The traditional roles of media owners, agencies and advertisers will continue to blur over the next few years, as each focuses on generating marketing revenue streams instead of advertising dollars. This comes from Richard Willingham, CEO of motum b2b, as he spoke at a recent Association of Medical Media event.
Willingham, the newly-elected Chairman of the BPA Worldwide Board of Directors, was on hand to share his views on the future of the media industry and he gave the crowd plenty to think about.
According to Willingham, many of today’s agencies are now creating content, a role which at one time was the sole domain of media companies. Further, agencies are building databases of qualified marketing contacts for their clients. When those databases are fully integrated, there is the potential for an agency to serve many different clients as effectively as media owners do now.
At the same time, media owners are offering creative design services since, at the b-to-b level, much of the media buying is being done direct and advertisers are looking for design assistance.
So where does this leave the industry’s traditional three-legged model of media owners, agencies and advertisers? Perhaps with one less leg as media houses provide the “total solution” of content, design and databases, and ad agencies offer the same service package.
