Agencies, IT Services and Marketing Tech: Collaboration and Competition -- Pivotal Research

BOTTOM LINE: Agency holding companies including Interpublic, Omnicom, Publicis and WPP, IT services firms such as IBM, Accenture and Infosys and marketing technology companies such as Salesforce.com, Oracle, Adobe and Marketo are increasingly competing and collaborating with one another, as illustrated with several news items from the past week, which we elaborate upon in this note. We don't see outcomes as winner-take-all, but instead see an evolving eco-system with room for each kind of company to evolve as marketers increasingly look for ways to apply more data and technology to their operations.