We’re taking a brief break this week; back the first week of September. Hope to see you here then.

We all learn. In my case one key learning from over a year of blog posts is: ‘Put Xaxis in the title and watch the audience numbers soar.’ It is tempting to do what I was going to do this week (a piece about the JICs) and simply put Xaxis in the title (‘Xaxis vastly improves joint industry studies’?); but there’s no need for such trickery. Last week’s post in which I was a wee bit positive has generated some response, so this week I feel I need to expand on ‘wee bit’.

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Last week AdAge in the US ran a story headlined: “WPP Media Agency Group to Offer Flexible Alternative to Xaxis”. Loyal Cog Blog readers will no doubt mutter something inaudible into their pints of Old Peculiar and take a long, self-satisfied draught on their Meerschaum pipes. I have been critical of the Xaxis model; and therefore it’s only right to say ‘fair play’ to them when they admit it’s time to evolve that model. Even if my moaning might conceivably have had slightly less to do with the change of approach than the words and actions of the likes of Unilever, P&G, Nestle, and Kellogg’s.

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Last week, the always-worth-a-read Dominic Mills, writing on Mediatel’s Newsline commented on Starcom’s tool to automate content. As part of a larger initiative that has been running for several years, the agency has licenced access to archive content from various magazine titles in the Americas, has systematised this content, and is now making ‘repurposed’ versions of the original available to clients for use on their (the clients’) sites.

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Back in the BP era (that’s BP: before programmatic) there was another urgent topic of conversation amongst the media agency elite. This was how to deliver and measure integrated campaigns – a topic based around delivering to client needs, a rather quaint concept given the current focus on improving margins via a lack of transparency in trading.

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