Agency vs In-House Marketing Statistics (2027): Costs, Trends & Who Wins

These agency vs in-house marketing statistics answer one practical question: should you hire people or hire a firm? The data’s short answer is that almost nobody picks only one. Big brands keep building in-house teams and keep paying agencies anyway. Smaller companies outsource less of their digital work than most people assume.

Every number below links to the organisation that collected it: the ANA, Gartner, The CMO Survey, the BLS, SHRM, the Census Bureau and a handful of industry studies. When the source is an agency surveying its own market, we say so. If we couldn’t trace a figure back to its original, we left it out, which is why a few numbers you’ve seen quoted elsewhere aren’t here.

Last updated: November 2026. Each figure carries the year it was collected, so you can judge how fresh it is.

Key agency vs in-house marketing statistics (quick list)

• 82% of ANA member companies had an in-house agency in 2023, up from 78% in 2018 and 42% in 2008 (ANA, 2023).
• 92% of brands with an in-house agency still work with external agencies (ANA, 2023).
• On average, those brands do 61% of their marketing work in-house, up from 58% in 2018 (ANA, 2023).
• U.S. companies say outside agencies, partners and services handle 33.6% of their digital marketing activities, up from 31.6% in 2022 (The CMO Survey, 2026).
• Agencies took 20.7% of the average marketing budget in 2025, against 21.9% for internal labor (Gartner CMO Spend Survey, 2025).
• 39% of CMOs planned to cut labor costs and agency allocations in 2025 (Gartner, 2025).
• The median U.S. marketing manager earned $166,790 in May 2025 (BLS).
• Benefits make up 32.5% of total compensation for private-industry management, business and financial staff (BLS ECEC, June 2026).
• 46% of B2B companies use a hybrid in-house plus outsourced model; 32% are fully in-house (Sagefrog, 2026).
• Revenue at U.S. advertising, PR and related firms grew about 10% in 2025, to roughly $226 billion (Census Bureau QSS via FRED).

In-housing trends: how many brands run in-house agencies

The best long-run dataset here comes from the Association of National Advertisers, which surveys its members every five years. Its 2023 in-house agency study (162 respondents, fielded February to March 2023) found that 82% of members now run an in-house agency. The figure was 42% in 2008, 58% in 2013 and 78% in 2018.

200842%

201358%

201878%

202382%

Source: ANA, The Continued Rise of the In-House Agency (2023), n=162. The 2013 figure refers to “in-house advertising capabilities.”

The curve is flattening. It jumped sixteen points, then twenty, then four. When four in five large advertisers already have an internal shop, there isn’t much room left to grow.

The figure that gets less press is the one we’d pay more attention to: 92% of respondents with an in-house agency still use external agencies, up from 90% in 2018. At these companies, in-housing hasn’t replaced agencies. It has changed what agencies get hired to do.

What moved in-house, and what stayed with agencies

In the same ANA study, 65% of respondents said they had moved some established work from external agencies to their in-house team over the previous three years. The work that moved most often was creative for digital channels (social, search and email), traditional creative such as print collateral, direct mail and out-of-home, and social and search media buying.

Media is where the split shows. Only 54% of in-house agencies handled any media planning or buying in 2023. Meanwhile 88% said their in-house workload grew in the past year, and 67% said it grew “a lot.” That combination usually means a stretched internal team, which is exactly when overflow work goes back out the door.

Why brands in-house is changing too. Cost savings was still the top KPI used to judge in-house agencies in 2023, but it slipped from 69% in 2018 to 62%. Business performance as a KPI rose from 45% to 59%. In-house teams are increasingly measured like any other growth function, not as a cheaper substitute.

In-housing trends in 2026: strategy over savings

The ANA’s newer 2026 State of In-Housing report (published 22 June 2026, full report gated) surveyed jurors of its In-House Excellence Awards rather than the full membership. Respondents were five times more likely to say marketers are in-housing more than ever than to say they are pulling back. 53% said the main job of an in-house agency is to act as a strategic partner involved in upstream strategy.

According to IHALC’s write-up of the report (404 respondents), only 9% now name “a cost-saving alternative to external agencies” as the primary benefit, compared with 30% picking cost savings in 2023 (the question was worded differently). 34% see work moving from outside partners to in-house, while 7% see it moving the other way. 67% of responding in-house agencies handle media, up from 54% in the 2023 study, and the most common in-house functions were social (58%), influencer and creator marketing (37%) and SEO (35%).

