Media Week

Last night’s Media Week Awards at the Grosvenor proved yet again that no one parties like the media fraternity.

While other ‘big’ awards have been, well, rather less big this year, Media Week’s annual bash was as large and as vibrant as ever, with more than 1,300 attendees representing media owners, agencies and clients.

Of course the main topic for the night was predetermined long ago: Just how bad is the current economic climate?, how much worse will it get?, and when will real growth start to appear?

As one newspaper managing director told me, “everyone’s still talking a good game, and I think that’s important, but behind closed doors we all know any talk of recovery is grossly premature”.

This sentiment supports downgraded ad forecasts by ZenithOptimedia earlier this month, which marked the UK out as one of the world’s biggest fallers this year, after a "worse than expected first half of 2009".

But not even the current climate could deflate the worthy winners last night, with Mediaedge:cia paving the way after winning the industry’s biggest accolade, Media Week’s Agency of The Year.

The WPP agency continues to go from strength-to-strength, growing billings 5% year-on-year at a time when the wider market is battling double-digit declines.

While fierce rivalries within the British media mean very few awards ever go undisputed: the crowning of MEC last night was one of those rare exceptions.

“I suppose if we were going to lose to anyone, it should have been them,” said one runner-up agency head begrudgingly.

“Can’t really argue with that," opined another, "but lets see where they go from here,” which for those who don’t know, is high praise indeed in agency-land.

Comedian Frankie Boyle aptly set the tone for the evening from the off, being suitably funny and offensive, with an added edge of instability.

Of course, not even the best celebrations run entirely smoothly, and when OK!’s after party was gate-crashed by footballer Shaun Wright-Philips and his “crew”, it was definitely time to go home.

Now where's the Pro Plus?

Channel 4’s departing chief executive Andy Duncan has no plans to go quietly at the end of this year, as proved by last week’s announcement of a ground-breaking content tie-up between the broadcaster and YouTube.

By the time Duncan is carrying the last of his belongings from the shiny building in Victoria, internet users should be able to view a selection of ad-funded C4 content, including Skins and Hollyoaks, via Google’s video site for free.

The move could be a significant development towards generating digital revenues for both C4 and YouTube.

The non-exclusive, three year deal allows C4 to keep control of its own advertising sales, and some non-C4 content to boot, while reportedly giving the broadcaster the larger share of revenue.

Martin McNulty from internet marketing agency TrafficBroker agrees the partnership has the potential to be very interesting for C4, noting it "opens the broadcaster up to a much bigger advertising market, that is liquid". He suggests that if traditional content providers can tap into the auction-type ad sales model that has already made adwords a success for Google, it could be a major break through.

Just as significantly, the deal is also the first real sign that exiting Duncan has a list of ‘unfinished business’ concerning commercial partnership which he has every intention of completing.

Last month, he told me he hoped to be able to announce "two or three commercial partnerships" before he steps down as CEO, and refused to rule out a tie-up with BBC Worldwide.

The deal, already dismissed by most as being dead in the water, gained renewed credibility yesterday when Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw called talks between Channel 4 and BBC Worldwide "encouraging."

Whether the BBC is now more minded to play ball or not remains to be seen, but Duncan clearly has a point to prove and his legacy in mind, which could make for an interesting final quarter. Watch this space.

Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP and one of adland's best known soothsayers, has dramatically revised his stance on the viability of publishers charging for content online following comments from the quintessential newspaper man, Rupert Murdoch.

Speaking at an industry event in Greece last week, The Daily Telegraph reports an irrepressible Sorrell, as saying: "[Rupert] Murdoch is absolutely correct to try and get people paying for content - it is critical for traditional media businesses as there is not enough advertising to support these models anymore.

"Getting consumers to pay for content they value is key. We have to find those areas."

Such sentiments will be music to the ears of those operating in the embattled newspaper sector, which according to Sorrell's own media investment arm GroupM is expected to see advertising revenue plummet 26% in the UK this year.

But such apparent support for online pay-walls flies in the face of Sorrell's own vision of the future, announced less than 10 months earlier.

Addressing an international advertising event in January, there could be no mistaking what the WPP leader thought about the position traditional publishers now find themselves in, or his reservations about charging for web content.

"Some of the structural changes we're seeing taking place in the [newspaper] industry, particularly in America, the failure and bankruptcy and reorganisation of these [publishing] companies is going to continue. And there's no way of stopping it, because we've given it away for free," he said.

"The seeds of this problem were sown when the people who created the new media industry, probably in the early nineties, decided - rightly from the consumers point of view I have to say - to give it away for nothing.

"It's impossible actually now to take it up. You can start up here [high] and take your pricing down, but you can't start there [free] and start moving it up."

It appears News Corp's venerable leader's commitment to "charge for all our news websites", buoyed by thriving online subs at the Wall Street Journal, has led Sorrell to change his mind.

It marks the latest backtrack in what has been a tricky year for WPP's famous crystal ball-gazer, who, lest we forget, is responsible for group billings of more than $80 billion, or around a third of all the world's measured media buying.  

At the same event in January, Sorrell predicted "a flat year" for the global ad market in 2009, adding reassuringly: "We're not looking at the Armageddon or the Apocalypse Now that analysts and media followers are forecasting.

"We don't see it as bad as Goldman and others who talk about -5, I see -10 from [some quarters] which seems somewhat strange."

Nine long months, a series of forecast revisions, and thousands of redundancies later, and Sorrell now accepts a drop of 5.5% is the most likely outcome.

But then it's been one of those years; also at the IAA event in January, media execs were expressing incredulity at the suggestion a former Russian spy was being bandied around as a potential buyer for London's Evening Standard.