Where’s the media agency heading? To answer this question properly, we first need to look back to appreciate where media agencies came from, and perhaps where many are still finding themselves today.
AND SO IT BEGINS
The origins of the media agency are simple. Media agencies were born to sit between a buyer (the advertiser) and a seller (the media owner) to buy the media space that the advertiser needed. With relatively few media choices to make, the agency was able to use wholesale buying to achieve discounts that the marketer couldn’t have achieved on their own. Meanwhile, media owners were able to manage their cost of sale by offering commissions to agencies, thereby reducing their overheads.
Buying was the value exchange media agencies were based on and how they made their money.
