Everything You Need to Know About Programmatic In-Housing

Throughout programmatic advertising history, brands have largely entrusted its execution to agencies and trading desks. But today, in a world of unforgiving consumers and constantly shifting market dynamics, many brands are searching for an alternative to the traditional brand-agency model as they look to gain greater transparency into their media buys, more holistic control over their data, and greater assurance of compliance with privacy regulations.

The result: programmatic in-housing.

Numerous heavy hitters have already brought elements of their programmatic operations in-house, including Marriott, Colgate-Palmolive, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Bayer, EA Games, Wayfair, American Express, Unilever, Anheuser-Busch, Netflix, Target, Deutsche Telekom, and Ally Financial. Now, as those groundbreaking programs mature and their outcomes come into view, more brand advertisers are peering over with interest and beginning to question whether they, too, should take control of their own programmatic business.

So, just how has the in-housing trend evolved to date? What forms can programmatic in-housing take? What are the benefits and challenges for brands? And what does the process really entail? In this guide, we’ll answer all these questions and more.

Exploring the Rise of Programmatic In-Housing

The first adopters of in-house programmatic media buying were typically digital natives like Netflix and Target—brands boasting rich, voluminous first-party data that gave them a head start on the process. Over time, though, the types of companies in-housing have become more diversified… and, suffice to say, they have done so with varying degrees of success.

Those who tried and failed often did so because they underestimated the logistical hurdles involved and became too fixated on the stereotype that in-housing is an all-or-nothing play—just look at Vodafone or Prudential. But this idea of “agency versus in-house” programmatic is outdated as it doesn’t suit the needs of modern brands. As marketers learn more about the intricacies behind this digital transformation, a whole range of in-house programmatic manifestations are emerging, with brands and agencies breaking new ground and creating new operational frameworks as their relationships evolve. Indeed, in-housing programmatic is far from a death knell for agencies—brands still lean heavily on their external partners and agency investments still command almost a quarter of total marketing budgets. Understanding market logistics and maximizing technology-driven optimization opportunities requires as much critical insight as possible, and agencies remain perfectly positioned to provide that guidance.

When it comes to programmatic in-housing, one thing is clear: where we were five years ago looks very different from today, and where we are today will look very different five years from now.

The Varying Levels of Programmatic In-Housing

While it is difficult to neatly classify the numerous variations of in-housing—especially considering all the factors involved—here are four of the most common arrangements:

All-In on In-Housing

This is the quintessential in-housing set-up, where an AdTech stack sits within a brand organization in tandem with media strategy, ad operations, data management, and campaign stewardship. An in-house operation that looks like this is still relatively uncommon, given the stark commitment of time, resources, and internal talent marketing organizations need to launch, maintain, and refine it.

However, despite the complexities involved, it is slowly growing in popularity, with more brands building relationships with the technology platforms and the talent they need for in-housing to succeed:

• 55% of senior marketers rate managing and optimizing relationships with tech platforms as their biggest media priority today
• Embedding in-house talent within an organization has climbed the scale of marketing importance, with around 40% citing it as a challenge now
• 39% of marketing teams are presently heavily involved in developing in-house media technology

An Example of the All-In Set Up

For brands going down this route, the classic approach involves forming an internal agency-style trading desk and equipping them with a demand side platform (DSP). Going all-in can be a monumental task, but with the right preparation, the right planning, and the right implementation, the returns are potentially mouth-watering. Pharmaceuticals giant Bayer, which first began developing their in-housing operations back in 2017, was reportedly able to reduce its programmatic buying costs by over $10 million in just the first six weeks. The company has also pointed to a number of additional in-housing related benefits, including ownership of their tech stacks, data, and dashboards.

The Importance of Greater Transparency into Media Buys

Bayer’s success is essentially a microcosm of the upsides that come from in-housing programmatic. With the removal of third-party cookies from Chrome lingering just over the horizon and data privacy at the front and center of public consciousness, it is paramount that brands know exactly what their advertising is doing.

A recent study found that 58% of marketers worry about not having a complete picture of how their media is traded and the results their investments deliver. It shows that—despite significant progress over the last few years—many agencies still fall short on providing real visibility into the digital ad buying process. This lack of transparency, plus added control and potential cost savings is why most brand advertisers that pursue in-housing choose to do so. Indeed, gaining access to unfiltered campaign performance data empowers brands to do a host of valuable things, including:

• Tweaking campaigns in the moment to adapt to shifting consumer trends.
• Quickly validating hypotheses through on-the-fly multi-variate A/B testing.
• Sharing frontline feedback and information with other internal teams free of obstacles.
• Digging deeper into consumer behavior to learn more about path to purchase decisions.
• Monitoring for brand safety.
• Ensuring ad placements align with business values and corporate ethics.
• Uncovering new audience targeting opportunities.
• Tying programmatic buys to non-programmatic buys to unlock a holistic view of performance.
• Storing both historical and current campaign data in one centralized platform.

