Issue No. 8. How the Mathmen—and Mathwomen—Took Over

How Media Unbundling Changed Advertising Forever

In the old days, meaning for most of the 20th century, advertising was about gut instinct. The kind of people who ran the show—well, they were storytellers, showmen, gamblers. They had a drink in one hand, a hunch in the other, and did business in smoke filled rooms. If you asked them why they spent $10 million on TV instead of radio, they’d flash a grin and tell you to trust them.

And it worked, mostly. Because the numbers weren’t precise, and the game wasn’t built for precision. It was built for big ideas, for campaigns that would land in front of mass audiences, broad demographics, whole cities at once.

Then, slowly at first, the math people came.

And all of a sudden, the men with the green eye shades—the ones who'd been tucked away in the back, balancing buys and calculating reach—weren’t the underdogs anymore. These women, many of them were women, and some men, had been the quiet strategists, the ones who had always worked the numbers but never gotten the credit. Until it became clear that they were the future.

The Unbundling of Media: A Grey Swan Takes Flight

For most of the 20th century, media was just a cog in the big machine of advertising. Creative agencies ran the show, and media was an afterthought—handled by in-house departments that were treated as little more than glorified accountants.

Clients paid agencies a percentage of what they spent on media, and nobody thought too hard about it. That was just how business was done. The budgets were massive, but the talent wasn’t there. Maybe 5% of the ad industry’s brightest minds were working on media, chasing 95% of the investment. That was the balance.

Then something shifted.

The internet happened.

Computers got more powerful. Data got sharper. Precision targeting became possible. Suddenly, advertising wasn’t about making that one great ad and putting it on one great network anymore. It was about serving the right ad to the right person at the right moment.

And that meant media wasn’t an afterthought anymore. It was everything.

From Second-Class Citizens to Kings and Queens of the Industry

In the 1990s, the world’s biggest holding companies—WPP, Omnicom, Interpublic, Publicis, and Havas—saw the writing on the wall. Instead of keeping media buried inside creative agencies, they spun it out into bright, shiny, specialized buying and planning units.

• WPP launched Mindshare in 1997, rolling its media expertise into one focused powerhouse.
• Omnicom followed with OMD in 1998, consolidating media across its agency brands.
• Publicis created Starcom MediaVest Group in 2000, pulling its media talent into a turbocharged, dedicated network.

And it worked. Boy did it work!

By 2002, media agencies weren’t just growing—they were outpacing their creative counterparts. From 1995 to 2005, global media spend grew by more than 60%, from $250 billion to over $400 billion. Investment in data and technology skyrocketed.

The green-eye-shade people—the ones who had been second-class citizens in advertising—were now the ones making the biggest deals in the industry.

And many of them were amazing women.

The Rise of the Mathmen—and Mathwomen

Before the internet, a media executive was a negotiator, a dealmaker. They’d haggle for better rates, buy in bulk, and make bets on where audiences might be. They were gamblers—Madmen in their own way, except their game was played with TV slots instead of whiskey and wit.

But when data came into play, everything changed.

The new media leaders weren’t gamblers. They were mathematicians.

And many of them—names that didn’t always make the headlines—were the very same women who had been running media strategy in the background for so many years. They understood how media moved, how audiences behaved, how every dollar worked harder when put in the right place. They had always known that media wasn’t just logistics—it was strategy.

• Data scientists replaced gut instinct.
• Algorithms replaced handshakes.
• Precision replaced persuasion.

Suddenly, every ad dollar could be tracked. Every placement optimized. Every impression analyzed. The game wasn’t just about reach anymore—it was about return on investment, targeting efficiency, and real-time bidding.

Google’s AdWords (launched in 2000) and Facebook’s ad platform (2007) further accelerated the shift. Now, it wasn’t just about buying media—it was about owning the data that made media work. The creative teams still had their place, but the ones making the real money? The media agencies.

The emerging media leaders started travelling the world evangelizing the vision of using numbers to identify and buy what wasn't for sale. They set up systems to sling strategic frameworks at speed and inviting whole teams to get together in luxury hotels in the world's greatest capitals to listen to their leadership lessons.

The World We Live in Now

The unbundling of media was a grey swan event—not entirely unpredictable, but one many agencies underestimated until it was too late.

Today, media agencies have more influence than ever. Holding companies generate billions in revenue not just from creative work, but from media planning, data management, and ad tech.

• WPP’s GroupM manages over $60 billion in media spend annually.
• Publicis’ Epsilon acquisition cemented the group's control of first-party data.
• The Trade Desk, once dismissed as just another DSP, is now valued at over $40 billion.

Meanwhile, the old-school creatives—the ones who once looked down on media as a back-office function—are struggling hard to keep up. The Madmen are still around, but, in many cases they’re answering to the Mathmen or at least partnering with them now.

And the Mathwomen too!

Because in a world where everything is measurable, gut instinct only gets you so far.

And if there’s one thing the unbundling of media proved, it’s this:

Those second-class citizens?

They were kings and queens all along.