Home The Big Story The Big Story: The Strange Case Of The Vanishing Media Agencies

The Big Story: The Strange Case Of The Vanishing Media Agencies

SHARE:
The Big Story podcast

The Big Story is a breezy new podcast featuring a roundtable of AdExchanger editors talking about the biggest stories from the past week. It is available wherever you subscribe to podcasts.

The temperature is cooling, the leaves are falling and the skies are turning the color of slate.

It’s a time for mystery.

This week on “The Big Story,” the team investigates the baffling situation of the missing media agencies.

The cross-continental trail begins at the annual DMEXCO conference in Cologne, Germany, where AdExchanger editor Rae Paoletta searches for the buy side, but mostly finds vendors and “sellers talking to sellers.”

What happened in DMEXCO? Who was there? What did they see? Following a contentious divorce last year between the conference organizer and its founders, the event seems to be shrinking, becoming less international and more focused on the interests of its native Germany.

Back Stateside, editor Alison Weissbrot digs into Forrester’s Global Media Agency Wave and its eerie conclusion: The media agencies are dying.

The AdExchanger team tries to reconcile that strong language and interrogates the suspects: the encroachment of consultancies into agency territory and brands taking their programmatic media buying in-house.

And because there can’t be a Forrester Wave without a ranking, the team also dives deep into who came out on top, and why.

Tagged in:

Must Read

Comic: Shopper Marketing Data

Infillion Strikes Again, This Time Buying The Retail Purchase Data Company Catalina

Infillion, an ad tech business built on M&A, is back with another acquisition. This time it’s Catalina, a century-old market research and shopper marketing company with roots in physical cash register machines.

This Election Season, Buyers Can Curate Deals Based On Voter Values

OpenX and Givsly’s new curation solution lets political campaigns reach voters based on data sourced from nonprofits, rather than traditional party affiliation.

Walmart’s Ad Revenue Totaled $6.4 Billion In 2025 As The Ecommerce Flywheel Started To Spin

“Fully a third of our profit in the most recent quarter was related to advertising and membership income,” Walmart CFO John David Rainey told investors on Thursday.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters
Comic: AI-TA?

Q4: Omnicom’s IPG Merger Is An AI Test Case

Omnicom just reported its first earnings since closing the IPG deal and, shocker, it’s saying AI is main growth driver for combined holdco.

Digital-native brands need to figure out how to win in retail shelves. They're finding it difficult, to say the least.

Big CPG Brands Are Quick To Cut Ad Spend Amid A Tough US Market

Companies like P&G, PepsiCo and Colgate-Palmolive are cutting marketing spend as the easiest and quickest way to protect profitability.

How The Minnesota Star Tribune Protects Advertisers While Covering ICE Crackdowns

Amid a federal crackdown and local unrest, Minnesota’s biggest newsroom is proving brand safety and hard news can coexist.