Key trends in the market of digital agencies / studios and golden hundred Ruward

Hi, Habr! As part of the Golden Hundreds of Russian digital published by us, we conducted an analytical study and survey of more than 50 large agencies / studios and formulated key trends in the development of the agency communications market for 2013-14.

Market situation and key trends

According to the results of the study, we were able to identify the following important trends that influenced the development of the market in 2013 and remain relevant in 2014:
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• 2013-14 are held under the auspices of associations and alliances. Many players form groups and tandems to cover a larger range of services, reduce costs and capture a larger market share. The most prominent associations of the last time include the formation of the Kokoc Group (Coco, BDBD, SEO Dream, Arrow Media, Media Guru, Webprofy), iConText Group (iConText, Registratura.ru, R-Broker, Webprofoters. ISEO), the formation of SPYK (three Siberian agencies: Siberiks, Kinetics, Punk you!), AIC and QSOFT strategic alliance.
  
  
• One of the most significant trends was the development of the ideology of Performance Based Marketing and the focus on this scheme of work with large customers of many key market agencies ( ADV , iConText , RTA Moscow , etc.). You also need to note the increased attention of large agencies to CRM / eCRM tools and increasing competence in this area.
  
  
• The massive segment of small agencies began to exert pressure from below on the development of cloud SaaS-services for website development, SEO-promotion and other services. Many customers in the low price segment are increasingly beginning to use these services to solve their problems on their own, reducing the flow of calls to small studios and agencies.
  
  
• The active development of the start-up environment singled out this category of companies into a separate client segment “start-ups”, with which some agencies began to orient themselves.
  
  
• The rapid growth of the mobile segment has the most serious influence on the market structure, there are strong local players who have sufficient competencies to work with a large customer, full-service agencies also increase expertise in the mobile segment.
  
  
• The active development of new technologies and mechanics, from which we can distinguish the directions of SMART TV, RTB mechanics, CPA / CPL / CPO, eCRM, adaptive and progressive enhancement approaches, strengthening the role of cross-platform tools and integrated automation tools.
  
  
• Difficult external economic situation causes concern of market players, motivating to reduce marketing costs, optimize business processes and be more careful in forecasting budgets for large international brands.
  
  
• Personnel fever is gradually declining (but some positions remain overheated), the skill level of managers on the side of a large customer grows, often due to the rotation of personnel from the agency market.
  
  
• From the problems of the market, one can single out: still a low entry threshold (which can be further influenced by the active development of SaaS services), a small dispersion distribution of players (more than 10,000 operating agencies in Russia), a low average level of customer service and support, a weak the level of strategic expertise, the frequent lack of competence in the agencies' own marketing aspect, personnel shortages in a number of positions.

In addition to highlighting key trends, we actually published the Golden Hundred itself - the first agency rating on the market from all segments of the interactive communications market:

1. First place with an increase of 12 positions took iConText companies
2. In second place (-1) is the RA GRAPE
3. In the third (-1) place - Ingate
4. In fourth place were the guys from Red Keds
5. On the fifth (+3) iMedia

A complete list of the top 100 and advanced top 300 agencies can be viewed on the page of the Golden Hundred 2014 .

If you think that there are still some important factors that are not included in our brief review - let's discuss them in the comments.