Porter: Smart Ads Only Threaten Agencies That Don’t Deliver Strategy

As ad technology advances, industry professionals continue to push the idea that small businesses can ditch their agency partners and take over their own online advertising. The latest development driving this conversation is Google Smart Ads, which purport to automate ad campaign creation, management and optimization.

But as Location3 CEO Alex Porter points out in a recent post on LSA Insider, that idea relies on the assumption that agencies are strictly execution-based – that at their most basic level, agencies only exist as a static middle man between businesses and their ad campaigns. Porter gives us a clearer picture of the role of the agency in an advertising landscape that increasingly features automation and machine learning and developing features like Google Smart Ads.

Here’s an excerpt from the post:

“But if an agency is looking at AdWords and Facebook as only parts of a greater strategy that includes attribution, organic, reputation management, social media, content, and design, then automation becomes an opportunity to save time and energy on tasks that were previously done manually. More than that, that time and energy can now be focused on processes that can’t be automated (for now) – creative and strategic leadership.”

For more insight, the entire post can be read here.