Long-term Cost Efficiencies

The fact that Bayer was able to save $10+ million almost immediately after in-housing its programmatic is more the exception than the rule. The majority of brands experience their cost benefits over a longer period of time, with monthly gains stemming from not paying out agency fees (fixed hourly rates, platform fees, media fees, etc.). Internal programmatic teams have just one focus when pulling campaign levers: increasing profitability for the brand. Agency partners, meanwhile, must also balance this goal with their own need to make money and meet margins. In-housing simply eliminates that tax.

Then there is the matter of cost efficiencies through better campaign execution. The switch in-house ultimately enables brands to invest in—and nurture—talent within their marketing organization (assuming they can hold onto that much-coveted programmatic buying talent, of course!) While outsourced staffing solutions can provide some great results, they may not be able to optimize the consumer journey with the same granularity as an in-house staffer who knows the brand through and through.

Not All Plain Sailing

Now, there may be many upsides to in-housing, but brands should not underestimate the organizational, technological, and cultural challenges involved in this digital transformation.

For starters, programmatic in-housing takes time. Ideally, the transition should be a well-researched, deliberate journey with calculated investment in the right resources and tech over a period of many months, if not years. From the outset, those leading the change need to ensure they involve a wide range of internal stakeholders from all corners of their organization, including finance, legal, product, and IT. All these teams will have either a direct or indirect influence on the program’s success, so it is important to listen to their input on the process (and get their buy-in before proceeding). What are the security implications, for example, from an IT perspective? How much budget is available for the required tools? How are privacy regulations going to be respected? What are the data challenges from a CRM standpoint? A multitude of questions must be answered, so the more support earned from across the org, the better.

Essentially, programmatic in-housing is not something you can just do on a whim, and it is critical to set the expectation internally that transformational results are unlikely to arrive quickly. Brands accustomed to focusing on short-to-medium term initiatives and goals must learn to adapt to protracted, longer-term processes and a new way of working.

The Hybrid In-Housing Option

Of course, every marketer right now is thinking hard about how to wrangle more out of their advertising dollars, and many are concluding that they need outside help and guidance to do so successfully. At the same time, many media agencies are adopting new structures—reorganizing in a way that makes it easier to offer on-demand services and step into a more advisory role for clients that seek to in-house some of their programmatic budgets. It is a development that makes sense for both parties—agencies have extensive experience in what works and what doesn’t in the programmatic sphere—not to mention the tools necessary for executing on programmatic media buys—and clients need to tap into those resources as they bring some of that operational activity inside their own walls.

This, in essence, is what the hybrid in-housing model is all about—an in-house marketing team tees up the overarching strategy before consulting with an agency on how to deliver it in the market. Sometimes, this will lead to the agency assuming the day-to-day responsibilities of implementing the plan and pulling the levers, and at other times it will lead to the advertiser doing the work with their own platform under the agency’s direction.

The latter scenario is the one that more brands are pursuing as it ultimately merges many of the best aspects of both in-housing and outsourcing. With hybrid in-housing:

• Brands can control what DSP(s) they are using
• They have complete transparency into media performance
• If they ever want to switch agencies, they can take their historical learnings with them
• They can consolidate vendors
• They can maintain access to agency expertise and valuable external perspectives

A 2021 Forrester study frames the hybrid in-housing trend in numerical terms, finding only 30% of marketers plan to completely manage programmatic internally in the long-term. It highlights just how important agencies remain to brands—programmatic advertising can be a labyrinthine, complex venture, and there are still many marketing organizations that struggle to identify the right systems to help them better engage their audiences. The hybrid option alleviates that pressure and empowers brands to take whatever baby steps they want.

Fully Outsourcing Programmatic Functionalities

Option number three: fully outsourcing, a route that many brands still prefer despite the myriad benefits that in-housing offers. It represents a great option for those who don’t have the resources to build an internal programmatic team and all the costs that come with it—think upfront licensing fees, salaries, training, etc.

From a brand perspective, the main drawbacks to contracting out all aspects of programmatic advertising are the lack of control they will enjoy over their consumer data and the limited transparency they will get into media performance. To address and nullify this, however, some agencies are recalibrating with a new dynamic that is helping them win more programmatic business: the agency plus sister company, two-for-one, solution. Indeed, a growing number of agency pitches today feature purpose-built services supported by their holding company’s dedicated data and analytics divisions. It is a move designed to negate the potential for brand-agency conflicts, with these specialty customer intelligence orgs brought into the equation to fuel better communications planning and extract deeper insights into the brand’s marketing efficacy. It is a symbol of how agencies are responding to the moment and the mood of the industry, becoming nimbler and reengineering their capabilities to stay attractive to brands.

