Publicis units land deals in U.S., Britain, France

PARIS Feb 27 (Reuters) - Publicis (PUBP.PA), the world's fourth-largest advertising group which has vowed to fight for advertising spending despite the economic slump, unveiled a string of contracts on Friday.

Its MediaVest USA unit was named "Agency Of Reference" for Comcast Corp's (CMCSA.O) online and offline planning and buying duties.

The deal with Comcast, the largest U.S cable operator, is worth an estimated at roughly $500 million per year, Publicis said. Other details were not available.

Separately, Starcom France won a four-year advertising deal with national health insurance agency CNAMTS. The budget is worth some 20 million euros ($25.4 million) per year.

Finally, Mars Petcare UK named another Publicis unit, Zenith Optimedia, to handle its 15 million pound ($21.4 million) media planning account, following a review. The business was until now handled by MediaCom, a unit of Britain's WPP (WPP.L).

Zenith Optimedia already handles the media buying for Mars.

Publicis Chief Executive Maurice Levy said earlier this month that the economic crisis made market visibility difficult but he was committed to winning market share this year and industry-best margins in 2009 ($1=.7865 Euro) ($1=.7004 Pound) (Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Hans Peters)