A decade after agencies established independent “trading desks” and/or separate programmatic media-buying teams, most agencies have integrated their programmatic and direct media-buying teams -- either explicitly or implicitly -- according to media-buying strategists at U.S. agencies surveyed last month by Forrester Research for media-buying technology platform Centro.
Only 25% of 104 executives responding to the survey characterized their current programmatic media-buying as still operating “independently,” while 17% say it is now completed “converged.”
Most media-buying organizations fall somewhere in-between, working either as formal (30%) or informal (28%) partnerships.
To facilitate convergence, most respondents (81%) cited technological or (80%) personnel changes, vs. establishing new processes (72%) or changing their business culture (62%).
The full report can be accessed here.
Joe, what this probably means---where it applies--is that the digital people now report to the same exec as the traditional media folks---not that the two are necessarily integrated with either team able to handle the other medium.