IPG Mediabrands agency Initiative has eliminated a small number of positions in its Los Angeles office as part of a consolidation of its media buying services. MediaPost first reported the news yesterday.
“Last week, we made a business decision to consolidate our buying/investment teams in the LA office impacting less than 10 people in the organization who we are actively looking to find other roles for within the agency,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement. “This does not affect the Rufus team and Initiative LA overall is growing as is the rest of the agency.”
Rufus is the internal team dedicated to Amazon. Initiative retained that account in a late 2017 global review and reportedly added more of the Amazon Studios portion of the business early last year.
The spokesperson declined to elaborate on the specific positions affected or the reason for the move.
It is unclear whether this news was tied to any specific change in Initiative’s client roster. A September report from COMvergence on the top performing media agencies for the first half of 2018 found Initiative trailing only Publicis Media’s Blue 449.