Media Spotlight: Nielsen media leagues spark inevitable grumbling.

The figures do not back the belief that bigger is always better, Alasdair Reid writes.

The league table never lies. That's what they say, isn't it? Well, in some football circles, at least. Don't say it in the hearing of some agency principals, though - the publication of the Nielsen Media Research table is always the occasion for an outbreak of gratuitous grumbling.

Even the agencies doing well at the top tend to profess themselves rather dissatisfied, arguing that their figures don't quite reflect how enormously well they have actually been doing. Steady performers tend to snipe at the growth figures of their immediate rivals, arguing that the numbers merely reflect the fact that those rivals had a very poor previous year and are only just recovering. And, of course, absolutely everyone complains that the numbers don't include the brand-spanking-new specialist division they have just launched, or the regional office, or their below-the-line figures.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying yes, the Nielsen Media Research figures tend to be pretty much on the button. And the current table has one or two interesting tales to tell if you scratch below the surface.

The agencies with arguably the least to grumble about this time around include MediaCom, which consolidates its place in the top slot; MindShare, which goes to third place on the back of an almost 12 per cent year-on-year increase; Initiative Media, showing the strongest growth in the top ten with a leap of more than 22 per cent, and Manning Gottlieb OMD, which sneaks into the top ten on the basis of an 11.85 per cent gain.

One trend you might expect the table to highlight would be a continuing shift in power towards the larger consolidated groups. Actually, though, it is hard to find evidence for that.

Steve Allan, the chief executive of MediaCom, points out that there has always been a polarisation between the very large and the very small, but he doesn't think we are seeing that phenomenon intensifying. 'Ten years ago, the differential factor in billings between number one in the table and number ten would be around two-and-a-half to one. That's still the case in the latest table,' he argues.