Madison and Wall: Saturday Summary

For the week ending Jan. 13, 2024

This past week I initiated the paid version of Madison & Wall for advisory and consulting clients as well as stand-alone subscribers.   

If you work for a company that has access but I don’t have your corporate address, please reach out to me at brian@madisonandwall.com and I can make sure you are added to the full distribution list. If you and your company don’t yet have access but would like to please enquire about it!

This was a busy week for many in the industry with CES happening in Las Vegas, although it wasn’t a week with much game-changing news for the broader industry.   

However, I thought there was some significant news related to the agency and data sectors (and ultimately for everyone in the media industry), which I analyzed in posts for subscribers.

First we had the acquisition of Work & Co by Accenture which highlighted what I think is still a vibrant agency sector for M&A and then came news about General Motors “taking a fresh look” at its agencies.     In this post, I identified implications of the review and calculated how much GM likely spends on individual agency fees on its incumbents which include Interpublic, Dentsu and Publicis.

Separately came news about WPP potentially disposing of its stake in Kantar.   In my post on the topic, I looked at growth rates for different kinds of data businesses (including Kantar as well as those operated by Publicis, Experian, Ipsos and TransUnion and a composite of independent data businesses, too).  It’s important to have a view on the structural differences between different parts of the data business - which should take on outsized importance in a post-third-party-cookie world, as there should be different expectations for growth that will follow.

I also participated in two separate long-form interviews which ran online this week, including Next In Media, hosted by Mike Shields and IAB Pulse, hosted by Chris Bruderle. The former focused a little more on TV and the later a little more on digital advertising, but hopefully both will be worth your while to listen to.