Programmatic, in-house or Agency?
I’m not taking any sides in this article, simply putting my thoughts together, myself coming from a programmatic background, I’m trying to build a programmatic in-house team, starting only with programmatic direct. Again, I’m not sure if this is the right move but I felt I should give it a try.
A survey by Infectious Media revealed that 84% of advertisers want to increase "control over their programmatic efforts". An overwhelming majority of advertisers expressed concerns over a lack of transparency and competence. Other concerns, such as ad fraud and brand safety were other factors.
Despite the strong desire to handle the programmatic internally, advertisers find it really hard to find the right talent and keeping up with the changes in DSP technology. If finding the right talent is the hard part, should it be same for the agencies as well, this can explain why some agencies struggled with the shift to programmatic and execute the campaigns efficiently.
Having said that, I think carelessness of many agencies has put marketers on alert mode and gave them grounds for undermining the true value of an agency as a whole.
I think its quite understandable why advertisers need control, its not just transparency its the valuable leanings as well.
The machine-learning or AI enabled ad tech vendors out there are very proud of their product which can optimize and scale your campaigns, but I’m sure it's not tailored to your business yet, it has to learn and adapt, remember that this learning is not free, you have to spend certain $$ for initial campaigns and gradually the system gets better.
On the other hand, you can get invaluable insights (some of them are actionable) from optimising the campaigns manually, for example, if your campaigns are performing really well with a certain Telco, doing a partnership deal with them might get your business incremental results. These are often overlooked both by marketers and agencies, if your agencies are giving these insights then you have the best partner in town.
The line between digital marketing campaigns and use of data is getting thinner day by day, one more question is, do you trust your agency to handle this sensitive data effectively? What if your organizational data policy limits you to share this data with a 3rd party? Do you still use them because you don't have man-power while you know that your campaign can perform much better with that dataset?
Not every brand has programmatic in their DNA and not every business has a culture that enables their teams to pick up a new skill which requires you to be up to date with industry and tech changes.
Not all car owners have the skill, tools and most importantly motivation to repair/maintain their own vehicle, some of them go for branded service centers which are expensive and the others go for a local mechanic, we all know how hard it is to find a good local mechanic or good local agency partner.
I think every brand should give this a try, not a full scale, maybe with a small campaign, brand can always go back to the agency if the trail goes south, would love to hear your thoughts on the above.
Fintech Growth Marketer | Performance & Lifecycle Marketing
6 年Hi Ravi, curious to hear from you if you habe tested in-housing model? If yes, what is your opinion in balancing the cost (compare to agency) vs value driven from in-housing? Thank you!
Some other points to consider for in-house vs agency 1) response time and agility 2) knowledge and experience working across geography ( depends on nature of business). Not all technology platforms work well across the globe. 3) view on changes in the tech landscape and learnings/testing out the new options
Web 3.0 Will Be The Future
7 年In-house team will be better 1. They are the one who understands your business nature the most. 2. As you mention, you don't trust the agency to manage your sensitive data. 3. It's usually much cheaper if your in-house team know how to do the "tricks" for each channel to compliment each other. 4. You have more control over the budget and strategy. 5. In-house focus solely on one single campaign (account), they can be more details in reporting & data analyst. All of the above required an experienced individual or team to execute.
Analytics and Growth Strategist | University of Michigan
7 年Experienced talent will be hard to find for all upcoming domains. Nobody was trained to manage Google & Facebook when these platforms first came into the market.
I Help eCommerce & B2B Businesses Turn Data Into Actions | Chief Marketing Officer At Roots Digital | ACLP Certified
7 年In house and agency both have its pros and cons. Agree with what you said. If advertisers really want to start in house, they can try with a few small campaigns. To get a feel what it is really like to run programmatic campaign internally.