This FAQ explores the agency ecosystem, the forces reshaping it, and what marketers should consider when evaluating agency partners.

Ad agencies face AI disruption, consolidation, in-housing, and economic pressure. Legacy models are cracking as clients automate more work, forcing agencies to rethink their business strategies—or risk falling behind.

The ad agency ecosystem is vast, complex, and ever-changing. It now faces changes brought on by AI and clients’ shifting preferences over how and where to spend their advertising dollars.

Learn how advertisers, publishers, and ad tech players operate in the programmatic marketplace that fuels over 90% of digital display ad spending.

New numbers show some growth in ad jobs: However, even though jobs in some areas of the industry have begun to come back, a rebound with agencies will likely be uneven.

Shrinking media budgets, aggressive growth goals and ever-complex marketing needs are causing a shift in the brand-agency relationship. In their bid for self-preservation, brands are streamlining spending and in-housing capabilities.

The term “in-house agency” can mean many different things. It could mean a brand is expanding its internal operations to include in-house creative and media teams. Or it could involve a company that is expanding its partnerships to include consultancies and tech vendors that help set up and staff those in-house agencies. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to how the modern advertising ecosystem operates.

This report will cover how brands rely on outside agency expertise and how that relationship has evolved in recent years. It also features 12 examples from brands on an in-house journey.

Agencies have always operated in a competitive market, but now, they must contend with brand clients bringing marketing tasks in-house and consultancies encroaching on their turf.

With consumer privacy concerns at an all-time high and US regulation a certainty, advertisers must shift from a "bigger data is better data" mentality to a more mindful data-driven marketing focus. We spoke with Nicolas Bidon, CEO of WPP’s agency trading desk Xaxis, about how this transition inevitably leads to in-housing for some marketers—and why that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Some marketers are taking control of their campaigns by in-housing various advertising services such as ad creative, social and search.

An ANA survey indicates that cost savings are why most brands turn to in-housing. While other in-housing benefits are nice, the research shows that they are often ancillary.