The Impact of Digital Media on Advertising: Five Cultural Dilemmas Matthew P. McAllister and Stephanie Orme Advertising agencies are at the heart of the advertising industry, employing nearly 200,000 people in the US (Johnson, 2015) and coordinating key marketing activities: creative work, media planning and buying, research, and integrated marketing. But are all agencies the same? In fact, the list of top US agencies in 2014 (Advertising Age, 2015b) shows a split between two kinds of agencies. On the one hand are agencies born in the analog media era. These are agencies that Don Draper from Mad Men could work for: traditional agencies centered in big urban centers (New York City, Chicago) and that were typically named after the men (never women) who founded them or were key influences: Leo Burnett, BBDO (standing for Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborn), McCann Erickson, and J. Walter Thompson. On the other hand, and increasingly more prominent, are agencies created in the digital era, located in places like Little Rock, Arkansas and Irving, Texas and named with words that are not proper names and are so futuristic that they sound like Star Wars planets: Epsilon, Acxiom, SapientNitro, Accenture, Experian. These companies (and, often, these words) did not exist in the Don Draper-era 1960s. They are agencies that specialize in digital advertising. The hacker Elliot Alderson from Mr. Robot -- or rather an ad-friendly version of him -- would be more likely to work for these firms than Don Draper. This seemingly minor change (to outsiders) is indicative of a major rupture going on in the ad industry that fundamentally influences how they conduct their business and what advertising and advertising-supported media means for our culture.