Also how big were the agencies you were targeting? And were they the "digital" agency or the "above the line" agency? You'll have more luck with agencies that already do trade promotions through SMS, Web and other "tech" solutions.

So maybe "ad agency" is the wrong word - you want marketing agencies and probably more specifically the ones calling themselves "digital marketing".

(warning: I'm from Australia, terminology may be different ... )

For example: a few years ago I got on the phone to sell some SMS services. I wanted to sell to real estate agencies, so I started calling them and asking to speak to the person in charge of marketing. I called around 20 RE agencies and got one actually talking for long enough that they said "We use WORLD FAMOUS AD AGENCY for all our SMS and MMS". So then I called WORLD FAMOUSE AD AGENCY (which is a global marketing/ad agency with both above and below the line services) and spoke to them, and they were sort of interested, like didn't blow me off immediately but as you said, kind of "run around", but one thing is they weren't interested in SMS, they were interested in MMS.

I called my SMS provider and asked if they could do MMS, they said no, but I should call LARGE SMS PROVIDER IN AUSTRALIA. So I called them and asked about MMS for WORLD FAMOUS AD AGENCY, but LARGE SMS PROVIDER actually gave me the full story: that WORLD FAMOUS AD AGENCY uses UNHEARD OF DIGITAL MARKETING AGENCY who use TINY TECHNICAL GATEWAY PROVIDER who use LARGE SMS PROVIDER. This was just an off-hand comment, so I called UNHEARD OF MARKETING AGENCY and pitched MMS to them at a price point I thought would be undercutting the competition.

I got a meeting with them, but they realised that I wasn't doing the MMS - I was using the same guys that the guys they use now were currently using - basically because I wasn't presenting technology I had created but technology they had already seen. We had a good laugh about it and I got some web/hosting work out of them.

Now I didn't end up selling them the MMS, or SMS but this was the level of marketing agency that would talk to a small, independent operator, and also that really explored every new available technology such as Bluetooth, SMS, MMS, Web, trade promotions etc. rather than huge ad agencies that are directly talking to the big brands. They generally hold a relationship with the big ad agency, then the big ad agency has the relationship with the brand.

Short story: just start smaller down the food chain. You'll find that big agencies are rarely doing all the work themselves - at some point it's always just a lonely dweeb sitting at home coding in his underpants.