Network TV sales executives who don't know Bill Cella, may want to set up a lunch date, quick. Why? Because Cella was handed an $8.6 billion ad budget for national TV spending, or roughly one-fourth of the dollars that are spent on national TV each year in the U.S.
Cella was promoted yesterday to chairman of the newly formed Magna Global USA, a new media negotiating unit formed by the Interpublic Group of Companies, the New York ad agency conglomerate. Cella has been Executive VP-Director of National Broadcast & Programming at Interpublic's Universal McCann, one of two major media buying entities under the Interpublic umbrella. The other is Initiative Media.
Under the new structure Cella will oversee negotiations for the spending of both those groups starting in the fall. Interpublic said the new setup was designed in part to counter the consolidation on the sell side, where conglomerates such as Viacom, Disney, AOL Time Warner and Fox control most of the available national TV inventory. - Steve McClellan
