Summary
The days of trust between the ad agency and the technology advertiser will be a thing of the past. Gone will be those days when technology companies could give robust product roadmaps to their ad agencies trusting that they will not turn the table and use that information to negoatiate a better deal for themselves in use of that technology in order to compete with them, the technology company.
Analysis
The Kiss and Punch story is best captured by a single commentary by the author, "Spurred on by this (25% of Americans spend some 25% of their time on the Web) and the competitive threats coming from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, WPP has spent $1 billion acquiring digital firms in the last two years."
When we combine this with the acquisitions of Aquantive and Avenue A/ Razorfish by Microsoft and the appearance of IBM Interactive Services in the latest Agency Report by Advertising Age and it becomes very apparent that the world of advertising and the agency has been turned upside down. Also, consider that in the Forbes 2000 listing, published last month, Accenture is listed as a Software and Services company.
So let's look at the new short list of multi-billion dollar competitors in the world of digital advertsing and marketing services:
IBM Interactive
Microsoft
Accenture
WPP
Google
Yahoo
News Corp
Is it any wonder that Microsoft wanted to spend over $40B on Yahoo!. This is a new world and the competitors are many and quite varied. Hardware has morphed into sofware and services. Agencies, Consulting and Outsourcing are becoming full-flegded technology providers...and the Media and Software companies are trying to figure out what to do about Google and their advertising platform...
and who says the Internet is not a disruptive technology...
