Cracking under pressure: current trends in the global advertising industry

Abstract

The digitisation of advertising has profoundly altered the comfortable accommodation between advertisers, agencies and media which characterised the latter half of the last century, in spite of the advertising industry having been pro-active in building up its ad-tech expertise to meet the disintermediation challenge offered by Google and Facebook. The holding groups that oversee the several agency networks that constitute the global industry also have had to adopt defensive strategies in the wake of the global financial crisis. The groups have had to accept the cost disciplines imposed upon them by advertisers and to consolidate their services. Furthermore, at the same time as they deal with disintermediation and the effects of financialisation, the holding groups must struggle to demonstrate their continued functional relevance for consumer capitalism in the face of two major institutional threats: clients setting up their own advertising agencies in-house and management consultancies offering advertising services to their clients.