MediaPost: CFOs Cut Flow Of Billings Data, Media Shops Seek A Solution

While few people really believed agency billings numbers, the extremely inclusive figures that agencies claimed they spent on behalf of clients, one unintended consequence of the recent Sarbanes-Oxley financial reporting reform act may be to curtail the traditionally bombastic claims.

Several publicly traded agency CFOs forbade executives from making billings claims early this year, fearing that the claims - when proven unfounded - could be considered the basis of a successful shareholder lawsuit. That action proved frustrating for new business teams that would have liked to brag about media buying clout as well as trade magazines that have traditionally taken the billings claims as sound comparative data.

For the first few years of the online marketing field, several trade publications failed to distinguish between agency billings and revenues, and printed strange-looking lists of agencies by size. Revenues are a much more accurate measure of agency girth, but usually only the publicly traded companies divulge those figures.

While MediaPost quotes an analyst guessing that the real figures may be 20 to 30 percent lower than previously reported, the real difference is likely much greater. With about $92 billion in non-local, non-direct media spent in the U.S. in 2002, the top agencies and media firms claimed about $150 billion in domestic billings.