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Article: Accounting: Billings lose agency value; Debate simmers over relevance and accuracy.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Advertising Age
- Article date:
- July 22, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Crain Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Forget about billings. They mean nothing. Or do they?
As agency holding companies prepare to report second-quarter results, ad industry insiders and watchers continue to debate the accuracy and usefulness of billings.
Critics say the measure of a client's media spending has no relevance today, when the top three holding companies-Omnicom Group, Interpublic Group of Cos., WPP Group-collectively get less than half of revenue from advertising. The skeptics point out that, unlike revenue and net income, billings are not ruled by Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and are not part of the disclosures required on quarterly reports to the Securities and ...