• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, July 26, 2012

Former Madison Avenue economic guru and current Wall Street analyst Brian Wieser has given a pretty good history lesson on the evolution of the modern day ad agency leading up to Madison Avenue’s current quagmire, but he says the notion that digital media has been facilitating the “disintermediation” of ad agencies is way overblown, and probably plain wrong.

In fact, he says it is “rooted in a lot of ignorance” about what’s really going on.

“Digital is an opportunity for us,”  Wieser said, either forgetting that he was no longer in his former agency role, or using the royal “us” to refer to the agency folks attending his presentation at OMMA RTB in Los Angeles.

The problem, he says, is that the senior management running big agency holding companies isn’t giving them the resources to be truly opportunistic about it.

“Go ahead,” he said mimicking an agency chief, and then in a hushed voice, added, “just don't spend too much.”

That, says Wieser,” is the overriding theme on Madison Avenue, and why agencies haven’t seized more of the digital day the way they had, say television in its Golden Age.