ADVERTISING AGENCY

An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising (and sometimes other forms of promotion) for its clients. An ad agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services. An agency can also handle overall marketing and branding strategies and sales promotions for its clients. Typical ad agency clients include businesses and corporations, non-profit organizations and government agencies. Agencies may be hired to produce television commercials and radio commercials as part of an advertising campaign.

Types of advertising agencies

Ad agencies come in all sizes and include everything from one or two-person shops (which rely mostly on freelance talent to perform most functions), small to medium sized agencies such as Traction (agency), large independents such as SMART and multi-national, multi-agency conglomerates such as Omnicom Group, WPP Group, Publicis, Interpublic Group of Companies and Havas.

Generalized advertising agencies

Creative agencies specialize in "creative" or design-based business models: their basic interest is in the creation of the advertisement or branding. Other ("fullservice") agencies offer design in conjunction with media buying. Media agencies concentrate on media buying. (In the 1990s, media and creative were often unbundled in the interests of economies of scale in buying media.) The client who chooses to use a design only based advertising agency must assume some of the advertising purchasing. These are activities that are routinely handled by an agency with a media buying option. Media buying agencies are oftentimes a good choice for larger businesses. These agencies can assume greater responsibility for the strategic planning and function of an advertising campaign. The advantage to a design only-based agency is there is

no third-party ordering the service. In turn, cost can be lower and is oftentimes a good alternative for smaller businesses.

Specialist advertising agencies

In addition to the full-service, general-line advertising agencies, there are also agencies that specialize in particular kinds of advertising: recruitment, helpwanted, medical, classified, industrial, financial, direct-response, retail, yellow pages, theatrical/entertainment, investment, travel, and so on. Specialization occurs in such fields for a variety of reasons. Often, as in recruitment advertising, for example, specialized media or media uses are involved that require knowledge and expertise not ordinarily found in a generalline agency. In other cases, such as medical or industrial advertising, the subject is technical and requires that writers and artists have training in order to write meaningful advertising messages about it. Such specialist advertising agencies are also usually "full-service," in that they offer all the basic advertising agency services in their area of specialization plus other, peripheral advertising services related to their area of specialization.

In-House advertising agencies

Some advertisers believe that they can provide such advertisingservices to themselves at a lower cost than would be charged by an outside agency. An InHouse agency is a team that focuses on one goal to sell the companies product, they will handle all aspects of the brand. In-House is better if a company is looking to build up an image over a number of years, therefore creating continuity between all aspects of separate campaigns.

Interactive agencies
Interactive agencies may differentiate themselves by offering a mix of web design / web development, search engine marketing, internet advertising/marketing, or e-business/e-commerce consulting. Interactive agencies rose to prominence before the traditional advertising agencies fully embraced the Internet. Offering a wide range of services, some of the interactive agencies grew very rapidly, although some have downsized just as rapidly due to changing market conditions. Today, the most successful

interactive agencies are defined as companies that provide specialized advertising and marketing services for the digital space. The digital space is defined as any multimedia-enabled electronic channel that an advertiser's message can be seen or heard from. The 'digital space' translates to the Internet, kiosks, CD-ROMs, DVDs, and lifestyle devices (iPod, PSP, and mobile). Interactive agencies function similarly to advertising agencies, although they focus solely on interactive advertising services. They deliver services such as strategy, creative, design, video, development, programming (Flash and otherwise), deployment, management, and fulfillment reporting. Often, interactive agencies provide: digital lead generation, digital brand development, interactive marketing and communications strategy, rich media campaigns, interactive video brand experiences, Web 2.0 website design and development, e-learning Tools, email marketing, SEO/SEM services, PPC campaign management, content management services, web application development, and overall data mining & ROI assessment. The recent boost in the interactive agencies can also be attributed to the rising popularity of web-based social networking and community sites. The creation of sites such as MySpace,Facebook and YouTube have sparked market interest, as some interactive agencies have started offering personal and corporate community site development as one of their service offerings. It still may be too early to tell how agencies will use this type of marketing to monetize client ROI, but all signs point to online networking as the future of brand marketing and Interactive being the core of Brand's Communication and Marketing Strategy. Due to the social networking explosion, new types of companies are doing reputation management. This type of agency is especially important if a company needs online damage control. For example, disgruntled customers can quickly and easily damage a company's reputation via social networking site. Reputation management companies help stem the negative information or misinformation that might proliferate in their absence.

