First the news, then the music industry, now advertising: the digital revolution is bringing down Madison Avenue like no other force has in the history of the Ad Agency. Some estimate that over 160,000 people have lost their jobs in the advertising industry in the past 2 years. I don't think that's the recession's fault. Not completely anyway. The slow down in the economy just accelerated the demise of the old  advertising agency model, but the new ad world looks vastly different than the bloated budgets of the 30-second spot and national media buys. Here's what I see happening:

National spots will fade into individually customized pitch. Interestingly, I sent out a tweet this past weekend that showed my displeasure with the Audi/Jaguar/Porsche dealership in Nashville:

A few hours later, I heard from a dealership. It wasn't from the Audi/Jaguar/Porsche but from the local Cadillac twitter account, Crestgroup:

I'm quite impressed with Crest's ability to monitor "car noise" in the Nashville social media stream and to reach out to me with a very custom and effective message.

The advertising agency of the future will become a technology agency. Technology is no longer something we use. It's now a part of who we are. Have you been in a mall lately? Have you seen the hoards of young and old walking and typing on their mobile devices? My iPhone was stolen and for the few hours I didn't have it, my life was upside down. I wrote about it here. Communication and technology are so closely woven that the Ad Agency of the future cannot afford to develop marketing strategies without developing technology alongside it.

Product, messaging and advertising will be a collaborative process. Instead of the current silo approach where a team develops the product, another positions it and someone else  promotes it without much interactivity--if any at all, a successful product launch will be a multi-discipline effort.  A team of creatives, developers, brand managers, social media specialists, will work together from the inception of the project and input from marketing will help product development from day one. Instead of clients showing up with a product ready to go to market and saying, "here it is; now sell it," the agency of the future will not only help sell, but often design and deploy new ideas. They will be at the table from ideation to launch.

How has advertising changed in your experience?