In 5 years where do you think the ad industry is going? As a whole. Not just your agency. Across the board.

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The proliferation of MBAs in client roles will continue, and the work will continue to get worse as a result.

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MBA programs have two issues. 1) they’re usually 15 years out of date 2) they give a person with an MBA the feeling they’re the smartest person in the room. Both features are lethal when trying to do modern, culturally relevant work with an agency

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Break up the holding companies.

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We saw what happened with the banks :(

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Improved access to analytics and data will hopefully force the business to a more creative strategy than social/digital at any cost. If we all actually start looking at the data, creative will shift from banner ads and mindless social as a primary objective to strategies focused on work that works, as opposed to work that sounds cutting edge to an uneducated client.

That being said, the opposite will probably happen, and the banner ads will overtake us all like a zombie apocalypse and we’ll all go in house 🤷🏻‍♂️

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It also depends on what our definition of “works” is. For the clients who view that through the lens of just efficiency and short-term ROI (so, a lot of them), it will still be an uphill battle.

More agency consolidations. There are too many of them fighting for the same work.
NYC office space will continue to get more expensive and agencies will try to cut costs from
rent and more people will be able to work from
Home or work remotely.
The presidential race for 2020 (and its outcome) will play a role in what happens, too

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In-house agencies will increase in both popularity as well as quality

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Love to see those numbers because unless in-house is a balance book squeeze play for cheaper, it still has to pay talent-attracting salaries + benefits. So, okay, you avoid the 4As target of 20% gross agency profit (nets to about 3% after taxes)—but that doesn’t actually eliminate that cost component because companies need to make a profit on their people as well. But all that’s a red herring: the real question isn’t who’s better on the bottom operational line, it’s who gets the job done. And, due respect, that’s not really about the structure—you’ll recall Intel crashed Agency Inside (for reasons not clear)—it’s about the fact that different models work better, or worse, in different contexts.

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The trend towards in-house will continue. Because beancounters and CMOs are seeing that it doesn’t take fancy pants, overpaid ad wizards to churn out feed content. Heck, AI can do it. So along with the move to in-house, cheap open offices, downward pressure on salaries (and the subsequent ageism) will continue unabated.

The dwindling sexy bits, like Superbowl spots, will be the last “cool” carrot dangling. But now that everyone’s an expert at content, that content will likely go in-house too (it already has). And as “fast” and “cheap” and “measurable” rule (stirred-in with the age-old middle-management fears), notable work will be an even rarer event. Like a unicorn.

Heck, they shouldn’t call them Lions anymore. Call them unicorns.

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In-house will grow until the next recession has truly hit. Then those in-house units will get crushed to cut costs. AOR isn’t going to come back. The industry is going to continue towards project-based work. Legacy agencies will slowly decline as clients will want to pay for non-union talent. There will be an explosion of tiny 3-5 person agencies with funny sounding names all going after the same tech projects.

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Fewer AOR contracts for agencies will force them all to convert more and more of their staff to freelance. We’ll look more like post production houses, where the absolute best are kept under contract and the rest are brought in temporarily as projects arrive. The in-house thing I believe will fizzle. There are enormous overhead costs with maintaining an in-house agency and it’s easier to just dole out stuff on a project basis. Likewise, the project based stuff allows marketing managers to move their costs around to minimize losses on the financial reports during bad quarters...keeps their bonus checks coming in. Overall- scrappy, agile and rewarding for top talent - pretty awful for everyone else.

This gonna sound glib, but it’s gonna be a lot like today, only different. Not as grandly as some might predict, but more than just somewhat. And the root cause of that change, and how the industry evolves, will be less about structural problems with the status quo and much more about the changing nature of the audience, the channels, and the global economics that far exceed the limited bounds of our industry. This isn’t going to be about the holding company’s race to the data-driven bottom or even the trend to in-sourcing: the only way we get ahead of it is to find ways to talk to people in ways they actually want to hear. We need to get our heads out the hall of mirrors ‘cause all you can see in there is just us.

Work-wise: Less and less flat, passive and broad stroke creative / more useful, targeted creative that benefits people.

Org and Brand-wise: More consolidation of agencies. Holding companies take a step back and become legal footnotes in website footers. Less “we’re a massive, unified worldwide army” and more “we’re seasoned veterans stationed in a small but nimble creative outpost near you, with a parent company who is so discreet (only here to provide funding, and handle administrative and legal BS) that you forget the holding company exists.”

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