Yesterday at the AAAAs Media Conference in New Orleans, Carat North America CEO David Verklin spoke passionately about how "The crackle of change is in the air." (It was the buzz at numerous panel sessions throughout the day). For the media services sector, he pointed out how many have been formed in North America over just the last few years: "A group of 10 companies, many of whom did not exist six years ago now control the global business of buying advertising time and space. 75% of all the network television commercials that we've bought in this year's upfront will be bought by six companies. I argue that the media services revolution that we're all a part of began in Europe 25 years ago when the advertising business bifurcated into two disciplines: companies that made ads and companies that placed and planned them. That model swept the US in the last 48 months. The brands Mindshare, OMD, Universal McCann, MPG and Initiative did not exist in this country over four years ago. That model from Europe swept this country and caused a seismic shift in our advertising business."

He cited Saatchi & Saatchi's Zenith Media; Leo Burnett's media is now purchased by Starcom; BBDO, DDB and TWBA/Chiat/Day now use OMD; Ogilvy, JWT and Y&R now use Mindshare and Mediaedge:cia. And as a byproduct, almost 70 out of the top 100 global advertisers on the planet have reviewed their media services provider in the last 48 months.

Verklin also looked a bit into the future, citing "Seven changes to watch for in the next 36 months."

1. The creation of the digitally-centric direct marketing agency. The collision of the interactive and direct marketing worlds. The holding companies will merge their digital and direct marketing assets into a new kind of direct marketing operation where the web is at the center of the universe. This is what some will call Generation 3 Direct Marketing.

2. Watch for people experimenting with 100% composition technology. In the next 36 months, we will be able to "target the toothless." He spoke of a world where Poligrip, for example, only wants to target people with no teeth. An ad targeting 10% of the viewers of a program, per se, that are "toothless," will no longer run a $10 CPM, but a $100 CPM. He called this the metric of the future, given paired interactive opt-in response opportunities. In the future, it will be the purity of the audience, rather than its size, that will matter most.

3. Watch for the collision of commerce and cause. Charities will move into 21st Century marketing techniques, including working more closely with retailers and other commerce-based businesses.

4. The rise of experiential marketing. This is the emerging discipline in which brands find new ways to come into physical contact with their customers. Pay attention to companies like Velocity and Radiate.

5. Media planning will be transformed into communications planning. In traditional media planning, the creative is often done first, and planning and buying come second. With communications planning, it doesn't start with a great slogan or a great ad, but with a deep psycho-behavioral and motivational understanding of what one's target audience and customer does and how they think. Communications planning offers clients more metrics and measurements to substantiate the effects of the overall effort.

6. Gaming will be far bigger than any of us can imagine. It's a global phenomenon. Advertisers will capitalize on full-motion video, integrated product placement, interactivity and the entertainment and time spent using values.

7. Marketing analytics. The ROI calculation industry is one of the most exciting and rapidly growing parts of our industry. Real time analytics will be the shape of the future. Brand managers will have a system on their desktops enabling tem to listen to and monitor all of the customers' sales and marketing activity in real time.