While this makes the professionals quite cranky, freelancers, hobbyists, undergrads, and grads have just been given a golden opportunity to participate in a creative community, in a rudimentary feedback cycle, in a market that never existed before crowdsourcing platforms. Bad for established creatives, but good for hobbyists and neophytes.

And while many complain that crowdsourcing means too many off-the-mark entries to wade through, businesses like Genius Rocket, Kluster, Victor & Spoils, and a dozen others are evolving crowdsourcing to accommodate the pull of the market.

For example, once a client submits a template-driven creative brief, Genius Rocket’s Select service collects portfolios from its creative community (the crowd). It then drains the pool of designers until only the best suited remains. Genius Rocket is the curator, concentrating the talent of the crowd to fit the needs of the client.

How do you entice talent to enter the pool in the first place? Address a supply side problem: spec work is terrible. Genius Rocket introduced a tiered system: pass through the first round (say, the storyboard round); get paid. Pass through the second (the rough cut); get paid. Pass the third round (client feedback and edits); get paid. Pass the forth round, and you’ve won. Genius Rocket Select offers the economics of crowdsourcing (i.e. it’s cheaper) and the talent funneling of a job market (i.e. not everyone gets a first-round interview). Undoubtedly, Genius Rocket Select is going to be more expensive, as will agency-like Victor & Spoils (don’t quote me).

But that’s just the market doing its job. The ad world is competitive – price and performance tend to be tightly aligned. The price gap between agency work and curated crowdsourced work will continue to increasingly shrink as more agencies adopt the role of curator. But whether this will grow agencies’ client pie or merely prevent current clients from being gobbled up by crowdsourcing platforms, only time will tell. One thing you can expect – the dialogue between client and crowd is going to get a lot louder.