[3] In 1856, Mathew Brady created the first modern advertisement when he placed an ad in the New York Herald paper offering to produce "photographs, ambrotypes, and daguerreotypes."
American advertising agencies began as the process of opening overseas offices before the two World Wars and accelerated their globalization throughout the latter part of the twentieth century.
[5] Companies such as J. Walter Thompson adopted a strategy to expand in order to provide advertising services wherever clients operated.
As of 2017[update], Accenture Interactive was the world's sixth-largest ad agency, behind WPP, Omnicom, Publicis, Interpublic, and Dentsu.
[7] Studies show that successful advertising agencies tend to have a shared sense of purpose with their clients through collaboration.
This includes a common set of client objectives where agencies feel a shared sense of ownership of the strategic process.
Successful advertisements start with clients building a good relationship with the agencies and work together to figure out what their objectives are.
Breakdowns in relationships were more likely to occur when agencies felt undermined, subjugated, or even feel they do not have equal status.
It was suggested that on occasions media planners and researchers were more closely involved in the project because of their personal relationships with their clients.
Planners of advertising agencies tend to be capable of creating a very powerful, trusting relationship with their clients because they were seen as intellectual prowess, seniority, and have empathy in the creative process.
Originally, in the 18th century, and the first half of the 19th, advertising agencies made all of their income from commissions paid by the media for selling space to the client.
[10] Although it is still the case that the majority of their income comes from the media, in the middle of the 19th century, agencies began to offer additional services which they sold directly to the client.