Agencies:

• Ad and design agencies can now point to a study commemorating their collective sense of martyrdom relative to their clients' inherently abusive nature. This study would complement well one polling the agency clients, perhaps entitled "Conceit and misaligned interests of expensive outsourced resources."

• In the same spirit of navel gazing, Ad Exchanger polled a bunch of agency executives to ask the question just what is an agency nowadays anyway?. Quite notable is that billions of dollars are handed over to an industry that has such difficulty defining just what it's supposed to be doing.

• Meanwhile, in the time-worn practice of desperate publishers, when the medium changes uncomfortably, they go directly to the client, disintermediating the agency.

• Ad agencies may be proving more conservative in their adoption of technology use, such as exploitation of the FBX platform due to privacy concerns. Their large clients tend to be juicier, prominent targets for regulators, as shown in the recent example where car maker KIA was wrist-slapped for allegedly insufficient disclosure in its behavioral marketing technology use.

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