78% of ANA marketers launch in-house offerings, study finds
78% of Association of National Advertisers (ANA) member marketers have launched agency offerings in-house, a rise from 58% in 2013 and from 42% in 2008.
An ANA study has revealed that brands are accelerating their in-house marketing processes, shifting away from agencies / ANA
These results, from a survey done by the ANA in August, also revealed that 44% of these in-house shops have been established within five years of its last survey. Roughly 90% of respondents said that workload has increased in the past year, with over 65% of them claiming to have increased by ‘a lot.’
More than half of ANA members have pulled away from using ad agencies, as more than 58% of the collective work has now been done in-house. Respondents revealed that lessening reliance on external agency partners was driven by the need to be more cost-efficient, as well as better knowledge of brands, speed and institutional knowledge. 79% of survey respondents expressed ‘high’ levels of satisfaction from in-house teams, while 37% indicated complete satisfaction with work done by these internal marketers.
However, challenges that in-house marketers have had to overcome include managing growth of their teams, as well as properly managing the change in workflow from increased projects and efficiently managing resources. 90% of ANA member marketers still have relationships with external agencies.
ANA chief Bob Liodice said in a statement: “This report makes clear that the work being done by in-house agencies is no longer confined to ‘low-hanging fruit’ such as collateral/promotional materials and internal videos. Traditional agencies are becoming increasingly challenged as marketers move more work in-house while encouraging their external agencies to provide differentiated services and increased value.
Liodice, who has been critical of the agency-client relationship in the past, said that the ANA expects this rise to continue, and accelerate towards in-house. A similar study done in 2017 has shown that clients have also increasingly taken their media buying responsibilities in-house — weeks ago, the trade body has announced its cooperation with an FBI inquiry on industry-wide media buying practices.