Guess it’s one of those days when the media side shines. After a review, Carat and MPG, which both competed down to the wire, will be splitting the Philips media pie as the brand has announced that the former will continue on as strategic media agency partner while the latter joins the fold to focus on Philips’ Consumer Lifestyle sector in the Americas, France and southern Europe.

Philips Consumer Lifestyle chief marketing, innovation and strategy officer Antonio Hidalgo explains in a statement, “Continuing our relationship with Carat is testimony to the strength of their strategic offering and the trusted partnership we have built in the recent years. The addition of MPG for specific geographies reflects Philips’ focus on identifying strong local partners to deliver business results.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Another Starcom media win? Another Starcom media win. The VivaKi unit has now been tapped by Anheuser-Busch InBev to work alongside and aid the beer giant’s in-house media buying/planning unit, Busch Media Group, with research and planning duties here in the States for all of its brands (you know, Bud, Bud Light, Michelob Ultra, Stella) across national, local and digital media.

In a statement, A-B VP of U.S. marketing Paul Chibe says, “Starcom impressed us with their planning and research capabilities, investment in media planning tools and strong team of people. They will enable Busch Media Group to maintain and expand upon our category-leading capabilities, and we look forward to their contributions.” Well, at least it’s nice to see that A-B InBev can make a decision about something.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

It’s amazing what Twitter buzz can do in a matter of minutes. While he’s busy judging One Show Interactive entries, it looks like Max Ahlborn, currently executive producer/partner at digital production shop B-Reel, has taken the time to launch a simple site called “No Media Spend.” The site’s name speaks for itself while the interface just consists of a page view counter, followed by the words, “With no media spend.” Last we checked, the total tally is nearing 700 well over 800 and a whole slew of industry folks are tweeting about it, some saying it’s their “fave site right now.” Talk about a quickfire way to get major exposure.

Update: A generous tipster sent us a slideshow presentation on the idea behind NMS and how it came together. Here’s one of 30 slides below. Enjoy the full show here.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In a statement, Sonic’s CMO Danielle Vona sounds happy with the efforts of the aforementioned shops, saying, “The finalist agencies did an outstanding job of demonstrating their unique capabilities and applying their team’s talents and expertise to Sonic’s media needs. Zenith was selected based on their superior planning and buying expertise with great insights into our brand and target, as well as the quality of their team.”

Zenith counts other clients including Verizon, Chase, Toyota/Lexus, Nestle and 20^th Century Fox. Meanwhile, Sonic’s creative review finals will occur late January/early Feb, with the winner expected to be announced some time in the latter month. As for its other accounts, the Oklahoma-born brand selected Euro RSCG Discovery for menus, POS and packaging, Lopez Negrete for Hispanic, Barkley for public relations and cause marketing, and C3 for the comapny’s children’s program.

Sonic’s media AOR duties were previously handled by Barkley.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Slate V’s ad critic Seth Stevenson recaps a little experiment he ran using Google TV Ads. Stevenson shows how you can infiltrate shows like Glenn Beck‘s by building a specifically targeted media campaign from the comforts of home for as little as $100. Whether it’s an informal testimonial for Google TV Ads or not, Slate V’s self-produced spot–which drove people to a website–aired 7 times during overnight reruns of Beck’s show and a total of 54 times on four networks, netting 1.3 million total views in a week’s span. Total outlay? $1,300.

More: “Glenn Beck Just Lost Fox 11 More Potential Advertisers (That’s 57 Total)”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Following the news that San Francisco based Butler Shine Stern & Partners lost the creative and media duties for Chipotle, Compass Point Media informs AgencySpy today that they’ve landed the media business. Creative will, for the time being, be handled solely by Chipotle’s in-house advertising department.

Word of the BSSP/Chipotle split came late Friday, at which time the brand stated they were soon to announce a new media partner. Compass Point Media is a Minneapolis based company. The 100-strategist/negotiator/analyst strong agency is a recent acquisition by Campbell Mithun. CPM has been in operation since 1976.

Recent reports put Chipotle’s media buying figures at $7 million for 2007 and $9 million for 2008.

More: “State of Your State: Minnesota’s Ad Scene”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

YouTube has long been fighting for ad dollars. Recently, things are looking just a tad rosier. They’ve got the new Universal Music deal. The site also says it currently sells ads against about 9% of its video views in the U.S up from just 6% a year ago. Nice, but whatever. Credit Suisse is guessing that the site’s total losses will hit $470 million. YouTube is still not doing its part for Google’s revenue structure despite its massive popularity.

So, how is it that the video site can turn down ad deals? That’s right. YouTube has been turning down deals from media buyers that use CPA – cost per action. When publishers sell media on a CPM basis, it’s a finite game. They know precisely how many page views are required to fulfill their end of the deal. With CPA, they don’t have a clue how long it could take to hit their goal. If your site is fighting off advertisers with a stick, then perhaps, CPA might not be the best thing for you. However, YouTube is not beating off anyone. The site has some trouble when it comes to selling ads for many reasons. One being that 70% of traffic comes from outside the U.S.

