This study describes and analyses the services-to-business sector which, on behalf of the advertisers, prepares and places in media just under one-half of the advertising directed to Canadian buyers. The sector consists quite visibly of advertising agencies, and of a multitude of supporting businesses about which there is very little information. Total revenues of the sector are at the $1.5 billion mark; its share of the gross domestic product is in slight decline.

Despite its modest size, the sector's member firms play a crucial role in disseminating market information in Canada's economy. That role, its history and its organizational underpinning are described at length. The sector is intensive in human capital and readily adaptive to technological change. Yet its growth appears to depend on changes in the economy's output and is less dynamic than that of business services in general.