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It’s been a long time coming but ad agencies are nearing their end. Some will survive, a few will prosper, most will disappear or be merged into other organizations.
Their business practices and business model is no longer sustainable, and quite frankly, clients don’t see the value of what agencies bring to the table.
Yes. All of this, plus C-level compensations and bonuses going stratospheric. An emphasis on shareholders instead of cultivating and sustaining talented employees. Clients are moving things in-house because it’s cheaper than paying agencies. And in response, agencies are trying to win pitches by being the lowest bidder, not the smartest partner. Consulting companies are now successfully convincing clients they can do what agencies do. All of this means that the money coming into agencies is constantly shrinking and what little is left is not reinvested back into the employees or hiring experienced leadership. Somewhere, a clock is ticking.
It’s truly a scary time to be in the industry. I’m working my ass off to get client side ASAP. That’s where all the jobs are right now.
Same here
While everyone else has been enjoying economic expansion, publishing and advertising have never really recovered from the Great Recession. The ad industry has been on a downward trajectory since digital media was undercut by Google and Facebook, roughly around 2013. If you recall, 2012 was Facebook’s IPO and they didn’t even do mobile ads. Then they hired some ad people who taught them how to steal our business. Remember all those strategists in 2012 who kept begging reluctant clients to shift their TV media budgets over to Facebook, and teaching Facebook our media secrets? Yeah, well kills the agency.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/02/advertising-jobs-programmatic-tech/552629/
i think the agencies that will weather the next few years are the ones that are able to deliver measurable results with creativity wrapped around it. the ones that do one or the other are gonna either become a commodity (the former) or suffer the fate of BFG (the latter).
Screw this “end is nigh” BS and screw going in-house too. That bubble will burst soon enough. There’ll always be a need for premium agency expertise. I’m going all in on that.
There is no bloat. I can say with absolute certainty that senior leadership has been decimated across most agencies. It’s why there are so many people over 45 who cannot get jobs in agencies anymore. And it’s so ironic to me that when you are “in the trenches” doing the work (as you say), you are perfectly ok with firing leadership to cut costs. What happens when you spend your next 20 years in this biz and become a VP yourself? Are you going to take one for the team and voluntarily resign? Didn’t think so. We all age. We all get promoted. We all get laid off. It will happen to you as well unless you have a magical plan to become independently wealthy outside of this career path you’ve chosen. Just stick around and watch.
It’s been decking since 2017, but never like this
That Atlantic article crystallizes my feeling that it smells a lot like 2007 right now. Not saying advertising is the canary in the cliche—but going on the 4th or 5th recession in my career (got started last century—love/hate saying that), it’s always felt like bad news lands here first. Add in the impact of the point that Google is history’s biggest ad agency, and, well, anyone for a big tasty bite of steaming shit sandwich? Of course, this WOULD be the time I’m trying to make a Madonna-like career reinvention (into directing), but, hell, we started the latest venture in the middle of dotbomb/911—and that was a lot of good years ago (deleting 2008/9 from memory banks. Beep!).
Apart from the factors listed above, I think the industry is also saturated with many people. Specifically for designers and art directors, Cheap software and more access to education has allowed more people to enter in the field. Which is great. Anyone who wants to do this line of work, should be able to. But, now it’s more competitive. High supply but not enough demand. This forces many designers and art directors to learn additional skills such as ux/ui, animation, video and audio editing, etc. just to stay competitive. And a lot of times, job apps want you to be experts in all fields.
Better to go client side now vs just waiting for the bottom to drop out.
So without getting political please, but how do y’all think Elizabeth Warren’s plan to break up the big tech giants (Facebook, Google and Amazon) would affect the whole advertising industry? Positively, negatively, or neutral?