Types of Advertising Agencies

Advertising Agencies

 “An advertising agency is an independent organization of creative people and business people who specialize in developing and preparing market plans, advertisements, and other promotional tools”.

-American Association of Advertising

Organizations elect the outside agencies for their advertising and promotion needs for the following reasons:

• The skills offered
• Objectivity
• Experience

Types of Advertising Agencies

Full-Service Agencies

These agencies are

• Involved in account services, marketing planning and research, media planning and buying
• Involved in Sales promotion, Creative Services, and Interactive Media
• Large size agencies.
• Deals with all stages of advertisement.
• Different expert people for different departments.
• Starts work from gathering data and analyzing and ends on payment of bills to the media people.

 The various departments of a full-service agency include:

Account Services: The link between the advertising agency and its clients and are responsible for coordinating the agency’s efforts in planning, creating and producing ads.

Marketing Services: Involves in research, strategy and planning and media to plan and execute their client’s advertising programs.

Creative Services: Include artists and copywriters who are responsible for the creation and execution of the clients advertising messages.

Creative services may also include print and broadcast production departments which are responsible for actually producing the advertising messages and putting them into final form.

Management and Finance: Involved in basic operating and administrative functions such as accounting, finance, and human resources.

Read: Organizing for Advertising and Promotion

Creative Boutiques

• Small sized agencies with their own copywriters, directors, and creative people.
• Do not have media, research or account planning capabilities.
• No other function is performed other than creating actual ads.
• Creates very creative and innovative ads.

 Interactive Agencies

• Modernized modes of communication are used.
• Uses online advertisements, sending personal messages on mobile phones, etc.
• The ads produced are very interactive, having very new concepts, and very innovative.

Read: The Promotional Mix

 Media Buying Agencies

• Specialize in media planning and buying
• Buys the place to advertise and sells it to the advertisers.
• Sells time in which advertisement will be placed.
• Schedules slots at different television channels and radio stations.
• Clients are consolidating their media buying to save money and improve media efficiency.
• Finally supervises or checks whether the ad has been telecasted at opted time and place or not.

Read: Traditional Response Hierarchy Models

In-House Agencies

• As good as the full-service agencies.
• The big organization prefers these types of agencies which are inbuilt and work only for them.
• These agencies work as per the requirements of the organizations.