““The answer is not mergers. The answer for the advertising industry is to change its model and the way it prices its product. Agencies give away their highest value product – their strategic thinking – for free and try to make a profit off implementation work. However, implementation is often a commodity. It reduces the client-agency relationship to a mere transactional level, of buyer and vendor. And, as time marches on and agency margins drop, the cost of doing business for the agency goes up, putting further strain on the relationship. That can be directly traced to the willingness of agencies, unique among service providers, to give their product away for free.””
