As I have been speaking with small and medium businesses (SMB) and other mid-market companies outside of the "enterprise" segment, it's obvious that many of these clients could benefit from working with a recruitment advertising agency, especially as they try to understand and start using search engine marketing (SEM). These companies tend to have a job board-centric mentality to recruitment advertising, and need a lot of hand-holding as they start using pay-per-click (PPC) ads as an alternative to postings.
So there seems to be room for boutique agencies that specifically handle SEM/PPC for recruitment on behalf of these smaller companies, and maybe also assist with "social" recruitment advertising on Twitter and Facebook. Joel Cheesman tried this concept (with Jason Carr in a business called HirePPC) before his move to Jobing, and Matt Martone transitioned his Job Search Marketing brand to an agency approach. The big agencies - TMP Worldwide, Bernard Hodes, NAS - get this stuff and do it well (disclosure - all three are my clients), but I'm not sure SMB customers are on their radar as target clients. And when I start looking at other agency Web sites, it's a little scary - many are still very print-focused (how?), while others define online recruitment advertising strictly as job postings. One I looked at (I can't bear to link to them) even had images of Monster job board postings as its "Internet" offering.
Meanwhile, plenty of companies are struggling with their recruitment advertising decisions. Many are still making those decisions based on brand loyalty and hiring manager pressure rather than data, so they need the education and guidance that an agency can provide. When I was finishing my agency stint (eight years), I was just starting SEM for my largest client. Almost four years later, the same Google ads I wrote back then are still running. So there is room for new agencies to take some business away as well.
