The journey of business model innovation in media agencies: towards a three-stage process model

ABSTRACT

Digital entrants have changed the competitive landscape for advertisers and media. Over the past decade, media agencies have grown more rapidly than the media market as a whole, securing a larger share of the value generated in the advertising industry. We develop a process model describing how these agencies have altered their business models over a decade. We discuss three separate stages in this innovation process, labelled business model innovation (BMI) awareness, business model exploration, and business model exploitation. We find and document how different building blocks of the business model are a focal point of innovation in each stage of the BMI process. Our findings offer a way for the media industry to understand the transformation of media agencies.

KEYWORDS:

• Business model innovation process
• business model canvas
• media agencies
• advertisers
• exploration
• exploitation

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for comments from Jan Mattsson and Poul B. Olsen. An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the 2016 European Media Management Association Conference in Porto, Portugal. This research was made possible through a grant from Discovery Networks International and Innovation Fund Denmark: [Grant Number 5139-00025B].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Personal communication with Mr. Ostergaard, managing director at MyResearch, 1 December 2015.

Additional information

Funding

This research was made possible through a grant from Discovery Networks International and Innovation Fund Denmark: [Grant Number 5139-00025B].