Keep in mind who answered: award jurors are the people running the most mature in-house shops, so these numbers describe the leading edge, not the average brand. Still, the message for agencies is plain. Brands with strong internal teams hire outside firms for what their own people can’t do or don’t have time for, such as specialist channels, fresh creative and surge capacity. An agency pitching “we’re cheaper than hiring” to these buyers is answering a question they’ve stopped asking.

Outsourcing marketing statistics: how much work goes outside

The ANA data covers large advertisers. Most agency vs in-house marketing statistics stop there, which skews the picture toward the biggest spenders. For a wider view, The CMO Survey’s 2026 topline report asked U.S. marketing leaders what share of their digital marketing activities external agencies, partners and services perform. The survey went to 2,111 leaders at for-profit companies; 308 responded (97% VP level or above, fielded 7 to 29 January 2026), and 198 answered this question.

The mean answer was 33.6%, with a median of 25%. Marketers expect 34.3% two years from now, and the figure was 31.6% in 2022. The gap between mean and median matters: a minority of heavy outsourcers pulls the average up, while the typical company sends about a quarter of its digital work outside.

Outsourcing by company size

You’d expect small businesses to outsource the most because they lack staff. The CMO Survey’s firm and industry breakout shows the opposite.

Under $10M28.5%

$10M to $25M24.7%

$26M to $99M25.8%

$100M to $499M29.4%

$500M to $999M38.8%

$1B to $9.9B43.6%

$10B+40.0%

Source: The CMO Survey, Firm and Industry Breakout Report (2026), n=196 answering by revenue band (17 to 46 per band); mean percentages.

Companies under $100 million in revenue send about a quarter of their digital work outside. Companies above $500 million send closer to 40%. The employee-count cut tells the same story: 31.0% for firms under 50 staff, 44.8% for those with 10,000 or more. Our read is that big companies run more channels, markets and campaigns at once, and they can afford a specialist partner for each.

With 17 to 46 respondents per revenue band, treat the gaps as direction, not precision. Forrester’s January 2026 snapshot of its 2025 Marketing Budgets Survey adds a twist for B2B: the heaviest outsourcers (31% or more of programs budget) cluster at both the smallest and the largest revenue levels. Forrester doesn’t publish the percentages outside the paid report.

Outsourcing by sector and industry

Segment	Respondents	Share done by outside partners (now)	Expected in 2 years
All companies	198	33.6%	34.3%
B2B product	80	28.4%	30.8%
B2B services	52	25.2%	25.9%
B2C product	45	47.9%	44.1%
B2C services	21	43.6%	45.5%
Retail / wholesale	12	57.1%	58.3%
Consumer packaged goods	18	54.7%	51.1%
Tech / software / platform	41	27.6%	23.6%
Communications / media	11	10.5%	18.6%
Education	5	3.0%	2.0%

B2C brands outsource far more than B2B companies, and retail and CPG send out more than half their digital work. B2C services is the biggest mover: The CMO Survey’s 2026 highlights report puts it at 33.7% in 2022 against 43.6% now. Tech and software companies sit near 28% and expect to drop to about 24%, which matches what we hear from SaaS teams building growth functions internally.

If you sell agency services to B2B or SaaS clients, plan for a smaller slice of the work and a client team that wants to own strategy. Our SaaS marketing agency rankings show which firms are set up for that kind of relationship.

Marketing agency vs in-house cost: where the budget goes

Gartner’s annual CMO Spend Survey splits marketing budgets into spending buckets. In the 2025 edition (402 marketing leaders in North America, the UK and Europe), budgets averaged 7.7% of company revenue, flat on 2024 and down from 9.5% three years earlier. Chief Marketer’s coverage gives the split.

Paid media30.6%

Martech22.4%

Internal labor21.9%

Agencies20.7%

Source: Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey via Chief Marketer, n=402. The four buckets total 95.6%; the published coverage doesn’t break out the rest.

Agencies and internal staff each take about a fifth of the budget. When money gets tight, agencies are the first line to be cut. 39% of CMOs planned to cut labor costs and agency allocations in 2025, and Gartner’s Ewan McIntyre told Chief Marketer that CMOs will “look to their third-party partners first before they look at their in-house team.”

If you run an agency, that quote is your churn risk in one line. Retainers that can be paused with 30 days’ notice are the easiest saving a CMO can find. Contracts tied to a named outcome, or work the client’s team genuinely can’t do, are harder to cut.

