Key trends in the market for digital agencies / studios and the Golden Hundred Ruward

Hello, Habr! As part of our Golden Hundred Russian digital, we conducted an analytical study and a survey of more than 50 large agencies / studios and formulated key trends in the development of the agency communications market for 2013-14.

Market situation and key trends

Based on the results of the study, we were able to identify the following important trends that influenced the development of the market in 2013 and remain relevant in 2014:

• 2013-14 are held under the auspices of associations and alliances. Many players form groups and tandems to cover a wider range of services, reduce costs and capture a larger market share. Of the most high-profile associations of recent times, one can single out the formation of the Kokoc Group (Cocos, BDBD, SEO Dream, Arrow Media, Media Guru, Webprofy), iConText Group (iConText, Registratura.ru, R-Broker, Webprofoters. ISEO), the formation of SPYK (three Siberian agencies: Sibiriks, Kinetika, Punk you!), AIC and QSOFT strategic alliance .
  
  
• One of the most significant trends was the development of the Performance Based Marketing ideology and an emphasis on this scheme of working with large customers of many key market agencies ( ADV , iConText , RTA Moscow , etc.). It is also necessary to note the increased attention of large agencies to CRM / eCRM tools and the development of competencies in this area.
  
  
• The mass segment of small agencies began to be pressured from below by the development of cloud SaaS-services for website development, SEO-promotion and other services. Many customers in the low price segment are increasingly starting to use such services to independently solve their problems, reducing the flow of calls to small studios and agencies.
  
  
• Active development of the startup environment has singled out this category of companies as a separate client segment of “startups,” some agencies have begun to work with.
  
  
• The rapid growth of the mobile segment has the most serious impact on the market structure, there are strong local players with sufficient competencies to work with a large customer, full-service agencies are also increasing expertise in the mobile segment.
  
  
• Active development of new technologies and mechanics of work, from which we can single out areas of SMART TV, RTB mechanics, CPA / CPL / CPO, eCRM, adaptive and progressive enhancement approaches, strengthening the role of cross-platform tools and integrated automation tools.
  
  
• The difficult external economic situation is causing concern for market players, motivating them to reduce marketing costs, optimize business processes and more carefully predict budgets for large international brands.
  
  
• Personnel fever is gradually declining (but some positions remain overheated), the level of qualifications of managers on the side of a large customer is growing, often due to the rotation of personnel from the agent market.
  
  
• Among the market problems, one can distinguish: the low entry threshold (which may be further affected by the active development of SaaS services), the finely dispersed distribution of players (more than 10,000 operating agencies in Russia), the low average level of customer service and support, and the weak the level of strategic expertise, the frequent lack of competencies in their own marketing aspect of agencies, staff shortages in a number of positions.

In addition to highlighting key trends, we published, in fact, the Golden Hundred itself - the first agency rating on the market from all segments of the interactive communications market:

1. The first place with an increase of 12 positions took iConText
2. In second place (-1) is RA GRAPE
3. In third place (-1) - Ingate
4. In fourth place were the guys from Red Keds
5. On the fifth (+3) iMedia company

A complete list of the top 100 and the expanded top 300 agencies can be found on the Golden Hundred 2014 page .

If you think that there are some other important factors that were not included in our short review - let's discuss them in the comments.