However, media firms are being told that YouTube “wants” to take such deals, but “can’t.” Now, why would that be? Is it that they are just determined to only make content deals like the one recently inked with Disney? Consider that YouTube recently lost such a possible deal with the Discovery Channel to Microsoft. They can’t and won’t win them all – and there’s only so many deals like that to go around.

If Bernie Madoff taught us anything, it’s that diversification is key. It’s hard to believe that Google, a company that is considered to be a champion of invention, evolution and revenue, is also a company that is stuck in the mud.

More: FTC May Soon Hold Brands Responsible for False Product Claims Made in Social Media Realm

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

It’s that time of year when show’s get canceled and renewed, banished to DirectTV or given a reprieve. So, who got the boot and who is still in the game?

Chopping Block which one part Hell’s Kitchen, one part Top Chef and one part just plain sad, has been canceled after only three episodes. Marco Pierre White is a fantastic chef, but he doesn’t have the melodramatic viscousness of Gordon Ramsey nor the hots of Padma Lakshmi.

The regurgitative network, DirectTV, has picked up three short-lived series – Smith, The Nine and Eyes – all of which were cancelled before all the episodes had aired. Hey, it got Friday Night Lights back on its feet.

Speaking of… Everyone can let out a deep sigh of relief. Friday Night Lights has bested the odds to be renewed for two more seasons.

Life On Mars wasn’t so lucky. The sci-fi crime show has been kicked to the curb by ABC. However, they will let the show finish off it’s episodes.

Poor ABC. Eli Stone, Dirty Sexy Money, Pushing Daises and now, Life On Mars have all been canceled just this season. They are racking up quite a few slots to fill next year. Ohhh… Lucy? You got a lotta work to do.

More: What’s the Big Deal with SyFy?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Nielsen has reported today that U.S. advertising for the full year 2008 was down 2.6% compared to the full year 2007. You are so not shocked. “Given the state of the U.S. economy, a decline in ad spending was expected, but it’s not as bad as it could have been,” Annie Touliatos, vice president of sales development for Nielsen’s ad tracking service, said in a statement.

Hispanic Cable TV (+9.6%) and Cable TV (+7.8%) were the only two media to show ad growth in 2008. Cable was the highest revenue-generating medium with $26.6 billion in sales.

Media Category                                      Jan-Dec '08 vs.
Jan-Dec '07 % Change

Hispanic Cable TV                                           9.6%
Cable TV                                                    7.8%
Spot TV Top 100                                            -0.3%
Syndication TV                                             -0.8%
National Sunday Supplement                                 -1.9%
Hispanic Broadcast TV                                      -2.4%
Network Radio                                              -3.3%
Broadcast Network TV                                       -3.5%
Local Magazine                                             -3.7%
Spot Radio                                                 -4.0%
Spot TV 101-210                                            -4.6%
Outdoor                                                    -5.0%
FSI Coupon                                                 -5.2%
Internet*                                                  -6.4%
National Magazine                                          -7.6%
National Newspaper                                         -9.6%
Business to Business                                       -9.7%
Local Newspaper                                           -10.2%
Local Sunday Supplements                                  -11.0%
TOTAL                                                      -2.6%

More: WPP Is Worried About A Few Things

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

What are the lyrics to that Jeffree Star song? Oh yeah! “Hey girl, I love the bag. It’s all about the bag. Oh, and matching shoes… I got those too! LV monogram makes me wanna jam. I wanna do it to you, in my brand new Louis.”

Well, someone wants to do it to Louis anyway. The parent company for the luxury bags, LVMH, has put their estimated $185M U.S. media account up for review. According to Adweek, WPP Group’s MediaCom’s is going to defend. Who else is in the pitch? Still unclear. If you know, the comments section awaits.

More: Blind Item! Which Agency CCO…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Since mid-December, Posner Advertising and a host of other agencies have been under attack! Somebody pretending to be an agency rep has undertaken an ambitious scam involving media buys. Posner has posted a paragraph on their website – assuring clients that the FBI is on the case:

“Attention media companies: Please be advised that an offshore entity has been impersonating Posner Advertising and is pretending to be purchasing media for clients unknown to us. This entity has reserved a strikingly similar, but illegitimate, URL to ours: www.posnerpromotion.com and is attempting to place web-based media and asking for payment terms. A fictitious representative of this company, Alvin Ortiz, is calling media owners, purporting to be one of our media buyers.”

The thing is – that secondary URL (www.posnerpromotions.com) looks like it is owned by Posner itself. However, this Ortiz fellow falsified details to make it look that way in WhoIs directories to assure ad networks that he was legitimate. He also went so far as to have the URL redirect to the Posner main page. Crazy right? He then went on to place false media buys for real banner ads for companies like Skype. The whole house of cards came tumbling down when one ad network, who has direct buying rights for Skype, was contacted by Ortiz.

