GroupM

1. Nancy Hill, the new head honcho over at the 4As, said that tomorrow morning she will announce new initiatives aimed at recruiting and retaining minorities into the ad business.

Um, does that mean that she has single handedly solved institutionalized racism? The lady is genius, I tell you. Nah, no. I'm actually excited to see if she cook up a plan that is going to make a difference. A real one.

2. The other drop at the 4As conference today was that Ogilvy will soon announce a new collaboration between Group M and Ogilvy in branded entertainment.

Group M so needs to be watched considering that Irwin Gottlieb is just running that shit like Meyer Lansky (pictured above); running media buying, sorry... trading like its the goddamn Commission.
It's almost sexy the way Group M and the agency's who chase after them are forcing media buying to play a new game. General market agencies would do well to learn some moves, catch a little heat by learning from these "trading agencies" how to push innovation, while telling clients exactly how it's gonna be.

John Montgomery, who has been serving as the worldwide CEO of GroupM's MindShare Interaction since 2005, was named chief operating officer of GroupM Interaction North America. CEO to COO. This is a new position for the agency. According to MediaWeek:

"In his previous post, Montgomery managed the company's global growth and oversaw expansion into emerging technologies including mobile, viral marketing and interactive television. He was also U.S. CEO of mOne, a joint venture between MindShare Worldwide and OgilvyOne Worldwide."

"Montgomery’s new responsibilities will include oversight of strategic and operations activities at each of the unit’s interactive networks. Specifically, he will oversee all North American GroupM operations for display, mobile and data management while working with the digital units of GroupM media operating companies Maxus, MediaCom, Mediaedge:cia, and MindShare to develop and implement best practices company wide."

What's going on with Irwin Gotlieb these days? The man, or should we say, "The King Of Advertising", is all over the press lately. Just two week after his splashy CNN Money piece, The King has made it big in Business Week with an article titled, "An Ad Man Tests His Limits." However, these inches are not so flattering. Drop the King moniker. Gotlieb is described as a "media buyer," which he hates. The piece goes on to talk about Irwin's new money making scheme, the practice known in the industry as a rebate or "volume override." It's a money making model that has been banned in France since 1993 and is now under scrutiny in Germany. Here's how it works:

"A media-buying agency approaches a TV network or magazine publisher and offers to buy a large number of ads. In exchange, the network or publisher pays the media buyer a percentage of the total advertising tab. The media company may write a check, give away free ad spots, or agree to buy something from the agency—a research study, say. Sometimes media buyers share the proceeds with clients. Sometimes they don't.

The rebates are controversial because they present a potential conflict of interest: Media buyers could be tempted to place ads not where they make sense for a client but where the rebates are the fattest."

He told Business Week that once he enough deals under his belt, he'll then tell clients how the rebates work (balls!) and refers to the payments as an "intelligent application of scale" and says "they represent a minor part of a plan to derive new sources of income in an increasingly competitive world."

Everyone better mob up, like right now. Irwin is a Don of Madison Avenue. GroupM earned just over $400 million in revenues. He is not a man who takes the word "no" lightly. And catch his end piece to this article:

"In five to seven years, he predicts, he may not represent advertisers at all. He will be an arbitrageur, buying ads in bulk, slicing them up for niche audiences, and reselling them at a premium. "Then," says Gotlieb, "we don't have to be transparent."

We're speechless. The man has some big fricking nuts. He's out, in major media, talking about his new scam with full confidence that everyone is going to fall in line. Dammnit! They probably will.

What do you guys think about this?

Apparently, there is one and his name is Irwin Gotlieb. All hail the king or as CNNMoney calls him, the $59 billion man. You know Irwin. He's been in the biz for years, eons even. Gotlieb is the CEO of media-buying shop GroupM, which is part of the WPP Group. Let's put this in perspective, last year Irwin controlled 16% of the world's $364 billion in global ad expenditures. He's also the guy that Sorrell to combine MindShare with WPP's other media-buying shops. Irwin also crafted that $1 million deal with NBC Universal where he put his balls on the table and said he would pay based on who was watching the commercials.

Here's a little background on the King to put this bigger than life CNN story into perspective: He was born in 1949 to Eastern European parents, but grew up in Japan. He came to New York for high school but dropped out and later took an entry-level media job at ad agency SSC&B. He taught himself to code on those old huge machines and wrote software that ad buyers would use for the next 30 years to determine prices. So, you're not surprised that he's a huge fan of digital are you?

"Say you want to sell grapefruit," he says over an egg-white omelet at London's Four Seasons, where he keeps an extra set of clothes for regular visits. To move a lot of citrus in the traditional way, he explains, you'd buy a spot on "Grey's Anatomy" or run an ad in Vogue, making behavioral assumptions and inferences built on viewer demographics. But in the digital world, ad buyers don't need to assume anything; they have data to work with. Online marketers track actual behavior, so instead of buying a type of audience, they can buy a click, an inquiry, or even a sale. Every time consumers take such an action, it becomes part of their "clickstream," which follows them around the web. This information trail gives marketers an increasingly sophisticated idea about each of us, allowing them to craft an ever more tailored online experience."

Irwin believes in the web not only to rack up ad impressions, but also as a source of data, which can later be applied offline. He was the lead investor in a $25 million funding round for Invidi Technologies who needs to take that epic music off of their web page. The tech startup is one mind bending agencies, which can determine the age, gender, location, income, and ethnicity of television viewers and send targeted ads to different sets within the same house.

"While the technologies are fairly well developed to enable all this stuff, the business rules don't exist," he says. "Our single biggest challenge as an industry is to find fair and equitable ways of getting the business arrangements in place."

A man like this naturally has lots of thoughts on lots of things.

On Google: "Google can do something without regard for whether they can actually make money on it," he says. "That can be very destabilizing to the rest of the business."

His thoughts on high level gig: He misses the ability to "start a project, work on it, and see it through to completion. It's a trade-off," he says. "If you want a scalable business you need to be able to delegate and rely on people."

On mobile advertising: "It's a function of the kind of advertising [you're trying to do]. Some of that is happening already. It's a matter of the kind of message you try to fit on the screen."

His favorite lunch spot in Manhattan: Sushiden, in midtown, which also has a super janky website. However, we post it so you can go stalk him, rub up against that fine suit and maybe grab a some genius for yourself.