Commentary

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Well, I’m back. It’s amazing how fast vacations fly by.

From the looks of it I missed a pretty busy week with new reports of the FBI probe into media trading and the big VMLY&R merger.

Both developments no doubt will have tongues wagging during the networking sessions at Advertising Week New York which will be going on for most of the coming week.

Details are murky but it looks like the feds are probing whether rebates paid to agencies by media companies in the U.S.—very publicly detailed in the ANA transparency report two years ago—crossed the line into illegal kickback territory. Pretty Juicy stuff, right?

The VML takeover of Y&R is not a huge surprise. WPP has merged a number of entities in last two years including two of its media agencies, MEC and Maxus. New CEO Mark Read has vowed the firm will continue to look at such opportunities going forward.  It’ll be interesting to see how many Y&R executives jump ship in the coming weeks and months.

And what a great time to come back from vacay (Portugal is fabulous by the way, you really ought to visit), just in time for Advertising Week New York. Can’t wait to see how this new consolidated venue in the Lincoln Center-area of Manhattan works out. If nothing else people are going to save a bundle on Uber and taxi rides schlepping from venue to venue.

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