Commentary

The 'In-House Trend' Was Written On The Wall

by Tyler Loechner , Staff Writer, December 22, 2014

Marketers are increasingly putting their trust in technology to run successful digital ad campaigns.

Nearly half (46%) of all advertisers believe that having a deeper in-house knowledge of digital ad technology is the most important factor in bringing digital advertising success. That’s more than the 27% of advertisers that feel having the most talented media agency is most important when it comes to digital ad success, per a new report from AudienceScience.

The results are part of the second annual International Media Image Survey (I-MIS) released in conjunction with the International Advertising Association, Warc and M&M Global.

It should be noted that AudienceScience is a digital ad tech firm that specializes in bringing technology directly to brands and was a sponsor of the I-MIS survey. There were also 795 respondents, 189 of which worked ad media or tech companies. An additional 486 worked in agencies, 82 were senior advertisers and 38 were consultants or academics in the media industry.

This means that 24% percent of respondents worked at media tech companies and could have simply voted for themselves, skewing the results. However, even if we assume the worst and pretend that all 189 voted for “deeper in-house knowledge” over "elite media agency," that stills means over 22% of the other voters, most of which were from media agencies, believe deeper in-house knowledge is the most vital component to digital ad success.

In other words, while AudienceScience did a have a horse in the race, the results are still meaningful and help give reason to the “taking programmatic in-house” trend. In fact, the survey was conducted in the spring of 2014, which one could contend was on the cusp of -- or at least in the thick of -- the “in-house” trend.

Nearly half (43%) of survey respondents said they planned to take more digital planning in-house, many of which presumably did so -- otherwise we wouldn’t have Sir Martin Sorrell making comments on the matter.

"Writing on the wall" image via Shutterstock

ad technology, agency, media buying, programmatic, rtb

2 comments about "The 'In-House Trend' Was Written On The Wall".

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Heather MacLean from TaylorMade Solutions, December 22, 2014 at 10:48 a.m.
Interesting approach. Technology over talent. I think that it should be more of a combination really. Talented people making good use of technology to grow the business. We still need the human touch..after all, we ARE marketing to human-beings.
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Jay Fredrickson from Fredrickson Services Inc., December 31, 2014 at 10:15 a.m.

So, slightly over 10% of the respondents were actually advertisers, and the rest were people in various stages of agency and media discussing what the trends were for advertisers? Can you break out what the ADVERTISERS actually said, for that is what matters most. Rhino, bird on rhino. More rhino and less bird, please.