There’s a Programmatic Talent Shortage

One key area where agencies retain an upper hand in the in-housing/outsourcing calculation is talent. Managing and optimizing programmatic media is a complex art, and advertisers considering independence from agencies will need a glut of staff additions in order ensure they are doing things right—a programmatic manager, a data analyst, and a DSP operator, to name but a few.

The problem facing brand-side HR departments today is actually filling these positions—the labor market in this field is desperately tight and to make matters tougher, the talent that is available often take opportunities at agencies over brands because they can offer better career progression, opportunities to diversify, and ongoing learning. Within the four walls of a brand, those things can be difficult to come by considering there is only one program to service and (most likely) fewer opportunities to influence overall strategy.

No player in the programmatic space can expect to be successful without the right people doing the bidding, so this talent shortage is a pressing concern for brands, regularly leaving them with no choice but to look to external partners.

The Path to Self-Service

Likely a concept that many marketers may not even be familiar with, the path to self-service model is aimed at brands that desire greater control over specialized programmatic functions but may be kept in-check by internal resource limitations.

The premise is simple: marketing organizations tap dedicated in-housing consultants to onboard new technology at a pace that makes sense for their evolving business. Then, as the client gets more comfortable with each aspect of the programmatic ecosystem, the consultants introduce more capabilities and training modules to nurture in-house teams to the point that they can manage everything independently. This is an option that may suit small- to medium-sized teams that have resisted in-housing programmatic media buying because they felt it too complex and/or tedious for them to manage alone. But with the proper training and strategists on standby, teams can maintain internal operations with far greater ease.

Here is what a typical path to self-service might look like over six months:

• Within the first seven days: Consultants provide the client an in-depth assessment of their incumbent platforms, team structure, top priorities, skill gaps, and established workflows. They communicate areas for immediate change and align on an action plan, determining next steps and prioritization for training calls.
• Within the first 30 days: At this stage, the client is comfortable checking on campaigns, accessing real-time campaign data, sending RFPs, and pulling reports. They understand the foundations of programmatic buying, RTB, strategy, and execution. Consultants continue to provide ongoing education around platform experience, as well as reading and understanding campaign data.
• 45-60 days from hand-off date: The client is now “hands on keyboard” and understands how to build/launch a new campaign. Consultants continue to provide ongoing education around more in-depth tactical best practices.
• 30 days from hand-off date: The consultant gives the client full permissions inside the technology as the in-house team prepares to transition to full self-serve. The in-house team runs through pacing and optimization exercises to better understand campaign management in real-time. Lastly, clients are introduced to an onboarding specialist with a focus on “readiness” to take over programmatic in accordance with campaign needs.
• Transition to self-service: The client is now comfortable with campaign execution from beginning to end—every aspect of planning, building, pacing, and optimizing—and takes full ownership of all accounts and buying execution.
• Long-term support (customer success): The consultant continues to provide the client support around advanced pacing and optimization strategies. A dedicated customer success manager organizes regular training calls to help clients stay abreast of custom offerings, platform updates, and any available beta testing opportunities.

The path to self-service blueprint can ultimately help brands ensure their systems, campaigns, and data consolidation practices are set up effectively from the outset, allowing marketers to mitigate many of the issues that can bring in-housing plans grinding to a halt.

Programmatic In-Housing—Wrapping Up

Bringing programmatic media buying in-house is a colossal undertaking. The whole operation must be built on a foundation of organized data, deliberate processes, capable tools, and skillful talent. As programmatic’s prominence rises and third-party cookie deprecation becomes a reality, more marketers may want to in-house their programmatic advertising… but all too often, they don’t know where to begin.

The good news is a host of options exist—be it going all-in, a hybrid approach where brands and agencies share responsibilities, full outsourcing, or going down a path to self-service. Overall, there are many benefits of in-housing, with the biggest being the ability to obtain greater transparency into media buys and secure more holistic control over data, not to mention the possibility of significant long-term cost savings. And either way, agencies still have an important role to play in the media buying ecosystem—whether as valued partners or as critical consultants.

If you’re starting to think about making changes to your organization’s programmatic advertising strategy and are looking for some guidance, our Programmatic In-Housing Readiness Quiz can help you determine where you are in your journey and set a course of action that make sense for you and your organization.