Almost half of media agencies now carry out their own programmatic media buying with in-house tech, according to new research generated by ExchangeWire and IponWeb.
Agents of Change: The Rise of the Programmatic Media Agency, found that 49% of agencies power programmatic media buys using proprietary ad tech. A further 34%, meanwhile, use a mix of custom and third-party software. The remaining 17% rely exclusively on tech provided by third parties alone.
Around the world agencies operating in Europe, the Middle East and Africa led the way with 58% relying solely on their own resources, falling to 56% among their North American counterparts and just 33% in APAC.
The results were obtained from a survey of 129 professionals worldwide and suggested agencies using their own programmatic tech stack benefited in the form of improved performance across measurement metrics.
Of those who did so, 50% rated their performance in campaign measurement as being ‘extremely strong’ versus just 18% of those who didn’t use proprietary solutions.
However, operating an in-house tech system didn’t necessarily make for a better understanding of programmatic, with 39% of agencies that exclusively used owned buying technology saying their understanding of the tech was ‘extremely strong’ – the same percentage as those didn’t rely on it.
Earlier this year, 90% of marketers said they would be willing to lay down ‘slightly or ‘significantly’ more investment in programmatic inventory if they could be guaranteed improved measurement and analysis.
