LONDON: Most agencies believe that their clients do not have a clear understanding of how changing media consumption habits will affect their business, a new report has said.

Advertising software business Mediaocean and digital marketing company Econsultancy carried out in-depth interviews with 13 agency and CMO executives and an online survey amongst 150 agencies for the report.

They found that 68% of companies said media convergence was leading to an more integrated approach to media planning. But 84% felt clients did not yet fully realise the implications for their business.

Agencies themselves were positive about the effects of convergence, as 60% of those surveyed thought it delivered more measurable campaign effectiveness, while 41% said it had driven direct sales uplift.

A significant proportion (59%) also said media convergence had led to higher digital budgets, with offline budgets suffering as a result.

In addition, respondents noted the greater opportunities for personalisation that digital offered with most indicating their clients were expecting this service from them. Some 61% of agencies anticipated delivering more targeted messaging and a similar proportion said clients wanted to see more customer interaction online.

Despite this, just 31% of the agencies surveyed said they had seen active moves by their clients to restructure their organisations in order to more effectively manage integrated campaigns. And fully 73% thought that a "siloed" organisational structure was the main reason stopping this process.

"Convergence is delivering greater transparency in both data and analytics," Sarah Lawson Johnston, Mediaocean's managing director for UK & Ireland, told The Drum. "However, marketers are struggling to grapple with how they'll handle the last mile of breaking down silos."

The client view came from Kristof Fahy, CMO of bookmaker William Hill, who argued that agencies could be doing more. "I want agencies to bring me the little things that are interesting," he said.

"Most marketers I meet are avid consumers of blogs, always on the lookout for the next trend and this is something the agency partners should be doing and bringing to us," he added.

Data sourced from The Drum; additional content by Warc staff