Commentary

Report: Most Digital Marketing Now Done In-House

The In-House Agency Forum (IHAF) in partnership with Forrester Research is out with a new report that finds the majority of digital marketing is now produced in-house.

The findings indicate that 89% of in-house agencies develop and/or execute digital marketing assets. And, while there continues to be a mix of internal and external agencies involved, in-house resources are responsible for the bulk of the work.

Nearly 80% of social media is insourced and 20% outsourced, 72% of digital strategy and planning is insourced versus 26% outsourced and 73% of digital creative development is insourced versus 27% for outsourced.

Also, 70% of digital content is produced in-house while the rest is outsourced per the report, titled "Debunking the In-House Myth."

That said, a large percentage — 47% — of digital media continues to be handled by external agencies with 46% of digital media planning and buying executed in-house. For programmatic buys, 43% is outsourced and 33% is executed in-house.  

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“The sheer scale of insourced digital marketing functions compared to outsourced functions illustrates how in-house agencies have grown in both popularity and digital marketing maturity over the past decade,” says principal analyst at Forrester Research, Jay Pattisall. “Equally significant is the high-level integration of digital and offline teams. In-house agencies can fully deliver on CMOs’ end-to-end digital campaign needs.”

The report is based on a survey of 288 companies spanning 30 different industries. Respondents included in-house agency leaders, client-side marketers and external agencies/vendor partners.

The full report can be downloaded here if you’re an IHAF member.

1 comment about "Report: Most Digital Marketing Now Done In-House".
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  1. Emily Foster from IHAF, January 26, 2021 at 1:11 p.m.

    It’s been six years since we fielded a survey focused on digital marketing. Based on the advancements we’ve seen, including capabilities and creative quality, it was time to take a look at how digital marketing within the in-house community has evolved. In the six years since IHAF’s last digital marketing report, the number of digital projects produced by internal teams has more than doubled. In 2014, fewer than half of in-house agencies produced 100 or more digital projects annually. Today, over three-quarters (77%) produce 100+ digital projects per year with nearly half (48%) producing 500 or more. 

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