• by Maarten Albarda , Featured Contributor, Yesterday

Over the last decade, there has been a distinct move toward bringing more agency services in-house. However, over the last six months we have seen what’s perhaps a next phase in the reshaping of the relationship between marketers and agencies.

First Keurig Dr. Pepper, then Suntory, and now Expedia have abandoned or at the very least changed their dependence on in-house agency services. There may have been others, but so far these three are the main companies covered in the press.

Until recently, the trend was definitely for marketers to bring creative, programmatic and other services in-house, chasing the promise of speed, brand immersion, and cost savings. However, this trend appears to be reversing. In-house agencies are now "under pressure" as economic headwinds including the zigzag of tariffs are forcing marketers to scrutinize every budget line item.

The changes highlight the inherent challenges of the in-house model: the high fixed costs of hiring, incentivizing and maintaining talent, the risk of creative stagnation, and the difficulty in scaling major campaigns.

And then there's the challenge of proving ROI. Companies are asking tough questions about whether their internal teams are truly more cost-effective than having external partners.

This doesn't mean the end of the in-house agency, but it may signal the end of the hype. The trend is no longer a simple in-house versus external-agency debate. Instead, we are seeing the rise of a more sophisticated, hybrid model, where leaders strategically decide which functions to own and where to leverage specialized external partners.

And we can’t get through this story without mentioning AI. It’s very likely some of the layoffs on the in-house agency side are driven by the realization that some of that content or media management can be developed and placed via AI-driven tech. I am not going to defend this idea, and only time will tell if AI truly delivers the same for less.

What’s certain is that traditional agency networks are not necessarily the ones to benefit from the “re-outsourcing” movement. The tech solutions that take the place of many in-house content and media managers are connected directly to the platforms or are even owned by them. Mark Zuckerberg recently told the Stripe conference: “It will be possible in the future that [when] you’re running a small business, or maybe a larger one, you wouldn’t have to start off with creative. Maybe you can, maybe you’ll get better results, but you could just come with a goal and we’ll just kind of deliver results. So that’s cool, and I think it’s going to pretty fundamentally change what advertising is.”

So the real story isn't about which model is "better," but about the emergence of a new approach. If anything, what Keurig Dr. Pepper, Suntory, Expedia, and probably others under the radar are doing suggests that marketers are moving beyond a simple binary choice. They are strategically assessing which functions are best served by an internal team, enhanced by AI-driven marketing tech, and where they need specialized skills, which will most likely come from a platform and not an agency partner. This shift gives a whole new meaning to the term “housecleaning."