WPP Phasing Out MediaCom Digital Unit Beyond Interaction
This story was written by David Kaplan.
WPP Group will discontinue media buying and planning shop MediaCom's Beyond Interaction unit as its seeks to further streamline its traditional and digital advertising services, Mediapost reported. The move comes almost a year after MediaCom initiated a global realignment of its digital unit. At the time, Beyond Interactive, as the division was known, was rebranded as Beyond Interaction and it began to assume a wider role as it coordinates buying across 23 countries.
But over the past few months, WPP has moved to integrate digital and traditional functions at GroupM, which houses WPP media agencies MindShare and Mediaedge:cia. Sloan Broderick, managing director of Beyond Interaction, will still oversee digital operations at MediaCom, but the staffers will be reassigned to other clients throughout the media buyer. No word on whether there were any layoffs as a direct result of the changes. MediaCom become part of WPP when it bought parent Grey Advertising in 2005.
By David Kaplan