According to a spokesman, Posner has been contacted by four online networks with suspect media buys ranging from 15-20K per outlet. Exposing the company to 80K worth of fraudulent claims. Ortiz and whomever he is working appear to be located outside of the U.S., though that cannot be confirmed.

This isn’t the first time that someone has tried such a stunt. Innovative Marketing also got snagged by the FTC for allegedly creating fake agencies to place crooked buys. The FBI and the FTC are both involved and are sorting out just who this Alvin Ortiz is.

You’ve been warned.

More: Nielsen Pays $1M To Lose Their Data

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Nielsen, those con artists, have had a “significant system disruption” according to a letter sent to clients from Executive Vice President-Global Business Services Mitchell Habib. This disruption caused several days of delays for everyone using their TV ratings system, since Nielsen could not access its own data. Apparently, Nielsen was relocating its mainframe and whoops! Data was lost. And catch this – Nielsen paid a $1M “over the standard fee to have them focus additional resources on this project to ensure a high quality and timely transition.” Massive FAIL.

Clients will not receive what in some cases was supposed to be overnight data until Jan. 12th. One client told Mediapost, who first reported the story that: “It’s fine for Nielsen to invoke the term of ‘continuous improvement’ in these matters, but to its clients, it looks more like continuous chaos,” he said.

Dude, just give up on Nielsen. That data your waiting for is worthless anyway.

More: TNS Vs. Nielsen: We Ask The Questions To George Shababb

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

But, seriously, where were they five years ago? Oh right. They were waiting for smaller companies to due to their work for them. All the while, they were losing dollars, market share and projecting an image of naivety above the internet to clients. Rob Norman, chief executive of WPP’s digital-media unit, Group M Interaction Worldwide told the WSJ that tech firms “got there first and dealt with the science before we did.”

Yeah. Yup. You snooze you lose. Now, all these big guys are going to be fighting for market share not only among themselves, but with established players in the game like Big Mama Google. Agencies need to think forward from here on out if they want to survive. Let’s not be afraid of technology. Let’s use it to our own ends and actually create the carcass to be picked over, rather than waiting to be the vultures hovering, hungrily at the end.

More: New Agency Alert: Seisser And Landsberg’s Grok

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The new spot for The Ladders from Fallon US is a bit of a planning and buying train wreck. Sorry, but this ad is definitely making us believe the hype – 2009 is going to suck balls.

The ad above played during The Fiesta Bowl last night, which makes you wonder about the media buy that went down. The Bowl clocked 12M viewers. However, in 2006, the US Census reported that only 5.6 percent of individual income earners made $100+ year. And in this climate with Madoff and mortgages going belly up that number has definitely dropped. Sure, college football rakes in recent college grads as well as die hard, more affluent alums, but one has to wonder how many watchers are bagging the really big dough?

This begs the question – do you really need to shit all over those folks at the middle of the ladder or even, the bottom? Previously, the job site ran an ad that featured a tennis player. It achieved the same message without crapping on the little guy. In tonight’s spot, we see little godzillas who can’t get the attention of a sales clerk. What happened?

How many people were turned off by the message? You could argue it doesn’t matter if 10% (1.2M) now feel badly about the site. They weren’t going to use it anyway, right? But the trick with luxury is to create a feeling of aspiration. Not aversion to your brand.

Hope all that dough you guys coughed up for media time was worth it. Seems like there would be better avenues to tap the folks you want than a straight up media blitz. Silicon Alley Insider estimates the site will generate $60 million in revenue in 2008, up from about $35 million in 2007. The Ladders didn’t start using broadcast campaigns until just this year. They were doing just fine. Hope this turns out to be worth it. According to Alexa, there was no spike in traffic for The Ladders tonight, so perhaps not. Of course, we’ll check back in on these stats in a few hours.

Oh yeah. This commercial also just badly, badly executed. To quote David Ibsen: The ads are lacking “a clear or effective strategy, are not entertaining, nor are they memorable, or seem to tie to the brand promise.”

Total. Fail.

Gotta say though – as far as the monster themed commercials go, I’m generally a fan. I adored Garmin’s take. Check it out below.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

TNS, the market insight and information company, is currently in a war of the ratings with Nielsen. If you ask us, it’s not a moment too soon. The recently acquired WPP company is taking the monopolistic Nielsen head on with their service DirectView, which uses ses satellite company DirecTV’s set-top boxes to collect data on live and time-shifted audience ratings on a “second-by-second” basis. We got a chance to ask George Shababb, COO, of TNS Media Research, a few questions about their service.

1. CurrentTV and Discovery Communications recently signed up to useTNS’s Directview over Nielsen’s DigitalPlus. What is it that your company is offering that differs from Nielsen’s ratings system?

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.