The case for and against bringing programmatic in-house
By Sam Bradley • February 9, 2026 •
Ivy Liu
More brands are set to bring the media expertise in-house this year, with some, including Danish advertiser Lego, even moving to build out internal programmatic expertise.
In theory, they’re doing so to reduce the cost of managing media investments, while gaining the ability to act faster, and in closer coordination with the rest of their business.
In practice, there are good reasons why media planning and buying, and programmatic specifically, are considered to be the final frontier of in-housing.
Industry observers expect to see a high number of media accounts come under review this year. While they peruse pitch decks and RFI responses, CMOs and CFOs may be keeping the arguments for and against working with an agency at all in the backs of their minds. It’s worth reviewing the arguments on either side.
The case for in-housing programmatic
A decade and change on from the mid-noughties rush to bring marketing operations in-house, internal advertising units are now mature departments. In-house creative teams win Cannes Lions, while in-house media units plan Super Bowl and border-spanning campaigns. As of 2023 (the most recent ANA benchmark report), 54% of U.S. brands have an in-house media unit.
“We’ve gone back and forth over the course of the years on agencies,” said Nikki Frisz, senior director of marketing at Dollar Shave Club. “[We’ve] changed agencies, [we’ve] changed the scope of agencies … [in-housing] has allowed us to be a lot more efficient.”
While they might have begun with the low-hanging fruit — most often paid social and paid search — many now have the institutional knowledge and expertise to take on more difficult and complex assignments, such as programmatic. Moreover, the vast majority of digital video and digital display ad dollars flow through programmatic pipes; avoiding the issue means there’s a ceiling on what an in-house media unit can do. As such, advertisers with firmly established internal units, such as retailer Boots or paper manufacturer Georgia-Pacific, now also have their own programmatic trading teams.
Advertisers pursuing control over relationships with DSPs and SSPs, speedier decision-making, and lower costs (or at least, a clearer understanding of why media costs what it does) are likely to follow. And with ad-tech power players like Amazon explicitly courting the in-house teams of small and mid sized advertisers, it’s becoming easier for them to do so.
Finally, there’s the promise — if not yet the reality — of agentic media buying. CMOs across the industry are quietly keeping an eye on efforts, such as those coming from DSPs like Yahoo, to develop AI systems that can automate media spending decisions, saving time and enabling smaller teams of media practitioners. They’re less interested in the technological potential, or the principle of a programmatic supply chain without opaque middlemen, than in the chance to cut down agency fees or cut agencies out entirely.
The case against in-housing programmatic
Stock watchers might not place much confidence in the long-term future of operating company/holdco business model. But agencies are not just activation shops placing bids and carrying out the orders to the letter of a client brief.
They’re taking a more active role in curating the bidstream — “curating dynamically” at the supply level. They’re grinding out favorable terms with otherwise unassailably powerful companies (see last year’s attritional chess in The Trade Desk’s pricing) such as Google. They’re able to do those things in large part because they’re able to negotiate on behalf of entire rosters of clients, bringing a heft and scale to negotiations few in-house units will ever be able to match.
Brands attempting to build up an in-house media unit are engaged primarily in hiring. But there’s a lot of competition in that pond, and experienced programmatic experts — the kind of person that can spin up an effective team quickly and without institutional support — don’t come cheap, and might not be thrilled about the idea of wedding themselves to a single brand for the rest of their career. According to Paras Shah, Georgia-Pacific’s senior director of digital media, “recruiting, developing and retaining specialized talent that’s high in demand” was one of the biggest challenges faced by Georgia-Pacific as it built up its internal department.
Little surprise that while 13% of U.S. ANA members handle programmatic internally, twice that number (26%) opt for hybrid approaches, retaining some in-house media capabilities but relying on agency expertise for programmatic or national TV buys and for cutting-edge strategic consulting — as well as the aforementioned scale.
Furthermore, agentic media buying is, for now, an idea in utero. The few agencies pushing ahead with agentic media buying tests are doing so step by step, with small budgets and one hand hovering over the handbrake should their vibe-coded media assistants go rogue with client budgets.
And some agency experts question whether the idea is even a useful one. “When it comes to programmatic activations, we’re not trusting that to large language model-based agents,” said Christopher Francia, director of product development and client performance at Attention Arc, in a recent episode of the Digiday podcast.
