What If An Agency Had An API?

The growth in the number of APIs is one of those exponential curves often associated with digital. The Programmable Web Directory now lists over 4,000, a milestone it recorded only 6 months after it logged its 3000th, which in turn was only 9 months after it passed its 2000th recorded API. Growth has been driven by social of-course (there are over 500 Social APIs), and a large proportion of the total number of APIs are naturally created by digitally native organisations (Facebook has 8 APIs, Amazon has 21, Google has 91) and digital start-ups whose API often exists from as early a stage as possible from their inception.

There is however, another interesting trend in APIs which is the increasing number of organisations whose heritage is not digital, but who are nonetheless recognising the value in opening up their data. That includes museums, local councils, libraries, retailers, sports goods manufacturers, regional government, national government, credit card companies, the Oxford English Dictionary, Nasa, MTV, Billboard, the Met Office. Enlightened news organisations are responding to digital disruption with open data: the FT has an API, the New York Times has 13; USA Today has 8. And of-course The Guardian have pioneered with their amazing Open Platform. The programmable web directory have speculated that key areas of potential growth include video and TV, retail, and travel.

This rapid growth in open data reflects a growing recognition from all types organisations of the value in becoming a platform. Companies like Mashery make it easy for any type of company to develop their own interface, and many have used them to do just that. There is unquestionable value in open data in an age where entrepreneurs are everywhere and when the requirement for any organisation is not just for innovation, but continuous innovation (and for every company regardless of size to act more like a start-up). Opening up your data drammatically increases the potential resource an organisation can have applied to generating new ideas and new value from the raw material of its data, meaning improved pace, momentum, competitive advantage. But APIs also play a big part in building relationships with essential talent for the future - developers.

Agencies are not as naturally data rich as governmental, telecoms, retail and other similar direct-to-consumer organisations but as the big ad networks begin to build big data capabilities, how long will that last? Growing numbers of clients are already recognising the advantage of allowing anonymised, aggregated data collected by their agencies to be combined for mutual benefit. With the relentless digitisation of not just communications but products and services, the need for agencies to innovate alongside their clients is evident. As agency output moves more from messaging to experiences, the opportunities for creating new value out of new data unfold. Data held by agencies is seen as proprietary property from which to leverage value and to be protected at all costs, but with the example of a growing number of their clients recognising the benefit of opening up at least part of their data pool, might there be reason enough for change?

There's plenty of reasons why it might not happen, but equally there's plenty of reasons why it might. So my question is will we ever see an agency with an API? Or maybe that question should be when? And what might it look like?

Comments

[Polle de Maagt]

Neil, love your point. Several months ago, I made an argument for opening up advertising campaigns with an API http://www.polledemaagt.com/blog/think-about-it-an-api-for-your-advertising-campaign/
Curious what you think.

[Charles Day]

Neil. Very interesting frame on this. I asked the same question a couple of months ago of all creative businesses.
http://artmeetcommerce.com/blog/2011/8/3/every-business-needs-an-api.html
Would be interested in talking more.

[Noah Brier]

Interesting thought, Neil, but I'm not sure I agree that agencies are quite so data rich. They use third-party (and some first-party) tools to manage the data-heavy side of the business (media planning), but I'd assume most of those things already have their own API in one form or another (they need to spit out reports and the like). The digital experiences they create spit off a lot of data, but once again, that data isn't captured by the agency, it's captured by third-party tools like Google Analytics or Omniture.

The real data in a creative agency probably lies somewhere in "ideas" (thoughts, sketches, designs, presentations). Starting to think about how an agency would build an API on top of that is very interesting (more for the agency itself than clients). But the problem there is one of structure: To build an API requires starting with structured data. The reality is that most of what agencies do is still mostly soft and not-so-easy to arrange.

I'm actually more interested in the idea of brand APIs. If you think about the way a company like Coke operates, that's essentially what they have to allow bottlers all over the world to interact with HQ, whether it's about shipping or brand guidelines.

Or am I just missing that point? That's very possible too. Anyway, good post and interesting thought.

[neilperkin]

@Noah thanks for the thoughtful comment. I think the data-richness of agencies is rapidly changing. Group M with their Xaxis platform, for example, say that it houses "the world’s largest pool of audience profiles in its proprietary database...reaching more touchpoints than any other solution in the industry" (quote from the link in the post). So this takes us into interesting places with interesting possibilities I think.
Your thought about building an API on top of a structure of ideas is indeed an interesting one. As is brand APIs - in the reading around whilst thinking about this post I came across this interesting piece about Starbucks so-called 'stealth stores' being the equivalent of a 'Starbucks API'.

http://bit.ly/rVPxhg

Feels a bit like good old fashioned franchising but an interesting thought nonetheless...

[Noah Brier]

Re: GroupM - Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I suspect those systems already have very robust APIs, though ... I don't think they could survive without them.

Re: Starbucks API - That's what I was thinking of too. Yeah, it does feel like franchising, though I always thought about what we did with likemind and the thought that open source franchising is a bit like an API.

[neilperkin]

@Noah yes, nicely put. And worth thinking about some more.

[Kin Lane]

Definitely think we'll see more agile, nimble agencies emerge who get it. I think we'll have to see many agencies master using of the mainstream APIs within their business (Facebook, Twitter, Google, Foursquare, etc)...then be able to competently handle customers who have APIs.

Once an agency has a staff that can take advantage of 3rd party and client / partner APIs I think we'll start to see them understand the true power of having their own.