The Advertising Agency Model is broken
April 9, 2007
Ad Agencies are like diapers and clients should change them often until they understand the concept of ROI, stop the drug addiction to flash, and try to help the client rather than hurt them in costs.
It the largest ‘shock’ online, Think Personality states that ‘the Ad Agency Model is Broken’. We feel however that they are not really 100% accurate. The Model isn’t broken, it’s virtually dead among smaller to mid sized firms, and is facing huge problems with larger firms. In short when there are agency reviews every 6 months, switching ad agencies like diapers, it means that there is a problem not with the Ad Agency, but rather with the entire Advertising Agency model.
The Article states “An agency that specializes in interactive marketing won’t tell you to do a print campaign because that’s not their strongest suit or who they have on the team. Do you really want an agency advising you on how to invest your big dollars in campaigns that they are staffed to create?
Or would you rather work with an agency who is not staffed to actually implement the work, but who is staffed to advise on what the best thing to do for you is, not for them?”
Is that why most Ad Agencies don’t employ search engine optimization best practices? Because they don’t have a clue of how it works nor to they have the staff to do it? Because the level of BS out there in terms of ‘All Flash, no Google sitemaps’ design for their InterActive projects?
It’s not so much as they are doing a disservice to their client, it’s the reason why they are doing this disservice. The point is that there are at most 10 or so respect SEO firms out there, and none of them are Ad Agencies in the traditional sense.
Search Engine Optimization is a full time job, some of the larger SEO firms have a dozen people or more working on it full time. So for an Ad Agency to say that they can do it ‘in house’ is more than a lie, it’s a theft. Because if the agency is saying they can do it in-house (in which they can’t) then bills the client for it… and their solution is to unleash a field of Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia Flash designers to built the ‘SEO friendly’ site is exactly 6 months prior to the client hitting the roof saying ‘what the hell did you people build me!?!!? Great looking site, too bad I am the only one looking at it.’
This is exactly what happens without SEO, of course there is always the alternative… something an ad agency either does by design (the smart ones) or because they are clueless (the dumb ones).. it’s to force the client to pay per click because the site was designed poorly initially, and now the company is tied to ad agency billable hours + Google, Yahoo and MSN pay per click charges to rank for keywords the website would of ranked for naturally if designed right.
In short it’s the Ad Agencies mission to make sure your site doesn’t rank, because how else could they get more billable hours for Pay per click management.
The model is broken, it would of been cheaper to hire out a professional search optimizer from the start from both a revenue and traffic level.
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