or, if history is a guide, five years from now we'll be talking about the naivety of non-advertising companies thinking they can get into the marketing business via a few simple (and expensive) acquisitions.

See Also:

• WPP's Buddy Media Deal Could Signal Era Of Consolidation In Facebook Ad Buying

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Google's British media-buying agency, Manning Gottlieb OMD, London, did not deserve to win a Grand Prix at the Cannes ad festival because the judging process was corrupt, according to allegations by WPP CEO Martin Sorrell and Ikon CEO Dan Johns.

They may be right: Some of the media placements that OMD cited in its award-winning work are flawed because they ask users to search for information in under-ground locations where there is no web service.

Here's the winning campaign for Google. It's certainly clever—OMD bought posters near historic sites and then spelled out on them phonetically things users might want to search for. So in the Baker Street underground station, a poster said, "Shur-lok hoemz."

But users are unlikely to get wireless reception when they're in a subway station. Wireless reception won't become available in the London Underground until later this year, yet OMD's video entry for the award cites at least six poster locations in underground train stations.

The allegations call into question—again—the integrity of the world's premier advertising awards competition. (Last year, a fake ad for Kia won a Lion which the festival had to pull after I exposed that it was a fraud.)

Sorrell told The Guardian that he believed the media judges voted for their own agencies' campaigns, not the best work:

"One thing I've noticed this year in particular some practices creeping in that are a bit disturbing," said Sorrell, speaking to MediaGuardian. "Practices of pressure on the jury by [the chairman] of the judges. There are some techniques to these things. I was at a dinner and there was lots of chatter about one of the functional areas [awards categories] where lots of pressure was put on an organisation in terms of voting."

Ikon's Johnson went further. He told B&T “the best work didn’t win gold" because certain judges were “ordered” to support work from their sister agencies:

Johns told B&T: “Unfortunately after six days of judging the best work didn't win gold, that is a view held by a number of the jury members. In these situations you have two choices; either to sit back and do nothing or raise your hand and say enough is enough."

The media jury was chaired by Mainardo de Nardis, CEO of Omnicom-owned agency OMD Worldwide. OMD, of course, owns Manning Gottlieb OMD, the agency that won the Grand Prix for its Google Voice Search campaign.

The award was immediately heralded by Daryl Simm, CEO of Omnicom Media Group Worldwide, who noted in a press release, "Along with winning the Grand Prix, OMD was awarded a total of a 15 Media Lions — more than any other media agency in the competition."

A protest by some Cannes judges is planned.

Related:

• WPP Will Spend 10 Times More With Google Than Facebook This Year

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DDB Worldwide's chief creative officer, Amir Kassaei, struck back at WPP CEO Martin Sorrell's allegations that Omnicom somehow rigged the Media Lions award in favor of Manning Gottlieb OMD's work for Google by saying that WPP executives were ordered to discriminate against Omnicom agencies' work in the jury voting.He also threatened to boycott Cannes next year if nothing were done (a highly unlikely occurence).

He said:

"I have since been notified by no fewer than 12 jury members that people from other holding companies this week are being briefed to kill Omnicom, especially BBDO, DDB and TBWA, this is a fact.

Kassaei’s contentious comments have the full support of Keith Reinhard, chairman Emeritus of DDB Worldwide, who said, "I have to agree with everything Kassaei has said".

He also told CampaignIndia:

"What differentiates Omnicom from WPP is the creativity and innovation. I would respect them if they did the better work. Just look at the objective facts, in the media category, WPP is doing better than Omnicom, so accusing use that we're playing silly games is not right."

Here's a video of him saying it, from CampaignBrief Australia:

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Omnicom is getting sued for discrimination and wrongful termination by Ray Katz, a veteran sports media exec. Katz is seeking a minimum of $3 million plus lawyer fees and says he was discriminated against based on the fact that he was Jewish, single, and 50. Interpublic recently faced two federal lawsuits based on racial discrimination.

Pizza Hut Middle East has truly outdone itself. It is selling a pizza that has a crust made out of mini pizza cones.

Former Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Disney engineers and creatives launched Quantasy, a new LA-based creative brand services agency.

Oreo (along with DraftFCB, Weber Shandwick, and Dentsu's 360i) is setting up shop in the middle of Time Square for its latest campaign. The cookie maker is reaching out to everyday consumers to come up with an idea for its final "Daily Twist" ad.

The Atlantic is experimenting with native ads.

Crisp Media, a mobile ad tech shop, launched a new product that will help advertisers, agencies, and publishers to "quickly develop and deploy powerful mobile ad units" and measure their campaigns' successes.

Rokkan was selected to create a new digital presence for SOHO China, one of the country's biggest real estate developers.

R/GA San Francisco made three new hires: Michael Jefferson, Ari Nave, and Matt Nelson. The three will work as a creative director, group planning director, and director, mobile & social platforms, respectively.

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Sports media veteran Ray Katz filed a $3 million lawsuit against Omnicom alleging wrongful termination and discrimination, and it's quite the page-turner. It features allegations of fraud, anti-Semitism, taunts regarding sexuality and overall bullying.

