Digiday Research: Over half of brands say they handle marketing ‘mostly’ with internal resources

This research is based on unique data collected from our proprietary audience of publisher, agency, brand and tech insiders. It’s available to Digiday+ members. More from the series →

In-housing marketing is growing.

Digiday’s quarterly benchmarking survey found that about 83% of marketers are managing their marketing either mostly in-house or completely in-house. That’s up from the 55% of marketers six months ago who said the same.

60% of brand marketers surveyed by Digiday this quarter said they were managing their marketing functions “mostly” in-house, while 23% said they were managing it entirely in-house.

No brands said they were using agencies for all tasks, while only 5% said they were “mostly” using agencies. 13% said it was half-half.

Here is what people are managing entirely inhouse: 80% said it was brand strategy, 55% said it was social media, while 57% said it was media planning and strategy. Coming in lower were programmatic and traditional ad buying, as well as creative production.

But even those, many are managing partly-in house. 

The same survey six months ago found that 33% were managing marketing “mostly” in-house, with 22% saying it was completely in house.

More in Marketing

Marketing’s upper middle embraces AI creative production

Scaled AI creative production is becoming ordinary among CMOS outside the billion dollar club.

‘It scared the hell out of me’: What brands have learned from creator partnerships

At Shoptalk Fall, brands like Favorite Daughter, SharkNinja and Bob’s Discount Furniture talked about what they’ve learned from working with creators.

transparency

Future of Marketing Briefing: Agency fees in creator deals are the next transparency headache for marketers

As creator marketing budgets grow, so do questions about what agencies are taking.