Meredith, which is best known for mag brands such as Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle, and Ladies’ Home Journal, built up its marketing business the old fashioned way—through acquisitions of small companies with disciplines in digital and design. It pursued these companies quietly for the most part, until last year, when it purchased a stake in mobile marketer The Hyperfactory.

SEE ALSO: Meredith Acquires Stake In Mobile Marketing Firm The Hyperfactory

So far, Meredith has been able to avoid blurring the lines by avoiding investments in media buyers. But as the WSJ article notes, Meredith is looking to invest in search marketers and ad shops that will increase its geographic presence in the U.S. and abroad.

It also needs to do more to shore up the company’s marketing revenues. Meredith marketing revs shot up 50 percent between the summer of 2007 and 2008. But by summer ‘09, marketing dollars were up only 13 percent and in the last quarter’s earnings, the segment fell slightly due to pullback in advertisers’ spending.

With the coming acquisitions and added pressure to expand its marketing services, Meredith could find itself competing against the agencies it depends on to buy its advertising. At the same, marketers are also putting more money into promotions, creating their own media properties and sidestepping the traditional process of buying ads with established publishers. So the two sides appear to be headed on a collision course, with agencies in the middle.

For the moment, though, marketers claim they aren’t too worried. Loreen Babcock, the head of Omnicom Group customer-relationship agency Unit7, still sees Meredith as the provider of additional marketing services that it can work with. But she also tells the WSJ that’s how the landscape looks now, adding, “Maybe it plays out differently.”