Bringing more media capabilities in house is a top objective for nearly half of marketers but lack of resources and institutional reluctance to move away from agency relationships are holding them back, according to a study from Forrester Consulting commissioned by Acxiom.

Desire for greater transparency, control over data and assurance of compliance with privacy regulations are among the biggest factors driving media in-housing, according to the survey. Media planning, analytics, connected TV and other addressable and programmatic media buying are among areas most quickly going in house, said Acxiom CEO Chad Engelgau in an interview.

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Improving internal media capabilities ranked as the top objective for 40% of the 300 U.S. marketing leaders in Forrester’s survey. Media in housing ranked slightly ahead of objectives such as implementing advanced technology or improving quality of consumer insights. Forrester found 90% of marketers now expect to have at least some responsibility over all areas of media, but 64% of marketers expect to bring media capabilities in house gradually.

Transparency—knowing exactly how much is paid to whom and for what in complex media supply chains—is one big driver of in-housing interest, according to Forrester’s survey. So is having direct control over consumer data to ensure compliance with increasingly complex privacy regulations and manage the rapid changes brought by the end of third-party cookies and other personal digital identifiers.

The interest also is driven by marketing leaders wanting their marketers to have their “hands on the keyboard,” Engelgau said, repeating a phrase that’s become common in recent years at Procter & Gamble Co. The consumer packaged goods giant has largely brought media planning in house, for example by having brand marketers handle their own buying on such self-service platforms as Meta’s Facebook and Instagram.

But only 30% of marketers want to completely manage media on their own, Forrester found. Social, search, affiliate, connected TV, addressable and other programmatic advertising are among the areas marketers most want to manage directly, Engelgau said. More traditional TV, out-of-home, radio or print buying is more likely to be handled through agencies, he said, though marketers are also looking to manage analytics of how all the pieces work together in house.

But the term “in house” doesn’t exactly describe how the landscape is changing. It’s often more about taking responsibilities away from traditional media agencies, leading media duties from within, and then relying on other third parties for help. These third parties include such demand-side platforms as The Trade Desk, which P&G uses, or data and analytics specialty firms such as Acxiom, Engelgau said.

That helps explain why Acxiom, a unit of agency holding company Interpublic Group of Cos., would commission a study about the growth of in housing—and why IPG’s 2018 acquisition of Acxiom or Publicis Groupe’s 2019 acquisition of Epsilon were so strategically important.

Clearly, big media reviews and assignments—including for Unilever, Walmart, Facebook (Meta) and Coca-Cola Co.—have happened in recent months despite marketers' desire to take more media in house.

But Engelgau said a growing number of media pitches now involve combining a conventional media agency with holding companies’ data and analytics specialty units, with the latter often playing an advisory role to media duties that marketers want to keep “in house.”

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So data and analytics specialty shops are increasingly important to winning business, media wins are often described as holding company efforts, perhaps led by a traditional agency brand. Engelgau pointed to Morgan Stanley and E-Trade awarding their media account to IPG’s “Mediahub powered by Acxiom” in August as one example.

Client-specific units combining the media agency with data specialists are often necessary to manage conflicts, he said, since the data operations aren’t segmented as much as agency brands are.

The pandemic actually slowed the shift of media duties in house, according to 62% of the Forrester respondents. Engelgau said that may have been because of budgetary restraints in hiring the necessary people. But respondents also cited organizational reluctance to “break with an agency-dependent culture,” existing agency contracts and unrealistic organizational expectations among factors holding back the change.

Staffing in-house media operations is an ongoing factor in bringing more work in house and managing much “in house” led functions with help from outside, Engelgau said. Among factors making it harder for marketers to hire for in-house media operations, he said, is less potential for advancement within a single marketer versus an outside agency serving many marketers, he said.

“Marketers know they don’t have enough people with the right skill set,” he said. “So they know they need to depend on entities” such as Acxiom, or IPG sibling addressable advertising specialist Matterkind.