Wausau Paper Corp.  (WPP) Trade Now »     Rate WPP  -  Discuss WPP  -  Add to Watch List        

WPP's (WPP) media buying agency GroupM predicts that "interactive media" -- loosely defined as online, mobile and gaming -- will gather up 15% of all global advertising in 2009, up from 11% of the global total in 2007. Last year's increase was driven by improved mobile phone handsets, cheap laptops and faster broadband in the U.S. and Western Europe. GroupM simply attributes next year's growth to secular trends -- money is moving away from traditional media and toward digital.

The king of marketing services, WPP's Sir Martin Sorrell, pleads with Steve Ballmer and Jerry Yang to somehow work out a deal. Reuters:

The advertising industry lost a potential balancing influence in the Web search market when deal talks between Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO) broke down, the chief of ad services group WPP (WPP) said on Friday. "It was a shame ... that those negotiations failed. Maybe they'll come back again," WPP CEO Martin Sorrell said in an interview [on CNBC].

See Also: Here We Go Again... Microsoft's Mundie Opens Door For Yahoo

Filed under: Analyst reports, XM Satellite Radio (XMSR), Sirius Satellite Radio (SIRI), Abercrombie and Fitch (ANF), Analyst initiations, Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan (POT)

MOST NOTEWORTHY: