While consolidation continues to sweep through the holding company level, marked by Omnicom’s planned purchase of IPG and Publicis’ acquisition waves, a significant shift is happening elsewhere in the industry. Digiday has reported that PlusMedia, a direct response agency, and Cage Point, an omnichannel media agency, have merged to form Mile Marker.  

Backed by private equity firm Lightview Capital, this new agency is designed to serve the thousands of midsized marketers often overlooked by industry behemoths, specifically helping them achieve growth through precise audience targeting. 

Bringing Together Complementary Skill Sets 

The merger combines two distinct but powerful skill sets. Mile Marker brings together Cage Point’s expertise in analytical insights and a transparent approach to investing in performance channels with PlusMedia’s capabilities in audience segmentation through direct mail and other distinct channels. 

Leading the new entity is CEO Scott Shamberg, a veteran of holding company shops including Performics, who previously ran PlusMedia. He is joined by Shattuck Groome, the former head of Cage Point, who now serves on the executive team. Together, they oversee a client roster totaling approximately $500 million in media investment, including brands like Freshpet, DoorDash, and Arcadia Consumer Healthcare. 

Mile Marker has identified a specific niche: clients ready to scale from spending $5 million on media to the 35−50 million range.

“Those are the folks we want to be talking to,” said Shamberg. “We’ve got founder experience and entrepreneurial experience now on our executive team, along with large global holding company expertise. When you mesh all that together, you get a very ‘tell it like it is’ kind of approach and a frankness to it”.

Transparency and “Forgotten Channels” 

A shared philosophy between Shamberg and Groome is the conscious avoidance of non-transparent media channels or “black-box” investments. Instead, they seek opportunities in what Shamberg describes as “forgotten channels,” such as print and direct mail, while negotiating directly with video sellers rather than relying solely on DSPs.

This transparent approach was exemplified when Arcadia Consumer Healthcare tapped the agency to consult on a potential acquisition of brands from Purdue Pharma. After analyzing the proposed media plan, Groome identified massive inefficiencies.

“We told them right off the bat that their $10 million media plan was more like a $1 million media plan,” said Groome. “They believed me and ended up buying those brands. The second we turned on real media — not some of these interesting [channels/platforms] that a lot of the agencies are now using that don’t have complete transparency — they saw immediate growth on those brands for a fraction of the cost”.

Mile Marker places a premium on deep knowledge of how to target media appropriately and, crucially, how to measure it. Groome emphasizes eschewing “soft KPIs” like CTR or CPC in favor of hard attribution, whether that is retail sales or e-commerce results.

This rigorous devotion to analytics is validated by long-term client success stories like Freshpet. The brand, which has been with the agency since its launch, has grown to over $100 million in ad spend,. Freshpet founder and president Scott Morris credits the agency’s careful use of limited dollars for driving the brand’s consistent growth.

“I would say 70 to 80% of the growth every single year is driven by the media spending, by the marketing,” said Morris. “It’s been unbelievably consistent and productive over a decade… And by keeping that incredible level of analytics and data — and also no bullshit, no meetings where everyone’s waving wands and showing cool charts — that performance level that we have in our spend is exactly what we have to have each and every day.”