The world’s leading corporations have become “stateless,” and advertising agencies have also followed their footsteps to business frontiers around the world. As Armand Mattelart (1991:ix) has put it, “[t]he question of advertising has long ceased to be a national question…”

In 1960, only 17 percent of the ten largest US ad agencies’ total worldwide billings were generated from overseas markets; but by 1989 their overseas billings had risen to 54 percent (Kim, 1995:209). The overseas share in the worldwide income of the top 500 US-based advertising agencies grew from less than 25 percent (US$2.15 billion) in 1986 to more than 40 percent (US$7.15 billion) in 1995 (Advertising Age, April 1995:s15). The advertising agency Young & Rubicam, for instance, has established a global network of more than 300 offices, spanning from Africa and Asia to Europe and the Americas. Grey Advertising, founded in New York City in 1917 and still headquartered there, now operates in over fifty countries.