Decoupling, in

advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...

, occurs when services that were previously subcontracted by

advertising agencies An advertising agency, often referred to as a creative agency or an ad agency, is a business dedicated to creating, planning, and handling advertising and sometimes other forms of promotion and marketing for its clients. An ad agency is generally ...

are purchased directly from suppliers. Decoupling is part of the unbundling of the services previously provided by traditional full service advertising agencies, which originally began with the creation of standalone media buying agencies such as Zenith from

Saatchi & Saatchi Saatchi & Saatchi is a British multinational communications and advertising agency network with 114 offices in 76 countries and over 6,500 staff. It was founded in 1970 and is currently headquartered in London. The parent company of the agency gr ...

Group in the 1980s and

Mindshare Mind share relates to the development of consumer awareness or popularity, and is one of the main objectives of advertising and promotion. When people think of examples of a product type or category, they usually think of a limited number of bran ...

from

WPP Group WPP plc is a British multinational communications, advertising, public relations, technology, and commerce holding company headquartered in London, England. It was the world's largest advertising company, as of 2019. WPP plc owns many compan ...

in the 1990s. For the same reasons as media (focus,

economies of scale In microeconomics, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation, and are typically measured by the amount of output produced per unit of time. A decrease in cost per unit of output enables ...

and dedicated software) press production and digital production are now increasingly handled by standalone production agencies, which trade direct with advertisers and not through their advertising agencies.

References

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