Advertising Companies

An advertising company or ad company is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising (and sometimes other forms of promotion) for its clients. An ad company is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services. A company can also handle overall marketing and branding strategies and sales promotions for its clients. Typical ad company clients include businesses and corporations, non-profit organizations and government agencies. Companies may be hired to produce an advertising campaign.

Ad company 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.

Some advertising company limit the amount and kind of service they offer. Such company usually offers only one or two of the basic services. For example, although some company that specialize in "creative" also offer strategic advertising planning service, their basic interest is in the creation of advertising. Similarly, some "media-buying services" offer media planning service but concentrate on media buying, placement, and billing. In small company, employees may do both creative and account service work. Larger companies attract people who specialize in one or the other, and indeed include a number of people in specialized positions: production work, Internet advertising, planning, or research.