Latin America

Ad holding company WPP Group is beginning the new year with preparations to lay off of thousands at its global agencies, Guardian reported. The decision was made during budget meetings held during the last two months. The units that have staffing costs greater than 60 percent of revenue. But the cuts at the global company will not be spread evenly. Reductions will be heavily felt in North America and Western Europe, places that have been hit hard by the advertising slump.

ContextWeb, which operates the Adsdaq ad exchange, has added the ability for marketers to target the Spanish-speaking audience online by category and keyword. The new capability is the first time the company has offered targeting through its exchange in a language other than English. To lead the effort spanning the U.S. and Latin America, ContextWeb has hired Time Warner veteran Joe Kutchera as director of Spanish language markets.

UK ad-holding company WPP Group, fresh off its takeover of audience researcher TNS, has sold its 50 percent stake in TV researcher AGBNielsen Media Research to Nielsen. In return, Nielsen will transfer to WPP the assets of ad-pricing researcher SRDS and health-care media-planning data unit PERQ/HCI. Nielsen will also give over its 11 percent share in several subsidiaries belonging to Brazilian media research firm IBOPE Group.  WPP already holds a 31 percent stake in IBOPE. These assets will be added to The Kantar Group, WPP's information, insight and consultancy division.

Looking to expand its European presence, Microsoft's Razorfish has bought Spanish digital ad shop Wysiwyg. Terms were not disclosed. But as Razorfish was adding elsewhere, it was subtracting in the U.S., as Bloomberg reported that the company laid off 40 staffers in New York this week.

Ad holding company WPP Group reported a 16 percent rise in sales in the third quarter, boosted by the stronger dollar and euro against the pound. Revenues came in at £1.72 billion , compared to £1.48 billion pounds a year ago.  In constant currencies, revenue was six percent higher; on a like-for-like basis--stripping out acquisitions and currency fluctuations--growth was three percent.

French publishing and ad group Hi-Media, which bought photo-sharing site Fotolog for about $90 million last year, is now making changes at the top. General manager Andrew Cohen is moving out of the picture and being replaced by CTO Arne Jokela and senior product management director Yossi Langer, who are stepping up to each get a "president" role while also retaining their old responsibilities.

The long march to the 2012 Olympics continues with the announcement that Spanish web portal Terra, part of the Telefónica group, has bagged the exclusive South America mobile and online video rights to the London games as well as the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.

WPP's digital investment and operating arm WPP Digital has established a global digital production hub to distribute work among its stable of digital agencies. The objective of the new outfit, Deliver, is to better leverage WPP's existing production capabilities in Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and South Africa in a "distributed model," according to Neal Prescott, CEO of Deliver.

Former Digitas exec Neal Prescott has been named CEO of WPP Digital's new production services unit, Deliver. The new unit will tie together production services in Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and South Africa and work with all of WPP's digital properties, including Actis Systems (Russia), AGENDA (China), Wunderman's ZAAZ (Seattle), as well as The Ogilvy Group and WPP Digital agencies BLUE (China/Singapore), Quasar (India) and Schematic (Los Angeles/Costa Rica). The creation of this unit is expected to save costs associated with using outside production companies.

While many other forecasters have been backtracking a bit on expectations for online ad spend growth this year, UK media shop Carat has upped its forecast very slightly, the company said in an email release. Back in March, the Aegis-owned agency said global online expenditures would be up 23.3 percent this year, and then slow to 18 percent in '09. In its revised outlook, Carat says that worldwide internet spend will grow 23.7 percent this year and 18.6 percent the next.