With a possible European Commission antitrust inquiry looming over Google (NSDQ: GOOG), the advertising boss who says “we’re Google’s biggest customer” has come out batting for marketers he says are gagging for regulatory measures. “The ‘G’ word” is “competitively dangerous”, WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell told the FT Digital Media…

Alok Kejriwal is CEO and co-founder of the online gaming company games2win.com. He blogs at rodinhood.com. In October of last year alone, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) attracted 605 million unique Internet users (50% of the global Internet population), got them to return another 18 times, stick around for 9.5 minutes during…

Rob Norman (pictured) will add the title of CEO of GroupM North America to his current role as head of GroupM Interactive, the WPP media unit’s digital arm. Norman replaces Marc Goldstein, who will leave his role as GroupM NA CEO effective March 31.  Goldstein has been in the post…

Is that the sound of ice breaking? Marketers, advertisers and publishers will have to wait for the real recovery, but a new revised forecast from WPP’s GroupM shows things are at least going in the right direction. GroupM’s mid-year report predicted UK full-year, all-media ad spend would drop 14 percent…

With ad buyer Aegis Media’s earnings release on Thursday, the big European ad groups’ Q3 financials are now in. So what do they show? On this evidence, in 2010 they will be smaller businesses with fewer staff and a renewed emphasis on digital and emerging markets…

WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell had predicted a two percent revenue fall for 2009, then revised it downward to four percent after a lackustre first half. In reality, both figures are wide of the mark: for the first nine months of the year, WPP made revenue of £6.29 million—an impressive…

With the 2016 Olympic Games all squared away and set for Rio de Janeiro, members of the International Olympic Committee could get down to more serious business—such as how to handle the issue of online video. WPP Group CEO Sir Martin Sorrell had some very simple ideas for the IOC…

WPP Group’s lawsuit against web-based TV creative ad agency Spot Runner for securities fraud and breach of contract has been dismissed, sources close to the legal dispute tell paidContent. WPP, which helped lead a $40 million funding in the Los Angeles company about three years ago, accused Spot Runner of…

In the first half of 2009, advertising group WPP made one quarter of its revenue from its digital activities, showing that advertisers are investing in new online ways to track, measure and expose their brands in the recession. In an unaudited interim report covering the six months to June 30,…

Yes, we’re still in that recession. London-listed advertising giant WPP on Tuesday reported worse than expected Q109 earnings, but CEO Sir Martin Sorrell is sticking to his prediction that H209 will be better than H1 and that some recovery will take place in the advertising economy next year. “Reportable” revenues…

It can hardly ever be a bad time to be a millionaire, but the UK’s big league media owners have collectively seen their fortunes drop by £3 billion in the last 12 months according to The Sunday Times Rich List (online from Tuesday, except for this preview). Although the list…

—Group M Interaction: WPP’s GroupM network of advertising businesses has appointed Jakob Nielsen as MD of its Interaction digital arm (not the Jakob Nielsen, user interface guru). Previously sales director for Western Europe at Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), Nielsen will be responsible for the digital activities of the Mediacom, Mindshare, Mediaedge:cia…

The forecasts are in - so, with a quarter of the year gone, how is the UK’s digital economy faring? And what do experts expect to happen in the rest of 2009? We ran off the mean average from four key ‘09 UK online ad forecasts. The result - a…

Last year was good, this year will be far worse and next year we might start to see some recovery in advertising spend and the economy. That’s a quick summary of WWP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell’s view of the tumultuous media landscape, which he gave after his company announced improved…

No surprise that Martin Sorrell sees the next few months as “very tough”, but the WPP ad group CEO also reckons the financial markets will improve in the second half of the year, leading to a “real-world” recovery in 2010 (via Bloomberg). By that time, though, the advertising world will…

WPP Group will discontinue media buying and planning shop MediaCom’s Beyond Interaction unit as it 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…

Ad holding company WPP Group is beginning the new year with preparations to lay off of thousands at its global agencies, Guardian reported. The decision was made during budget meetings held during the last two months. The units that have staffing costs greater than 60 percent of revenue. But the…

WPP’s successful £1.1 billion takeover of market research group Taylor Nelson Sofres last week has seen its first leaver - TNS CEO David Lowden left the company over the weekend, according to WARC. He is replaced by Pedro Ros, a former MD of global clients and services at TNS, who…

Looking to expand its European presence, Microsoft’s Razorfish has bought Spanish digital ad shop Wysiwyg. Terms were not disclosed. But as Razorfish was adding elsewhere, it was subtracting in the U.S., as Bloomberg reported that the company laid off 40 staffers in New York this week. The job cuts represent…