Wednesday, February 29, 2012

A $1.5 Billion Advertising Giant Will Be Created Tomorrow

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/a-15-billion-advertising-giant-will-be-created-tomorrow-2012-2


Bill Wise, CEO of MediaBank

MediaBank and its competitor Donovan Data Systems have intended to merge for a few months.

Now the Department of Justice has given its stamp of approval and the two will become a new company, Mediaocean, tomorrow.

The deal values Mediaocean at $1.5 billion. MediaBank CEO Bill Wise tells us it will manage well north of $100 billion in advertising spending.

MediaBank and DDS are like the plumbing system for the advertising industry. Media buyers use them to manage advertising campaigns across television, print, radio, out-of-home (billboards and such), and digital. It helps them keep track of ad servers, ad networks, invoices and more.

"A caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity," says Wise. "We want to be the caterpillar. The plumbing of the industry isn't necessarily the fun part, but if you can figure it out it is so needed."

Mediaocean will be a 1,000-person organization. Of course with any merger, some reorganization is necessary. Wise says they haven't discussed that yet. For now he's focused on growth.

"First and foremost we'll be creating a very new digital system," says Wise. "It will be a combination of assets of both companies, as well as new assets. We're consolidating everything into one global operating system. It's going to be an app store for advertising where there's a developer community that sits on top of the platform."

Here's our interview with MediaBank CEO Bill Wise and DDS president of digital JT Batson about the merger when it was announced back in September:

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Posted by Augustine at 5:32 PM