In the beginning, Ad Agencies and Internet Companies didn’t mix.  Ad Agency initially discounted Internet Marketing and continued steering their customers, both large and small, to other advertising vehicles.  More importantly, the Ad Agencies wanted to control their client’s ENTIRE advertising campaign – especially Ad placement.  Realizing that Internet Marketing would infringe dramatically on this control, Ad Agencies went to great lengths to ensure that their clients were sheltered from Internet Marketing campaigns.

As with other technology advancements, once the Internet Marketing “Genie” got out of the bottle, Ad Agencies found stuffing it back into the bottle difficult.  The more they pushed, the more data appeared from different sources stating that Internet Marketing was producing results.  More importantly, Internet Marketing offer one benefit that other Ad Agency programs couldn’t – ROI!

Internet Marketing, for the first time, tracked PPC Ad Conversions in addition to PPC impressions and to PPC clicks.  I imagine most Ad Agencies felt lots of pressure from their clients to become more accountable.  Likewise, numerous Ad Agencies clients began filtering more and more of their advertising budget to Internet Marketing – PPC campaigns in particular.

So the Ad Agencies were forced to offer Internet Marketing and PPC campaigns to their clients or risk losing even more of their advertising dollars.  The most recent evidence of Ad Agencies aligning more closely with the giants in the Internet Marketing space, is the significant presence of Google and Microsoft at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.  This festival draws Ad Agencies from around the globe.

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO and Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO attend the conference for the first time.  Why? Simple, when one of the largest Ad Agencies in the World, WPP Group, spends nearly $1B annually on PPC campaigns, then the Ad Agencies finally have something to offer to the Internet Marketing companies – commitment!