Mediapalooza is back, but the fun is tempered by the fact that agencies whose ranks were decimated by layoffs at the front end of the pandemic are running out of people who can pitch, much less service the accounts if they win.

Those were among conclusions of panelists at the ANA Media Conference in Aventura, Florida, on Thursday. Another key takeaway: Marketers pushing for ever-longer payment terms may make it impossible for smaller, independent shops to take their business or pay minority-owned production and media players, which in turn is at odds with marketer wishes to increase the ethnic diversity of their agency rosters.

“Mediapalooza” is the term the industry gave six years ago to a wave of big reviews spawned by the combination of digital disruption and publicity about non-transparent media practices, said Bill Duggan, group executive VP of the ANA. Given frequent three-year cycles, many accounts went out for pitch again in 2018, but with a bigger reverberation this year.

Unilever skipped a cycle after 2015 but is reviewing U.S. and other key global media accounts this year. This year’s media review participants also include Bayer, Coca-Cola, Walmart, Samsung, Chanel, Eli Lilly, Facebook, Hershey, Dyson and Philips among others, Duggan said.

For what it’s worth, Shenan Reed, head of media at L’Oreal USA, a participant in 2015’s Mediapalooza, said in an earlier talk: “We have a phenomenal relationship with our agency Wavemaker. They’ve been our agency for five years.”
 

Nevertheless, the first 100 days of 2021 saw 89 media reviews concluded in the U.S., “which is crazy,” said Greg Paull, co-founder and principal of R3. He cites such factors as the “changing consumer journey” and client needs to get more transparency and data accountability, which sound much like their needs six years ago.

But the difference may be fewer agencies in the pitch.

“Agencies are making decisions and turning down opportunities that we would think they would normally think about,” said David Strome, client development director of MediaSense, a consulting firm which he said is running about 40% of current reviews. “There’s kind of an unspoken priority matrix,” he said, that includes “the size of the prize” vs. the complexity of the work.

“They lost 28,000 people during COVID, the agency holding companies,” Paull said. “So, they just don’t have the bandwidth now to throw people into review teams.”

Thus, it might be wise to wait before launching a review, unless a marketer has a particularly alluring account. Even then, the seemingly endless push from some marketers to stretch out payment terms may be at odds with another stated goal – improving diversity among agencies or the production houses and media companies they pay, which often involves smaller and independent players that can't handle the cash flow crunch, said Storme.

“If you’re part of the movement to support more minority-owned businesses,” he said, “that’s going to filter down, so it’s a little bit of talking out of both sides of your mouth."