2026: labor’s share grows

The 2026 CMO Spend Survey (401 CMOs) put budgets at 7.8% of revenue. According to Chief Marketer’s report on the 2026 results, labor’s share rose to 24.5% from 21.9%, paid media hit a five-year high of 31.4%, and martech fell to 19.4% (from 26.6% in 2021). CMOs also put 15.3% of their budget toward AI.

Gartner’s 2026 agency share isn’t in any public source we could find, so we haven’t guessed it. The arithmetic still points one way: when paid media and labor both take a bigger slice of a flat budget, something else shrinks. In-house teams aren’t safe either, though. 43% of CMOs expected to spend less on labor in 2026, against 34% expecting to spend more.

In-house marketing team costs: salary and benefits data

The cost comparison is where most agency vs in-house articles go vague, and where agency vs in-house marketing statistics from vendors tend to favour whoever paid for the survey. Here’s one built only on government data. Salaries come from the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook (May 2025 medians). Benefits come from the BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation release for June 2026.

ECEC shows wages make up 67.5% of total compensation for private-industry management, business and financial staff, and 68.5% for the broader management, professional and related group. Across all private industry, benefits are 30.0% of compensation, or about $14.07 of every $46.89 an hour. So to get from a salary to what an employee costs you, divide by roughly 0.68.

Role	Median salary (May 2025)	Est. fully loaded cost per year	Per month
Marketing manager	$166,790	$247,100	$20,590
Web developer / digital designer	$99,520	$145,300	$12,110
Market research analyst / marketing specialist	$78,760	$115,000	$9,580
Writer	$76,910	$112,300	$9,360
PR specialist	$74,750	$109,100	$9,090
Graphic designer	$62,960	$91,900	$7,660

These are national medians. Big-city pay and senior specialists cost more, so treat the table as a floor for a U.S. hire. The BLS “marketing specialist” line is a broad occupation (SOC 13-1161) that lumps research analysts with general marketing specialists; a paid search or technical SEO specialist will usually sit above it.

Hiring costs and time to fill

Salary isn’t the only cost of going in-house. SHRM’s 2025 Recruiting Executives Benchmarking report (2,371 SHRM members, January to March 2025) put the median cost-per-hire at $1,200 for nonexecutive roles and $10,625 for executive roles. Median time-to-fill, from opening the requisition to an accepted offer, was about a month and a half for both levels (45 days for executives), and around 60 days at extra-large organisations.

The recruiting fee is the small part. Six weeks to hire, plus a notice period, plus a couple of months before someone knows your product and your data, means a new marketer is rarely pulling full weight inside their first quarter. A competent agency can usually be running within a few weeks. If the work has a deadline (a launch, a seasonal peak), that gap often decides the question on its own.

Agency costs vs in-house costs: a side-by-side

This is the part of the agency vs in-house marketing statistics debate people actually want answered: what does each option cost per month? No government body tracks agency retainers. The cleanest public benchmark for a single service is Ahrefs’ SEO pricing survey of 439 providers: agencies charged an average of $3,209 a month, and 78.2% of all respondents bill on monthly retainers. Two caveats. Ahrefs calculated the average using the top of each respondent’s price band, so it leans high, and the poll dates from around 2023 (the post was last updated in August 2024). For wider pricing data, see our agency pricing statistics.

Option	Est. annual cost	Est. monthly cost	What you get
Lean in-house team (manager, specialist, designer)	$454,000	$37,800	Three dedicated people, full brand knowledge, slow to add new skills
Two in-house doers (specialist and designer)	$206,900	$17,200	Execution capacity, no senior strategy
One in-house marketing specialist	$115,000	$9,580	One generalist; limited depth in any channel
Agency SEO retainer (average agency rate)	$38,500	$3,209	One channel, shared team, specialist tools included

This isn’t like-for-like, and you shouldn’t read it as “agencies are 3x cheaper.” A $3,209 SEO retainer buys a slice of a team’s time on one channel. A $115,000 hire gives you a full-time generalist who has to learn each channel. The fair comparison is one in-house person against the combined agency fees you’d pay to cover the same scope.

How to run the numbers for your own team

1. List the channels you need covered next year and the hours each needs per month. Be honest about which work is steady and which comes in bursts.
2. Price the in-house version: local salary for each role, divided by about 0.68 for benefits, plus software seats and roughly $1,200 per hire in recruiting cost.
3. Price the outside version: get two or three real quotes per channel rather than relying on averages, and multiply by twelve.
4. Add your own time to both. Someone has to manage staff, and someone has to brief and review agency work. Assume a few hours a week either way.
5. Count the delay. If hiring takes six weeks plus ramp-up, what does a quarter without the work cost you?