Search engine agencies

Lately, pay per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) firms have been classified by some as 'agencies' because they create media and implement media purchases of text based (or image based, in some instances of search marketing) ads. This relatively young industry has been slow to adopt the term

'agency', however with the creation of ads (either text or image) and media purchases, they do technically qualify as 'advertising agencies'.

Social media agencies

Social media agencies specialize in promotion of brands in the various social media platforms like blogs, social networking sites, Q&A sites, discussion forums, microblogs etc. The two key services of social media agencies are:

social media marketing online reputation management

Healthcare communications agencies

Healthcare communications agencies specialize in strategic communications and marketing services for the Healthcare and Life Science industries. These agencies distinguish themselves through an understanding of the strict labeling and marketing guidelines mandated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and industry group guidelines, most notably ADVAMED and PHARMA.

Medical education agencies

Medical education agencies specialize in creating educational content for the Healthcare and Life Science industries. These agencies typically specialize in one of two areas: Promotional education - education and training materials tied to the promotion of a given product or therapy

Continuing medical education - accredited education and training materials created for continuing physician and medical professional education.

Other agencies

While not advertising agencies, enterprise technology agencies often work in tandem with advertising agencies to provide a specialized subset of services offered by some interactive agencies: Web 2.0 website design and development, Content management systems, web application development, and other intuitive technology solutions for the web, mobile devices and emerging digital platforms. The student-run advertising agency model, which mainly operates out of university classrooms or as a student groups, provides free advertising services to clients in exchange for the educational opportunity.

STRUCTURE OD ADVERTISING AGENCY

Broadly there are 6 departments in any advertising agency

Account Servicing Account Planning Media

Creative Production Finance and Accounting

Account service department The account service, or the account management department, is the link between the ad agency and its clients. Depending upon the size of the account and its advertising budget one or two account executives serve as liason to the client. The account executives job requires high degree of diplomacy and tact as misunderstanding may lead to loss of an account. The account executive is mainly responsible to gain knowledge about the clients business, profit goals, marketing problems and advertising objectives. The account executive is responsible for getting approved the media schedules, budgets and rough ads or story boards from the client. The next task is to make sure that the agency personnel produce the advertising to the clients satisfaction. The biggest role of the account executive is keeping the agency ahead of the client through follow-up and communications. Media department

The responsibility of the agencys media department is to develop a media plan to reach the target audience effectively in a cost effective manner. The staff analyses, selects and contracts for media time or space that will be used to deliver the ad message. This is one of the most important decisions since a significantly large part of the clients money is spent on the mediatime and/or space. The media department has acquired increasing importance in an agencys business as large advertisers seem to be more inclined to consolidate media buying with one or few agencies thereby saving money and improving media efficiency. Creative department To a large extent, the success of an ad agency depends upon the creative department responsible for the creation and execution of the advertisements. The creative specialists are known as copywriters. They are the ones who conceive ideas for the ads and write the headlines, subheads and the body copy. They are also involved in deciding the basic theme of the advertising campaign, and often they do prepare the rough layout of the print ad or the commercial story board. Creation of an ad is the responsibility of the copywriters and the art department decides how the ad should look. Production department After the completion and approval of the copy and the illustrations the ad is sent to the production department. Generally agencies do not actually produce the finished ads; instead they hire printers, photographers, engravers, typographers and others to complete the finishedad. For the production of the approved TV commercial, the production department may supervise the casting of actors to appear in the ad, the setting for scenes and selecting an independent production studio. The production department sometimes hires an outside director to transform the creative concept to a commercial. Finance and accounting department An advertising agency is in the business of providing services and must be managed that way. Thus, it has to perform various functions such as accounting, finance, human resources etc. it must also attempt to generate new business. Also this department is important since bulk of the agencys income approx. 65% goes as salary and benefits to the employees.