• Advertising Age, Wednesday, April 6, 2016 9:03 AM

Apparently taking ad-tech functions in-house isn't all its cracked up to be. An Ad Age report finds that in-house trading desks turn suppliers into buyers and partners into rivals. The post finds that as more marketers embrace automated media buying, more are building their own systems to do it with varying involvement from their media agencies. While bringing the function in-house might seem to simplify things, "the reality is anything but simple as the industry evolves into a complex web of partners, competitors and frenemies."

The report maintains that "no programmatic trading operation is fully in-house, given that agencies still get involved in some way, be it planning the media strategy, negotiating parameters of private exchanges with media companies or managing trading on platforms owned and overseen by marketers. Managing things internally still draws on outside specialists for help." That's good news for agencies and specialists: Marketers still need them.

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