Billings discrepancy watch: WaMu

Here's my second billings discrepancy post, wherein I contrast and compare the different billings figures accorded to accounts by different publications. This time around it's WaMu, which shifted its, um, very big account out of Leo Burnett and to TBWA/Chiat/Day. Here we go:

1) Advertising Age: $173 million; no source cited.
2) Adweek: $100 million-plus, with the proviso that, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus, WaMu spent $120 million last year and $75 million in the first two-thirds of this year.
3) Mediapost: $100 million; no source cited.

Billings discrepancy watch: Subaru

Billings figures long ago started to drive me nuts. Where to begin? Is it the fact that creative agencies don't even plan or buy media anymore? Is it that with the 15 percent commission long dead, they haven't been a very good proxy for revenue for more than a decade? Why not just start to size accounts like t-shirts—you know—XS, S, M, L XL? That's why I'm really trying to avoid posting billings figures, unless, we're talking about the money being spent in media on a specific campaign or unless it's to ridicule the whole concept. OK, with that, let's launch the billings discrepancy watch, in which I print the billings figures that other people have attributed to accounts in the news, and you get to pick which one to believe, if any. OK, for Subaru (an account shift that does include creative and media):

1) Advertising Age: $150 million.
2) Adweek: $200 million (Adweek cites a source, Nielsen Monitor-Plus).
3) The New York Times: $150 million.