"Plaintiff is a 52 year old, unmarried, Jewish male,"the lawsuit— filed against Omnicom Group, OMD, Optimum Sports, and former CFO Mark Amabile — begins. According to the suit, Katz was discriminated against for being all three — even though he once dated professional poker player Beth Shak, at right, on a reality TV show.

"Amabile repeatedly questioned Mr. Katz's status as a non-married male," the lawsuit says. "Further commenting that Plaintiff 'must be homosexual if he is not married at his age.'"

The former NFL marketing director appeared on Bravo's Millionaire Matchmaker in 2010— as a suitor — on a date with Shak (see a clip of the setup below).

Here are the highlights of the rest of Katz's allegations:

• Katz "exceeded the revenue and profitability goals set for his department, and year six was similarly on track to beat all goals," the suit states. He alleges he was fired because there wasn't revenue to support his position.
• Revenue generated by Optimum was assigned to other units of Omnicom, and expenses from those units assigned to Optimum, in violation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the suit alleges.
• Katz alleges he was fired for generating revenue for accounts like State Farm, Lowe's, Bank of America, and Visa as opposed to working on Amabile's pet projects. The lawsuit says Amabile"concentrated his efforts on obtaining sponsors for Diamond Nation, a local New Jersey baseball camp at which defendant AMABILE's son was a student... Upon information and belief, it was defendant Amabile's intent to curry favor with the camp and its college coaches in order to assist in obtaining extra baseball instruction, scholarship offers for his son, and admission to universities which would not admit his son without the prospect of baseball contribution."
  
• Katz didn't have a happy birthday. "Mr. Katz was given a book 'Golf over 50,' a disparaging greeting card calling attention to Mr. Katz's advancing age, and a candle with the numbers 6 and 1, signifying 61 years old, and further mocking Mr. Katz's age was displayed on the birthday cake," the suit states.
• On top of allegedly being told that he must be gay if he was still single, "Plaintiff, on numerous occasions was told that single people need to make less money than married people and Plaintiff was witness to occurrences of this practice being enforced."
• Katz says he saw defendants allegedly discriminate against Jewish vendors, for being "untrustworthy." He doesn't offer any evidence of that in the lawsuit.

Katz joined Leverage Agency as president of sports properties and media in October, 2009. He's currently managing partner at Source1 Sports.

Omnicom and Katz did not respond for comment.

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While speaking at Business Insider's Social Media ROI Conference Thursday, Gilt Groupe chairman Susan Lyne broke down what social media works for the flash sale site ... and what doesn't.

While Gilt dabbled in Facebook commerce in 2011, the company ended up closing its stores.

"One of my friends said that it was like trying to sell something at a bar," Lyne said.

But the site, which is social in nature given that it was founded on the idea of friends inviting friends, has also found great social media successes.

"For every one of our businesses, there's a social media platform that's better for that business," Lyne said.

Jetsetter, Gilt's travel flash sale site, has a handle on Pinterest, Lyne's own admitted obsession.

"Jetsetter is huge on Pinterest," she said. "I think they might have more followers than any other brand."

The photo-sharing site is a natural fit for the travel platform. Jetsetter asked people to pin boards of their ideal vacations in various giveaways, and celebrity judges would pick winners and send them on incredible vacations. These initiatives inspired 700,000 pins and boosted Jetsetter's traffic by 150 percent.

On the other hand, Lyne said that "for Gilt City, we find Twitter is much more effective."

If a consumer Tweets #GoldenTweet after making a purchase, then he or she has a good shot of getting reimbursed for that service. Every 100 golden tweets gets its money back.

Gilt City has also found great use for Instagram (and Facebook) for its "Love Your City More" contest, asking people to post pictures that show what makes their city great.

These social campaigns are primarily created in-house as opposed to being created by agencies.

"Social is a small amount of our marketing budget," Lyne said, "But we're increasing all the time."

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Coca-Cola held out against incredibly hot Apple in the annual brand value ranking from Interbrand.

Apple's value increased an astonishing 129 percent from last year according to the report, which evaluates the financial performance of branded products and services, the role of brand in purchase decision, and the strength of the brand.

Another big mover was Apple rival Samsung, ranked 9, which was the only non-American company in the top ten.

Coca-Cola was valued at $77.9 billion, which is surprisingly similar to the $74.3 billion value generated by the Brandz ranking earlier this year.

#20 Amazon

$18.6 billion brand value

Up 46 percent from last year

Ranked 26 last year

Amazon rode the success of the Kindle brand all the way to its spot as the 20th most valuable brand in the world. The Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire, which now has the world's second-largest tablet market share, were introduced to 175 countries this year, and they serve as a solid iPad alternative.

Source: Interbrand

#19 Nokia

$21 billion brand value

Down 16 percent from last year

Ranked 14 last year

Nokia's 2012 fall is closely linked with competitor Samsung's 40 percent rise in brand value. Samsung has a stronghold in the handset business, and Nokia no longer holds its spot as the world's largest phone manufacturer by volume.

Source: Interbrand

#18 Oracle

$22.1 billion brand value

Up 28 percent from last year

Ranked 20 last year

Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems helped the brand become one of this year's top risers. 

