We all understand the concept of “specialization” and the potential benefit delivery for certain service providers in select industries. That said, the era of the digital media specialist agency may be drawing to a close.
Think about it, we have specialist agencies for programmatic advertising, paid search, organic search, social media, email, mobile marketing, website development, user experience, social, native and display advertising.
Why? What are the advantages that accrue to an advertiser from this level of specialization? More importantly, how many advertisers are equipped to engage with multiple media agency partners?
Integrating strategy and resource allocation decisions, coordinating roles and responsibilities and effectively managing relationships among several media agencies takes time, energy and money… assets that are tougher and tougher for marketers to come by. Not to mention, the additional costs incurred for overlapping agency services/personnel.
Specialist agencies aside, when it comes to digital media, advertisers are also contending with general market agencies, PR firms, multi-cultural, experiential and promotional agencies that are also involved with their digital marketing efforts. It is damn difficult for a marketing staff to coordinate and optimize digital communications along this many fronts, let alone integrate such efforts with an organization’s “traditional” media efforts. And, let’s face it, the task is not any easier (or cheaper) for an advertiser’s media agency-of-record to take the lead on this task and coordinate multiple disparate agencies working collaboratively and cohesively toward a common goal.
The ultimate question for advertisers may be, why take what is already a complex process and further complicate it by dividing efforts and resources across so many players?
In our contract compliance auditing and financial management practice we have seen advertisers pay a steep price for assembling agency networks that are too broad for their existing teams to effectively manage. This in turn leads to cost inefficiencies related to duplicative services and fees tied to the lack of clear role differentiation across agencies, and in turn, a reduction in working media. Say nothing of the impact on digital media effectiveness tied to communication and briefing gaps that inevitably arise in these scenarios. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned from the words of William Blake, 18th century English poet and painter:
“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom”
We believe that the time has come for advertisers to give more serious consideration to streamlining their agency networks in general, and specifically to pare back the number of agency partners involved with their digital media efforts… beginning with “specialist” shops.
A great place to start is to evaluate the potential for centralizing media planning for traditional and digital media. This is a logical “first step” and will allow marketing organizations to better leverage their data, to improve their targeting and segmentation schema, enhance their resource allocation decisions and integrate all facets of their communication plans. Additional benefits from such a strategy include more collaborative and improved media briefings and streamlined communications across agency partners. Similarly, when it comes to media buying, focusing on fewer partners makes it easier to leverage an organization’s overall media spend, optimize sponsorship and value-add opportunities across media properties, and to minimize agency fees by eliminating redundant buying activities across partner shops.
Major holding company media agencies and larger independent media firms, with broad resource offerings and the scale to provide “one-stop” service certainly stand to benefit from consolidation. As do ad technology firms such as Adobe, Oracle and Google that provide advertisers with the tools to manage certain digital functions in-house. It should be noted that while the large media networks of a holding company will benefit, specialized, stand alone digital media shops within those holding companies may face challenges related to such a consolidation.
In closing, we wanted to address the topic of the “rise of the management consultancies” as legitimate competitors to traditional agencies. As it relates to media planning and placement, we believe that the large ad agencies and holding companies will retain an edge in this area for some time to come. However, vulnerability in the areas of strategic consulting and customer connectivity (i.e. data integration, user experience and system development) is where we believe consulting firms will continue to make significant inroads with CMOs as marketers seek to fulfill corporate mandates to assist in digitally transforming their businesses. As this is occurring, some agencies have announced plans to expand their resource offerings to compete with the likes of Accenture, IBM, PwC and Deloitte in this area. Realistically, at least in the near-term, agency constraints on talent and functional expertise represent significant hurdles before an attack in this area can be mounted… while concurrently defending their current base of business.