• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, March 6, 2017

A significant number of the world’s largest advertisers have shifted their media-buying in-house thanks to programmatic media-buying technology, according to an analysis by a leading Wall Street equities firm.

Describing the analysis as a “recent check with industry contacts,” Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser published a report to shareholders this morning, noting that 15 of the top 200 advertisers have taken media-buying away from their agencies and brought it in-house because of their ability to buy it programmatically.

“This appeared to us as a relatively significant escalation from the last time we explored the topic,” Wieser wrote, though he did not disclose when his last benchmark was conducted.

“But how significant a change was this finding,” he said, adding, “Not quite as much, as we discovered many of them continue to work with agencies for most of their related needs.”

Wieser explained that in-house “buying exists along a continuum, with a range of responsibilities divided up between marketer and agency.

“Overall, the impact of this trend is possibly slightly negative for holding companies because it leads some marketers to drive more decision making than might have otherwise occurred. As time progresses, we expect to hear of more marketers participating in such activities. But at the same time, we also expect that the depth of involvement many of them will have with agencies may expand as well.”