The “digital agency of the future” conversation is heating up again as agencies grapple with the changes happening on the Assembled Web and with client expectations.  Two recent strong contributions include John Lane’s, The Skills Digital Agencies will Need to Lead and Allison Mooney’s, Agencies Need to Think Like Software Companies.  Allison’s comment below sums up much of the required change: “Advertisers and brand marketers are entering a brave new world — one where code is on par with content. The 21st-century ad isn’t something to be looked at; it’s something to be used.”

Another key part of the conversation is the role online display advertising should play in the media mix for an “agency of the future.”  As my professors at MIT would say, that is an empirical question.  Thanks to comScore’s recent update of their “Natural Born Clickers” research, it would appear that there is some conclusive evidence.  (If anyone has evidence to the contrary please share links in Comments)  In case you missed it, comScore found that the number of people that click on display ads has been cut in half in the last 2 years.  That leaves only 16% of internet users that actually click on an ad at all and half of those (8% of total) generate 85% of all clicks.  So, 84% of online users never click on an ad.  The industry’s response is to try and optimize the targeting of the ad to those that do click or to develop attribution models to back into some determination of value.  But perhaps the problem is the real estate itself.  Eye tracking studies repeated show that users ignore ad real estate and become blind to it.  Many more are using browser plug-ins to block the ads from appearing.

Perhaps the agency of the future show be helping clients find ways to get on the content side of the page and move away from ignored ad real estate?

If you are a defender of display ads, attribution models, ad targeting, etc. please share your empirical evidence to refute comScore’s work.