Jeff Jarvis predicts a devastating upheaval for media and advertising agencies in a recent BuzzMachine post. Anyone involved in the Media, Marketing or Advertising industry should read this post. Most importantly, Jarvis accuses agencies of slowing down the natural progression and shift to new forms of media due to reliance on obsolete, siloed financial structures.
Advertising is the next big industry to suffer huge upheaval thanks to the internet. They may think they’re already there, but they’re not, not by a long shot. In fact, it is the ad industry that is holding up the progress of other industries — newspapers, TV, radio, cable — that are already getting tromped on by that elephant. Advertisers can get away with moving slowly — for now — because they are the ones with the money. Funny how that works. But this won’t last for long, as one client and then one agency discovers that the lazy, traditional, one-stop-shopping of TV upfront and the big-media lunch circuit is inefficient, wasteful, untargeted, irrelevant, and ultimately damned irritating to your customers.
Media agencies make money on commission. Why would a traditional planning agency recommend spending on interactive media if the firm makes a greater commission on print and television? The Television Upfront has kept mid-level agency VP’s and traditional content providers fat with cash. Ofcourse there will be a hesitentcy to restructure at these companies – the mid-level decision-makers have the most to lose.
Related Articles:
The End of The Big Advertising Agency
Advertising Agencies Thinking Differently
Saatchi Reacts to New Media
The Television Upfront: Is The Future Finally Here?
Technorati Tags: jeff jarvis, buzzmachine, marketing, advertising, agencies, media, marketing.fm
June 26th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
Yes! The inherent power of a few “experets” being leveled by the power of the interenet:
http://kevinperkins.wordpress.com/2006/06/25/advertising-has-changed-get-with-the-program-people/
This idea is also well described in Freakonomics… a great book that explains away assumptions through empirical thinking/measurement. I liken the ad business like real estate agents, which Steven Levitt beautifully describes as people with knowledge that if widely distributed, makes them powerless:
http://www.freakonomics.com/ch2.php
Check it out!