Agency vs in-house pros and cons, by the numbers

Pros-and-cons lists usually trade in adjectives. This one uses only figures cited elsewhere on this page, so you can see which trade-offs are backed by data and which are opinion.

Factor	In-house team	Agency	What the data says
Time to start	About 6 weeks to fill a role, plus ramp-up	Usually a few weeks	SHRM 2025: median time-to-fill around 1.5 months
Cost of one channel	About $115,000 a year for one specialist, fully loaded	About $38,500 a year for an average SEO retainer	BLS and Ahrefs
First thing cut in a squeeze	Less likely	More likely	Gartner 2025: 39% of CMOs planned to cut labor costs and agency allocations
Staff continuity	Depends on your own retention	Account teams change	Promethean 2026: 19% agency staff turnover
Main reason companies choose it	Building capability internally	Lack of internal resources	CMO Survey 2026: 59.5 of 100 points to build; Sagefrog 2026: 42% outsource for resources
Satisfaction	No comparable public figure	76% say it helps meet objectives	Sagefrog 2026 (an agency surveying its market)

If you’re comparing outside options, our small business marketing agency rankings and the full agency directory list firms with published pricing where we have it. Freelancers are the third option many teams forget; our freelance marketer vs agency statistics cover that trade-off.

Hybrid marketing model statistics: the most common setup

Most companies end up somewhere in the middle. Sagefrog, a B2B marketing agency, runs an annual marketing mix survey. Its 2025 B2B Marketing Mix Report found 48% of B2B companies used both in-house and outsourced marketing, 36% were in-house only and 16% fully outsourced. 94% of those who outsourced said it was effective, and the top reason for outsourcing that year was getting “comprehensive strategy and execution” (33%).

Sagefrog’s early 2026 findings show 46% hybrid, 32% fully in-house and 22% fully outsourced. 76% said outsourced support helps them meet business objectives, and only 4% said it didn’t. Don’t compare the two years too closely: the 2026 post shows different 2025 figures from the 2025 report itself, and Sagefrog doesn’t publish sample sizes for the 2026 data.

Large enterprises lean harder on outside help. The 2X and Avasant study (June 2025) of 87 senior marketers at companies with more than $250 million in revenue, plus 11 interviews, found outsourcing budgets rose from 39% to 42%, while personnel took 56% of the average budget. 2X sells outsourced marketing, so read this as a directional signal from an interested party, even though Avasant ran the research.

The CMO Survey 2026 adds a useful counterweight. Asked to split 100 points across ways of building new marketing capabilities (n=162), leaders gave 59.5 to training or hiring internally, 15.5 to partnering with agencies, 12.7 to other companies, 10.4 to consultancies and 1.9 to acquisitions. The “build” score was 57.9 when the question was last asked in 2020. Six years of new tools barely moved it.

Put together, the agency vs in-house marketing statistics from every source we checked point the same way. Companies keep the work that defines them (brand voice, customer insight, strategy, and increasingly media) close to home, and buy specialist skill, specialist tools and bursts of volume from outside. Plenty of agencies cover that specialist end themselves with white-label partners.

Why businesses hire marketing agencies (and why they bring work back)

Capacity, more than cost, is what sends companies to agencies. In Sagefrog’s 2026 data, lack of internal resources was the top reason to outsource at 42%, up from 37%. Faster execution (38%) and specialized expertise (31%) were the top benefits companies reported. None of those answers is about price.

The agency industry’s revenue doesn’t look like a sector losing clients, either. Census Bureau Quarterly Services Survey data for advertising, PR and related services (NAICS 5418) adds up to about $204.9 billion in 2024 and $226.0 billion in 2025, roughly 10% growth. The first half of 2026 ran about 4.6% ahead of the first half of 2025. These are taxable-firm, not seasonally adjusted figures and can be revised, but the trend is clear.

Work comes back in-house for reasons the ANA data already hints at: routine creative that an internal team can turn around faster, cost pressure on repeatable tasks, and a growing appetite to run media internally. Agency staff churn plays a part too. Promethean Research’s 2026 State of Digital Services report put agency staff turnover at 19% (an improvement on the prior year). At that rate, a client on a three-year retainer should expect the people on its account to change at least once.

Before you sign, ask who will actually work on your account and what happens when they leave. Our agency review method explains the questions we ask, and our best marketing agencies list is a reasonable place to start a shortlist.

