Abstract
The acceleration of globalization caused transformations in the area of communication, as in many other areas, and innovations brought about by information technologies have diversified operation methods and management, as well as organizational understandings of business companies within the global competition environment. Evolving towards post-modern structuring, companies have gravitated to customer-oriented business management strategies, where companies see their customers and market environment from different angles while conducting their advertising activities. The mass marketing sense, which was effective for a long period of time, was gradually alienated, and particularly with the intense utilization of social media and digital environments, the understanding of personal marketing (which more quickly connects products with their target audiences) was adopted in order to influence customers, who now have a multitude of choices. This chapter focuses on introducing the new organizational structures of advertising agencies in the social media age.
TopA Short View On The Functions Of Advertising Agencies, Agency Types And Structures
The concept of advertisement exists in our life; it has become a concept that has been identified with popular culture and it has consequently shaped the consumption patterns and fashioned the understandings of people in the information age. Regarded as a method of communication, advertisement is a communication type that conveys information and news, can create common feelings and thoughts and generates motivation for the formation of certain ideas, behaviors and purchasing patterns (Canpolat, 2012, p. 98). While a positive brand image is formed in the consumers' minds through advertisement, a connection is made between brands and the consumer with the aim of creating loyal customers. An advertising agency is a professional company that conducts its activities for the purpose of conducting and sustaining works, such as creating an advertising campaign, developing main sales theme, submitting advertisement tools to companies and publishing these advertisement tools (Mucuk, 2009, p. 230). Today, it is vital that advertising agencies highlight their original creative abilities while working towards the goal of increasing sales; this is their primary goal, as it is vital for business companies.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Mobile Marketing Agencies: Mobile marketing is the presentation of advertising material to consumers over mobile devices. The efficiency of being mobile comes to the fore in this field, which requires extremely advanced technical information, equipment and infrastructure. These include acquisition rate, advergaming, affiliate marketing, cell broadcast, click-to-call, cost per mile, WAP portal, and so on. It should be expected that the efficiency of mobile marketing campaigns will increase as a result of their synchronized use, as required by integrated marketing communication and support by other campaigns. In this context, specific applications (particularly the “advergame” applications) have recently come to the fore. The most important advantage of these applications is that they link consumers with advertisements without the consumers becoming aware of the advertisements (Özkaya, 2010:470).
Social Media Agencies: These agencies are utilized as a very important part of companies’ and/or brands’ communication strategies of companies; these have emerged due to the fact that social networks have become quite popular worldwide. All of the Web-based services that allow people to form public/semi-public profiles within a bordered system can explicitly provide lists of other users that they are in contact with; these other users are able to see and explore the contacts listed in the system, and are thus called “social networks” (Büyüksener, 2009:19).
Digital Media Planning Agencies: These agencies integrate the work performed in traditional media by engaging in activities such as Webpage design, search engine optimization and online and offline marketing work (Digital Agencies, 2014). Digital advertising agencies are particularly qualified in technical areas of the digital world, and they aim to link products and services with target audiences in an appropriate way. For this reason, preliminary examinations of products and services are conducted; attributes such as present product location, market share, awareness and brand value are researched; and then the targeted location is achieved (Digital Agencies, 2014).
SEM and SEO Agencies: SEM, or “Search Engine Marketing”, involves the process of attracting more traffic to a city by placing advertisements on the search results page of an Internet page. SEO, or “Search Engine Optimization”, involves improving the rankings on a free search results page of a Website (Inside Adwords, 2014).
Advertising Agency: Companies organized in order to perform advertisement work, as well as the people with whom advertisers cooperate in order to advertise in line with company / marketing objectives (Gençtürk Hizal, 2005). Agencies can also conceptually be defined as business organizations that realize the advertisement production for any person, establishment or institution, while publishing these produced advertisement products (Taskiran & Yilmaz, 2013).