The New Interactive Agency Landscape

The agency model is crumbling under the weight of continual innovation in digital channels, the changing media behaviors of the always-addressable customer, and marketers' frustration with a siloed approach to digital marketing. But the solution is not more agency consolidation to create the "one-stop shop" for all marketing needs. Instead, interactive marketers must expect — and demand — that agencies overhaul their role from agents of the brand to value exchange mediators, balancing the brand's goals against its audience's needs. This report describes the four types of mediators that will emerge by 2015 as today's agencies attempt to reinvent their identities, transform their services, and escape being kicked to the curb while competitors scramble for dominance in this new order.