Advertising Agency

Advertising Agency is an organization that, on behalf of clients, drafts and produces advertisements, places advertisements in the media, and plans advertising campaigns. Advertising agencies may also perform other marketing functions, including market research and consulting. An Advertising Agency or ad agency is a service provider that works for clients to create an effective and goal oriented advertising campaign aimed at representing the Company positively in the eyes of its target customers.

Advertising Agencies vary in size - from a couple of people handling all responsibilities to a medium or large sized agency that hires specialized professionals to function each department. It has been generally seen that Full Service Ad Agencies are well equipped to plan and create advertising campaigns for a range of media including TV commercials, Radio jingles, print advertisements etc. Depending on the budget, clients select their agency.

Administration is the agency's management and accounting operations. Account management is typically handled by an account executive who serves as liaison between agency and client, keeping communication flowing between the two and heading the team of specialists assigned by the agency to the client.

The creative department is where the advertising is developed from idea to ad. The media department makes the decisions about where and when to place ads then buys the appropriate time or space.

Market research tests product viability in the market, the best venues for commercial messages, the nature and characteristics of potential buyers, and sometimes the effectiveness of the ads. Many larger agencies have public relations departments as well.

Advertising is a social and business process responsible for the mass communication of the information. Today, advertising is the fastest growing industry that has come to stay so long as the forces of competition are at constant work deciding the destinies of the firms.

Advertising industry is social institution born specially to fulfill the human need to acquire and send the information about the availability of products, services and ideas. It is the industry with a net- work of variety of divergent forces and elements. The structure of this industry gives us the picture of the active participants in the widest range of advertising activities.

Professionals at advertising agencies and other advertising organizations offer a number of functions including:

· Account / Management – Within an advertising agency the account manager or account executive is tasked with handling all major decisions related to a specific client. These responsibilities include locating and negotiating to acquire clients. Once the client has agreed to work with the agency, the account manager works closely with the client to develop an advertising strategy. For very large clients, such as large consumer products companies, an advertising agency may assign an account manager to work full-time with only one client and, possibly, with only one of the client’s product lines. For smaller accounts an account manager may simultaneously manage several different, though non-competing, accounts.

· Creative Team –The principle role of account managers is to manage the overall advertising campaign for a client, which often includes delegating selective tasks to specialists. For large accounts one task account managers routinely delegate involves generating ideas, designing concepts and creating the final advertisement, which generally becomes the responsibility of the agency’s creative team. An agency’s creative team consists of specialists in graphic design, film and audio production, copy writing, computer programming, and much more.

· Researchers – Full-service advertising agencies employ market researchers who assess a client’s market situation, including understanding customers and competitors, and also are used to test creative ideas. For instance, in the early stages of an advertising campaign researchers may run focus group sessions with selected members of the client’s target market in order to get their reaction to several advertising concepts. Researchers are also used following the completion of an advertising campaign to measure whether the campaign reached its objectives.

· Media Planners – Once an advertisement is created, it must be placed through an appropriate advertising media. Each advertising media, of which there are thousands, has its own unique methods for accepting advertisements, such as different advertising cost structures (i.e., what it costs marketers to place an ad), different requirements for accepting ad designs (e.g., size of ad), different ways placements can be purchased (e.g., direct contact with media or through third-party seller), and different time schedules (i.e., when ad will be run). Understanding the nuances of different media is the role of a media planner, who looks for the best media match for a client and also negotiates the best deals.