Ad Age reports that Omincom has won BofA’s advertising account – partly due to OMC’s agreement to manage the account at the holding company level (according to this Wall Street Journal article).

According to this article in the New York Post, the ad networks are booming. But are they running out of inventory? Is this one of the reasons for the Fastclick/Valueclick merger? How will companies like Adteractive and Quin Street be affected? We’re watching this one closely…

Webroot Software released a report last week saying that there is less adware (yay!), but the adware that still exists is more difficult to remove (boo!), according to Mediapost. The scariest part is that the new, tougher-to-remove adware is referred to in the report as "pernicious." Yikes!

And yes, the issue of cookies as spyware is raised in the report – on Webroot’s "watch list."

Despite four consecutive quarters of loss, MDC Partners is getting some quality press, as seen in this Business 2.0 interview with Miles Nadal.

Business 2.0‘s reporter John Heilemann has the sense that Nadal is on to something, but wonders whether Nadal may be suffering from "delusions of grandeur," partly because of statements like this:

"If I had my way, I would own 50 percent of every smart firm in the
world… They could be in Bumfuck, Idaho, in Kuala
Lumpur, in New York, in Minneapolis, or in a basement in Shanghai. I
don’t care. Anybody who’s brilliant, who’s working on ideas that are
going to reinvent this industry — I want to own half."

MDC Partners is a new holding company model comprised of a "loose network" of agencies (CP+B, KB+P, etc.); where MDC owns a stake in each, but never 100%:

"The firms are given autonomy, not forced to cross-sell services. But they can draw on the network’s resources if they choose."

Nadal describes himself – in his role at MDC – as a VC fund with a focus on "marketing innovation:"

"We’re like a single-minded VC focused on one industry, but it’s not
technology — it’s marketing innovation," he says. "The only difference
is that our technology is intellectual property. It’s cerebral, not
tangible."

As the industry morphs, however, one has to question whether the creative product – and not tangible technology – will continue to reign supreme?

Wherever you net out on MDC’s strategy, you have to admire Nadal’s resolution and willingness to take a risk in order to compete with – and offer an alternative to – the large agency holding companies.

Too many articles about cookies – two cookie committees – Safecount.org and the IAB – and several prior Digital Axle posts (here, here and here) that address the issues at the center of the debate:

• Are the majority of consumers anti-cookie?
• Are they deleting them regularly?
• Are cookies a form of spyware?
• What’s the deal with the setting of third-party cookies?
• How can marketers educate consumers of the importance of cookies?

Rather than go through each article, we’ll present them here for you to check out: iMedia Connection, MediaPost, International Herald Tribune and the New York Times.

The blogging community has been all over the story of Jeff Jarvis and Dell. And the result seems to be that blogs are forcing companies to re-think their customer service models.

For those who don’t know the background, Jeff Jarvis posted his frustration with Dell on his blog back in the end of June. (Basically, "Dell Sucks. Dell Lies.") The story gained momentum, and on August 17, Jarvis posted an open letter to Michael Dell and Michael George (CMO). That got Dell’s attention. Now it’s the end of August, and the story is still hot – and the topic remains at the forefront of Jarvis’ blog.

Mediapost reporter Shankar Gupta wrote this article about the situation, and reports that Dell’s PR group now monitors blogs, and is beginning to proactively contact dissatisfied customers.

The power of the blog!

Efficient Frontier, a Search Engine Marketing firm, will spend $150 million with Google and Yahoo! – making them the single largest spender with the two respective companies, according to this Forbes interview with Efficient Frontier’s CEO Ellen Siminoff. Makes us wonder how much Adteractive spends?

eMarketer released this article on broadband’s effect on consumer behavior – based on a Forrester report entitled "The State Of Consumers And Technology: Benchmark 2005." The survey of 69,000 conculded that consumers with broadband watch 14.3% less television than those without (from 14 hours down to 12).

"The study concluded that in the competition for consumers’ time, the biggest loser is television."

The most famous mash-up is probably DJ Danger Mouse’s "Gray Album" (a mash-up of Jay-Z’s Black Album and the Beatles White Album). If you haven’t heard it, or heard of it – Google it, or check out this article.

One of our favorite mash-ups is housingmaps.com – a combination of Craigslist apartment listings with Google maps.

This Ad Week article raises the question as to whether agency creatives will begin to exploit this technology – some already are.

(On a side note, when did Ad Week begin providing Yahoo! content?)

Ad Week is reporting that Claria is shaking up their management team, and moving away from the adware business and towrds personalization.