AI and the agency vs in-house decision

AI is changing the cost maths, but less than the headlines suggest. In the ANA 2026 report, 49% of in-house teams said AI lets them do more work while external spend stays the same. Only 19% said AI lets them produce work they used to outsource. So far, AI is mostly absorbing the extra workload in-house teams already had, not replacing agency contracts.

BLS projections point the same way. The bureau expects no growth for writers and authors from 2025 to 2035 and says “increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) for writing is projected to dampen demand.” It projects a 2% fall in graphic designer jobs over the same period. Those are the roles where in-house teams will use AI instead of adding headcount, and where agencies selling general production face the most price pressure.

Agencies are responding by narrowing. 86% of agencies in Promethean’s 2026 study described themselves as specialists. A deep, narrow offer is harder to swap for a software subscription than general content production. Our AI marketing agency rankings list firms built around that idea.

How to read agency vs in-house marketing statistics

Definitions differ too. The ANA’s “in-house agency” is a dedicated internal creative or media unit, which most small companies don’t have. The CMO Survey’s “outsourced” share includes platforms and service providers as well as agencies, so it will run higher than agency spend alone.

Our cost tables leave out software seats, management time and the cost of a bad hire. An agency retainer leaves out the hours you spend briefing and reviewing. Plug in your own numbers before you decide.

FAQ

Is it cheaper to hire a marketing agency or build an in-house team?

For a single channel, an agency is usually cheaper. One U.S. marketing specialist costs about $115,000 a year with benefits, based on BLS data, while Ahrefs’ average agency SEO retainer was $3,209 a month (about $38,500 a year). In-house wins when the work is steady and spans many channels.

What percentage of companies have in-house agencies?

82% of ANA member companies had an in-house agency in 2023, up from 42% in 2008. ANA members are mostly large advertisers, so smaller firms are far less likely to have a dedicated internal agency.

Are companies moving marketing in-house?

Some work, yes. 65% of ANA respondents moved some agency work in-house in the three years to 2023, but 92% still use outside agencies. The CMO Survey shows the outsourced share of digital work rising from 31.6% in 2022 to 33.6% in 2026.

How much of the marketing budget goes to agencies?

Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey put agencies at 20.7% of the average marketing budget, close to internal labor at 21.9%. In 2026, labor’s share rose to 24.5%; Gartner’s 2026 agency figure hasn’t been published in public coverage.

What is a hybrid marketing model?

A hybrid model keeps strategy and core work in-house and uses agencies or freelancers for specialist or overflow work. 46% of B2B companies in Sagefrog’s early 2026 data work this way, more than any other setup.

Do most companies outsource marketing?

Most use at least some outside help, but few hand over everything. In Sagefrog’s early 2026 B2B data, 46% were hybrid and 22% fully outsourced, so about two in three use outside support. The typical U.S. company in The CMO Survey sends about 25% (median) of its digital marketing to outside partners.

Sources

1. ANA, The Continued Rise of the In-House Agency (2023)
2. ANA, The Resilient Rise of the In-House Agency: 2026 State of In-Housing Report
3. IHALC, coverage of the ANA 2026 report
4. Gartner, 2025 CMO Spend Survey
5. Chief Marketer, Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey coverage
6. Gartner, 2026 CMO Spend Survey
7. Chief Marketer, Gartner 2026 CMO Spend Survey coverage
8. The CMO Survey, Topline Report (2026)
9. The CMO Survey, Firm and Industry Breakout Report (2026)
10. The CMO Survey, Highlights and Insights Report (2026)
11. BLS OOH, Advertising, Promotions, and Marketing Managers
12. BLS OOH, Market Research Analysts
13. BLS OOH, Graphic Designers
14. BLS OOH, Writers and Authors
15. BLS OOH, Public Relations Specialists
16. BLS OOH, Web Developers and Digital Designers
17. BLS, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (June 2026)
18. BLS, ECEC Table 4 by occupational group (June 2026)
19. SHRM, 2025 Recruiting Executives Benchmarking
20. Sagefrog, 2025 B2B Marketing Mix Report
21. Sagefrog, early 2026 B2B Marketing Mix findings
22. 2X and Avasant, enterprise marketing execution study (June 2025)
23. Census Bureau Quarterly Services Survey (via FRED), NAICS 5418 revenue
24. Ahrefs, SEO Pricing survey
25. Promethean Research, 2026 State of Digital Services Report
26. Forrester, B2B outsourcing data snapshot (January 2026)