Source: Interbrand

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Omnicom, the giant ad holding company that owns agencies such as BBDO, DDB and TBWA, did a revenue sharing joint-venture with mobile ad company Amobee earlier this year, the company tells us.

The deal occurred before Singtel's $321 million cash acquisition of Amobee in March, we hear.

The pact is an interesting one, given Omnicom's historic aversion to digital ad agencies. CEO John Wren famously got his fingers burned when he acquired stock in Agency.com and Organic just in time for the late 1990s/early 2000s dot-com crash. The two agencies were moved into an off-balance sheet vehicle titled Seneca Investments. The deal was so controversial that Wren lost a board member over it, and the company was sued, albeit unsuccessfully.

Since then, Omnicom has been criticized by observers for being light on new media agency brands and heavy on traditional shops.

Now, all Omnicom's Asian clients who need mobile advertising will be working with Amobee's platform, Amobee CEO Trevor Healy tells us. Amobee offers soup-to-nuts mobile marketing services, from standard display ad buys to applications to 3D media and tablet campaigns. The company has 200 employees in Singapore and San Francisco. Healy says Amobee is one of the biggest buyers of mobile ad inventory in Europe. His clients include Google, EBay, and Barnes & Noble.

Omnicom Asia CEO Barry Cupples tells us that Amobee will work in conjunction with Omnicom's existing mobile agency, Airwave:

Airwave is an OMG business unit which operates independently in the mobile space. Their role is to bring strategic value to our clients through expert knowledge and understanding of the mobile offering. Airwave [has] great platform, ideation teams, and execution experts within their framework to ensure a stronger offering to take to our clients and an end to end solution in quick-fast time.

The structure is simple … the Amobee platform is powering Airwave capabilities and the bench strength that they bring to the table in terms of resources and discipline, taken from a track record of success, is significant. With our own resources and talent, working with Amobee has given us a head start in a space we believe will dominate within platform media, content, and data provision. We will grow Airwave together as partners.

Because the venture is a revenue-share and not an ownership stake for Omnicom, Wren's historic fears are taken care of: All the owned-tech-asset risk is essentially outsourced to Amobee, yet Omnicom still gets a slice of the gross revenue.

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Omnicom's Q3 2012 revenues grew only 0.8% to $3.4 billion — pretty feeble, for the holding company that owns ad agencies such as BBDO, TBWA, and DDB.

Investors didn't like that news, and the stock dropped 3% today in reaction.

Omnicom is one of the three biggest advertising holding groups, and is thus a bellwhether for the sector. Its results portend bad news for the rest of the media sector.

Omnicom's growth has been slowing for a year, along with its peers.

So why couldn't Omnicom grow its business in Q3?

The answer has two parts: Currency fluctuations killed off a bunch of Omnicom's sales growth, and Europe still sucks.

Here's Omnicom's "organic" (meaning like-for-like not counting acquisitions) growth by region:

• Organic growth
  
• US: 3.1%
• Eurozone: -1.8%
• UK: -0.1%
• ROW: 10.2%

Business is great everywhere — except Europe, where it's lousy. The euro lost roughly 2% of its value against the dollar in Q3. Currency fluctuations essentially wiped out any organic growth Omnicom received elsewhere.

Long story short: Omnicom is treading water because anything good its agencies do in the U.S. and the rest of the world is immediately cancelled out by currency changes and the decline of Europe:

Related:

• Omnicom Quietly Did A Huge Mobile Ad Deal — And No One Noticed

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The four largest ad agency companies have all reported their Q3 numbers, and all of them agreed on one thing: The economics of media spending and the macro-economic picture generally don't look good

The pattern is ominous: Revenue growth at Interpublic Group just went negative for the first time since the last recession. All the other companies are trending down. GDP growth is anemic — and that number isn't the government's final estimate. The final number may be worse.

Skip straight to the data >

This chart plots "organic" (like for like, year-on-year) revenue growth at the four largest ad agency holding companies and compares it to sequential growth in U.S. GDP.

Those companies are WPP Group (which owns Ogilvy, Y&R and JWT, among others), Omnicom (BBDO, DDB and TBWA), Interpublic Group (DraftFCB, McCann and Deutsch) and Publicis Groupe (Saatchi & Saatchi, Leo Burnett and Digitas).

We believe it is interesting because advertising revenues are a good proxy for economic growth globally. They represent a broad range of companies with revenues that come from both the U.S. and foreign countries, and companies signal their optimism via their willingness to spend on ads.

The obvious caveat: The sequential vs. y-o-y numbers are apples vs. oranges.

So is this anecdotal trend real, or a mirage? Let's examine the evidence.

This is Interpublic's 'Powerpoint From Hell.' We're basically right back at 2008, according to IPG's numbers. The only reason IPG's organic revenue is shown here as positive is because it represents the trailing 12 months. IPG's growth was negative in Q3.

It doesn't matter where you look at IPG, everything is trending negative.

Publicis Groupe's Q3 earnings contained these grim surprises: It expected 6.6% growth in September but got -1.6% instead. Its clients appear to be frozen in the headlights. (Red emphases added.)

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