Media Consolidation: Now It's The Marketers Turn »

For the past decade Madison Avenue has been consumed by a wave of mergers among both agencies and major media outlets that has consolidated the media marketplace to a handful of key players. Now it's the marketers' turn. In the span of only a few months, an unprecedented spate of merger deals among leading national advertisers threatens to consolidate, and possibly contract, ad budgets for many big media and ad agencies. This was underscored Monday by the largest department store operator, Federated Department Stores, $11 billion acquisition of the No. 2 department store marketer, May Department Stores.