Advertising Agency

An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising (and sometimes other forms of promotion) for its clients. An ad agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services.

An agency can also handle overall marketing and branding strategies and sales promotions for its clients. Typical ad agency clients include businesses and corporations, non-profit organizations and government agencies. Agencies may be hired to produce an advertising campaign.

Ad agencies come in all sizes and include everything from one or two-person shops (which rely mostly on freelance talent to perform most functions), small to medium sized agencies, large independents such as SMART and multi-national, multi-agency conglomerates such as Omni com Group, WPP Group, Publics, Interpublic Group of Companies and Haves.

Advertising interns are typically university juniors and seniors who are genuinely interested in and have an aptitude for advertising. Internships at advertising agencies most commonly fall into one of five areas of expertise: account services, interactive, media, public relations and traffic. University students working on the creative side can find internships as a assistant art director or assistant copywriter. Interns often take part in the internal creative process, where they may be charged with creating and managing a website as well as developing an advertising campaign. Hands on projects such as these help interns learn how strategy and well-developed marketing are essential to a sound advertising and communications plan.