• by Naomi Bradford , June 4, 2007

A little controversy could be good or bad, depending on one's point of view. For the dark side, you need look no further than the already-infamous cases of Don Imus and Julie Roehm, whose very public travails led to career derailments. For a completely different take on controversy, however, you can look at what's happening in the advertising industry with regard to new technologies for buying media.

Countless words have been written about Martin Sorrell's characterization of Google as a "frienemy" to advertising agencies, a great word to capture the essence of the debate as to whether the company will emerge as a friend or foe. We've also read reams of commentary on the CAB's rebuff of eBay's auction system, complete with finger pointing on both sides.

I honestly don't know whether Google will emerge as a friend or an enemy to ad agencies, nor do I know if eBay and the CAB will ever work out their differences.

One thing I do feel strongly about, however, is this: the debate over Google and eBay and their ad initiatives is having a very positive impact on the agency business, as it has prompted a discussion of an extremely important, if not critical, subject.

The debate is shedding light on the fact that the advertising industry needs to change with the times. In 2007, the media buying process relies on many of the same procedures that were in place during the LBJ administration, the simpler days of three television networks and a relative handful of local independent stations.

Google and eBay have sounded a wake up alarm signaling that the time has come to integrate technology into the media buying process. The underlying message is that agencies failing to heed the call will find that they have become as irrelevant as blacksmiths at the dawn of the automobile age.

The incredible explosion and fragmentation of media has made it virtually impossible for agencies to rely on manpower alone to serve as effective stewards of clients' advertising dollars -- a precious, finite commodity -- while maintaining some semblance of profit margins.

Sorrell himself heeded the call recently as WPP announced a deal to acquire 24/7 Real Media, a near-immediate response to Google's agreement to acquire DoubleClick. And, of course, Yahoo has acquired Right Media and Microsoft has gobbled up aQuantive. This is not to say that the Google "frienemy" conversation has spurred all this M&A activity, but there is little doubt that it signaled an awakening of sorts to the new world order.

Make no mistake, advertising agencies provide a critically important value-added function to the media planning and buying process, and so there always will be a place for what agencies bring to the table. The question, though, is how many seats will be at the table, and which agencies will occupy them?

Those who do occupy the seats likely will be those who change with the times, and they might very well owe a tip of the hat to Google, eBay et al. Love 'em or hate 'em, they have at least served notice to the advertising world that, like it or not, change is in the wind.