Structuring the (ad) agency

Roderick White

This paper acknowledges that agencies have come under a variety of pressures in the last 20 years, which have greatly impacted both their structures and functions.

Structuring the (ad) agency

Roderick White

The past 20 years have seen a blizzard of changes assailing the ad agency world, and this most conservative of industries has had to think seriously about reinventing itself in a more modern and market-responsive form.

Several factors are involved in this:

  • ‘unbundling’ - the separation of (in particular) the media planning and buying function from the former full-service agency (22, 23, 24), itself partly driven by the quest for economies of scale, and partly by
  • cost pressures (18, 22), imposed by advertisers increasingly questioning whether they are getting value for money...

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