• by April 19, 2011

Omnicom Group quietly purchased Fanscape during the first quarter, one of the few social media agencies that began in the 1990s. The acquisition was revealed as part of Omnicom's quarterly earnings call Tuesday morning.

Los Angeles-based Fanscape started in 1998 as a way for music fans to communicate with bands, but later turned to brand marketing, and with the explosion of social media, has boasted clients ranging from Hotels.com and Monster to M&Ms and State Farm Insurance, for which it has recently worked on a Facebook photo-tagging promotion.

John Wren, Omnicom Group president and CEO, pointed to Fanscape -- plus the previously announced February purchases of online community builder Communispace and tech PR/social media firm Voce Communications -- as key digital expansion highlights during the first quarter. All three acquired companies are now part of Omnicom's Diversified Agency Services network, with Fanscape in DAS' Marketing Arm and Voce in the Porter Novelli group.

Another first-quarter highlight, Wren said, was data-sharing deals with Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL, announced in March. Together with a similar 2010 arrangement made with Google, the partnerships provide Omnicom with new ad-targeting abilities across the networks of four of the Web's largest players.

For the first quarter, Omnicom Group reported revenues of $3.153 billion, a 7.9% increase over the $2.920 billion it reported for the same period last year. Net income rose 23.6% to $201.9 million, from $163.4 million in the first quarter of 2010.