advertising agency

Agency that provides advertisers with a wide range of services including research; media planning; design, production, and placing of advertisements and publicity material; design of packaging and display systems; marketing and merchandising; and public and press relations.

John L Hooper is credited with establishing the first American advertising agency in the early 1840s. In 1864 the firm of Carlton & Smith was founded, which was taken over by James Walter Thompson 1878. In 1916, with a turnover of $3 million, Thompson sold out, believing that no further expansion was possible. But growth continued, and in 1955, with 34 overseas branches, its annual turnover was calculated at $220 million. The American Association of Advertising Agencies is the technical, psychological, and educational centre of this mammoth business.

The US dominance of the global rankings was decisively challenged in the mid-1980s by two UK companies; Saatchi & Saatchi and WPP Group. By 1992 WPP Group ranked as the largest global agency group. The largest US groups are Interpublic (1992 income $1.98 billion) and Omnicom (1992 income $1.8 billion). Until the late 1980s, the Japanese company Dentsu was the largest single agency in the world.