THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF MEDIA AGENCIES?: #MediaSnack Ep. 25

On this week's episode. We review some fascinating data published by AdAge, Agency Report 2016 which for the first time really brings the threat of “consultant” businesses to the traditional agency business into stark focus. Based on annual revenues, the somewhat tyranny of the “Big Six” which for many years has been WPP, Omnicom, Publicis, IPG, DentsuAegis and Havas has been broken. Accenture Interactive is now the sixth largest global agency by revenue having achieved $2.9bn in revenue for 2015, edging Havas Group out of the top six. We consider this trend, look further down the ranking and realise that the majority of the top ten digital agencies by revenue are now owned by consulting firms like Deloitte and PwC rather than WPP and Publicis. What impact is this making on the industry and is this the beginning of the end of the agency holding model and their historic dominance of the agency market?Next we look at SAP XM, a new media trading technology launched this week. Its another fascinating disruptor to the traditional media agency model, giving marketers self-serve tools at scale to connect them with media inventory in a transparent market place.Finally we address an article written by Dominic Grounsell (the Global Marketing Director of Travelex) called “Why the marketing industry is failing to attract the best and brightest talent”. He suggests that the talent question should be keeping marketers awake at night.We also announce the launch of our latest 7Ts Investigation into the 7 drivers of competitive advantage in media: Talent. Today please check out the ID Comms 2016 Media Talent Survey which is open until 3rd June 2016. If you complete the survey you will get priority access to the results when published in a few weeks time.