The Challenge Ahead for Media Agencies: A Sick Goose

The network media agencies are full of contradictions. On the one hand, they have smart people who talk knowledgeably about the pressing issues of our time. On the other they make oh-so-secret deals designed to benefit themselves, over and above the needs of their clients.

These deals and the income from them has for many years been crucial to their parents, the major holding companies. The media agency divisions have been their star performers, but now the engine that’s been keeping the whole enterprise flying along is spluttering.

A major fix is needed, but it’s hard to replace an engine at 30,000 feet.

Someone once described these media agency networks to me as being like casinos. There’s the front of house dancing girls, the glamorous waitresses, the charming croupiers. And then in the backroom, away from the light and the thick carpets there’s the money men.

You’re persuaded to enter by the glamour, but at the end of the day the odds are not in your favour. The house never loses.

Agencies are full of experts, or so they claim. A few years ago every serious agency talked up its marketing science capabilities. World class, we were told. But, as the agencies themselves have pointed out in a different context, there’s a problem marking your own homework.

Nowadays every agency has brilliant ad tech capabilities. World class. Well, if the Google/YouTube story shows us anything, it seems the much-vaunted brand safety systems might not be all that they’re cracked up to be.

Go back further and several major agencies claimed they were the communication world’s equivalent of McKinsey. World class consultants.

We’ll see how real that claim turns out to be as the likes of Accenture turn their attention to helping clients tackle the intricacies of online advertising, by (in many cases) building in-house tech stacks for major advertisers. …

… read on at bjanda.com

Originally posted by Brian Jacobs on The Cog Blog at BJ&A
4th April 2017