Ad agencies' new challengers expose lack of tech wizardry

AD AGENCIES have had to endure the rise of the geeks as Google and Facebook emerged as mighty marketing machines. The next challenge is spreadsheet-wielding nerds.

Consulting firms such as Accenture, Deloitte and IBM, better known for their offshore outsourcing armies, have been quietly building scale in digital marketing. In so doing, they're exposing a weakness among the Madison Avenue types at WPP, Publicis and Omnicom: their lack of the tech wizardry crucial to many new publicity campaigns.

The Excel jockeys won't be designing Super Bowl ads anytime soon (agencies still have a creative edge). But they're very good at online marketing, building apps and e-commerce, the stuff that advertisers from McDonald's to Procter & Gamble care about more and more in a world in thrall to the smartphone.