Dissolution or Revolution – Will Traditional Advertising Agencies Finally Get Onboard the Digital Bus?

The traditional advertising agency is in a state of flux. Long accustomed to creating campaigns for print, radio, television and direct mail clients, the traditional agency model has been slow to adjust to the demands of digital advertising, namely online, viral and mobile marketing. When you consider that advertising is rooted in creativity, that outside the box strategy drives success within the medium, the unwillingness of, or perhaps more frighteningly the ineffectualness of traditional markets to evolve is rather mind-boggling. But on the heels of the Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) Council’s latest State of Marketing survey, the potentially devastating financial fallout to conventional advertising agencies may be precisely the spark the genre needs to get with the interactive age.

The survey reveals that senior marketing experts are anticipating a significant shift away from traditional agencies in favor of increases in digitally-minded hires, in-house training solutions and working relationships with digital agencies. In keeping with the study’s findings a new breed of consultant is springing forth to provide systemic, infrastructural and technological advances to marketers in lieu of old-fashioned advertising agencies. Given that the CMO manages nearly $200 billion is annual marketing budgets, the figurative dark cloud hovering over the traditional model is becoming more demoralizing by the minute.

Traditional advertising’s dilemma has been performance and affiliate marketing’s gain. PPC and SEO are not only cost-effective alternatives to conventional advertising, they bolster visibility increasing ROI. And yet with all the gloom and doom talk, traditional advertising has not picked out its coffin just yet. Last time I checked, television watching and radio listening hasn’t gone the way of the dinosaur. The T-Rex never did get with evolution. It didn’t adapt. There’s still time for traditional advertising to embrace digital. But it would be unwise to wait much longer.