3. Ability to reach my target buyers where they “live”: Google’s Adsense offering (i.e., syndication of their contextual search ads) has major implications and makes them look an awful lot like a media agency. Not only does Google serve up ads on their own high-traffic site, they are syndicating their ads to virtually every nook and cranny of the web. As an advertiser, it gives them an efficient way to reach into highly targeted sites that would be impossible to buy in a manual manner. Anecdotally, I’m seeing Google ads on all kinds of obscure and relatively low traffic sites that happen to be highly relevant to me professionally or personally.

4. Ability to service local, regional and international markets: This has at least two dimensions: First, can you run particular ads for people who live in particular geographies whether that is England, New England or Boston? Second, is it easy to localize the advertisements themselves? Particularly on the first point, it’s much easier to do this with Google than the machinations an agency has to go through to make it happen (e.g., working with dozens of different media outlets around the country/world). On the second point, it’s comparing apples and oranges since localization of text ads is easy compared to localization of ads that involve more than simple text. That said, they cover many languages and countries today so it’s a straightforward process.

5. Focus on driving results vs. their ego: Since much of the execution of a campaign on Google is strictly driven by machines, there is no ego involved. From time to time, one runs up against this dynamic with agency creatives where they are more focused on winning awards than selling your product.

6. Creative work: This is an area where it would appear that agencies have a clear advantage if for no other reason that the creative palette is very limited with Google today. If you look at some of the trends outlined in part one combined with increased bandwidth and broadband penetration in the next five years it seems inevitable that the Google creative palette provides won’t be so limited. The advantage Google has in this scenario is that the cost to launch and test a new campaign is low so creatives can refine their creative and copy while avoiding the high stakes and slow turnaround of typical campaigns of today that are bogged down by approvals at the client level. This quick turnaround should shift creatives perspective from thinking of how limited their palette is to relishing the opportunity to get immediate feedback on campaign ideas that may be conceived of, executed and killed/expanded in less than a day.

7. Account service: This is an area where agencies should maintain a clear advantage for the foreseeable future as people-oriented service is a core part of their value proposition. As Google and others gain an increasing share of their customers’ wallets, there will be an expectation of increased account service for large accounts. In a competitive market, Google will respond if Yahoo or MSN try to offer better service. This factor can diminish the inherent advantage agencies have.

8. Media neutrality: Most agencies like to claim media-neutrality but it’s virtually impossible to find in practice. The core obstacle is that the client’s budgets aren’t media neutral. There are often different teams, let alone different budgets for different media – print, online, broadcast, etc. This makes it virtually impossible for agencies to be media neutral. The philosophy behind Google’s technology is media neutral. It just so happens that it’s all executed on HTML webpages right now. Take the notion of delivering ads in the content you prefer to consume, on the device (PC, mobile device, etc.) you happen to be using at the moment and delivering the most relevant ad at the moment you consume it and extend it beyond online. It’s not hard to imagine this happening when your TV and radio have their own IP addresses along with your more traditional computing devices (this is already in process).