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AT&T’s proposed $67 billion acquisition of BellSouth has short- and long-term repercussions for ad spending in the telecom category (now the fourth-largest in the U.S. at nearly $6 billion), writes AdAge (via MarketingVox). In the short term, Cingular Wireless would likely be renamed AT&T Wireless, and the merged company would have to rebrand in BellSouth markets. SBC, which acquired AT&T and then assumed that venerable brand, is in the midst of a $1 billion rebranding campaign and will now be merging three brands into one.
However, in the long term, spending may decline. AT&T and BellSouth spend about $3 billion combined on advertising, and AT&T now expects reduced ad expenses to be a major source of savings. AT&T’s agencies include Omnicom’s GSD&M, Austin, and independent Rogers Townsend, St. Louis. BellSouth’s agency is WPP Group’s Grey Worldwide, Atlanta.
Newspapers would likely be the biggest losers, along with network and spot TV. Also, analysts expect the Yellow Pages business to be shaken up: AT&T and BellSouth control $6 billion of the $15 billion spent last year on Yellow Pages advertising; they recently purchased yellowpages.com for $100 million and will likely move from paper to online.
Though off-air online and experiential advertising grew modestly as a part of the overall radio revenue pie, and election-related political ads increased in Q3, total radio ad revenues were down 9% to $4.97 billion for Q3 and down 10% for…
Glamour magazine is running its photo of Britney Spears not only on the cover of the U.S. edition, but on the covers in seven other countries, as well.
Britney will grace Russia, Sweden and Greece’s editions of Glamour, among others.…
Titan Worldwide has signed a five-year deal with the Delaware River Port Authority to manage out-of-home advertising for the Port Authority Transit corp.
The contract covers advertising on PATCO’s rail service and stations between Southern New Jersey and Philadelphia, writes Mediaweek.…
Publicis has acquired full-service agency W&K Communications, continuing its Asia expansion that began several years ago.
W&K will be pulled under the umbrella of Publicis’s Burnett agency network, and will be renamed Leo Burnett Beijing Advertising, writes Adweek.
Other recent Publicis…
With only four weeks separating Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, Cyber Monday One (December 1) and Cyber Monday Two (December 
may command a greater share of online sales than they have in years past - thus increasing the importance…
Top American non-luxury auto brands received higher ratings and less negative comments from online consumers than competing Japanese brands, according to an analysis of consumer opinions collected from automotive review websites by Biz360, MarketingCharts reports.
The research, which aggregated a year’s…
