Brands are churning agencies and pulling marketing in-house at pace, sold as the fix for a broken relationship. It isn't. The problem was never who held the pen. It was that the business couldn't tell what any of the work was worth. Move it inside and you just put the team that does the work in charge of grading it.
If leadership can't tell what's earning its keep and what isn't, relocating the function doesn't create clarity. It just changes whose desk the uncertainty sits on.
The Take: Pulling marketing inside the building does not repair a broken feedback loop. It relocates the same blind spot two desks closer to the CEO, and the people producing the campaigns become the people signing off on their own results.
I've paid an external partner and wondered what half the invoice actually bought. I've also watched a brand pull everything back under one roof and call it solved. When this shift gets pitched as the cure for a stale external relationship, it rarely touches the actual fault line. It just relocates it.
Here's the claim, and you're welcome to push back on it. The fault was never about who physically produced the campaigns. The fault was that leadership couldn't independently verify what any of it delivered. Consolidating the function under one roof doesn't resolve that. It can quietly deepen it, because the people producing the work are now also the people signing off on it.
How widespread is the shift toward internal marketing functions?
It's the dominant setup now, not a fringe experiment. In the US, 82% of marketers run an internal creative or media function, up from 58% in 2013 and 42% in 2008 (ANA). The same research found 88% of companies increased their internal workload, and cost efficiency is the reason most cited for the shift (Marketing Dive).
Australia is mid-churn on the same pattern. CommBank ended a 14-year external creative relationship. Australia Post moved its media buying off Wavemaker after seven years. 7-Eleven Australia just launched its own internal unit, "The Corner Shop", led by Hugh Miller, handling tier 2 to 4 output while Clemenger BBDO keeps the flagship brand platforms (Mi-3). At the other end of the scale, Coca-Cola put its global media account, worth around AU$7.5 billion, into open pitch between WPP and Publicis (B&T).
Share of US marketers now running an internal creative or media function, up from 42% in 2008. Source: [ANA research](https://www.ana.net/content/show/id/79185).
What was the fault line before all this churn started?
Ask any business that just walked away from an external partner why. The answer nearly always lands on some version of "we weren't seeing enough return." Fair enough. But push one layer deeper: how did leadership actually know? In most cases the honest answer is a feeling, not a figure. The relationship went cold, updates stopped landing and there was no independent way to check whether the spend was earning its place.
Does consolidating marketing internally actually improve measurement?
Not automatically, and the data cuts against the assumption either way. Across the 721 Australian-market businesses we have scored as at July 2026, businesses running an internal marketing function average 61.5 out of 100 on the dimension covering data and tracking infrastructure, in line with the market overall. For that same group, data and tracking is the single weakest of the six dimensions we score for only 22.4% of them, well below the 44.1% share across the full dataset. The tooling and the tracking generally hold up fine once the function sits internally.
What thins out is the outside line of accountability. When output sat with an external partner, a natural gap existed between the people producing it and the people funding it. That gap forced a recurring question: is this working, prove it. Consolidate everything internally and that gap can disappear, because the group running the campaigns often ends up reporting on them too.
That same ANA research found only 59% of companies keep their data and marketing analytics function internal (ANA). Most businesses are absorbing the people who produce the campaigns while leaving the function that verifies their worth external, or absent entirely. That's the wrong way round.
What should leadership actually do about it?
Skip the org chart redesign. Start with the scoreboard.
First, price your own return before shifting a single headcount. Do you know what revenue each channel produces? Can you say, campaign by campaign, what's earning its budget and what's coasting on habit? If leadership can't answer that today, consolidating the function inside won't hand it to them.
Second, keep verification structurally separate from production, regardless of where the work sits. The people signing off on campaign results cannot be the same people who ran the campaigns. That separation can be a trusted dashboard, a finance partner asking hard questions or an external benchmark checked on a schedule. It cannot be the same group holding the pen and marking its own page.
Third, run the binary test on every line. Switch something off. If revenue falls, that line was earning its keep. If nothing shifts, ask why it was funded at all. The test doesn't care whether the line is an external retainer or a newly hired internal squad. It only cares whether the spend earns its place.
Which structure actually wins from here?
Neither one, as a default answer. Internal versus external was never the real fork in the road. The real fork is whether leadership can independently verify who's earning value and who isn't, regardless of where the work physically happens. Get that right and either structure can succeed. Get it wrong and the churn just repeats itself on a different org chart, at a slightly lower cost each round, with visibility that never improves.
The businesses that come out ahead won't be the ones who relocated the function fastest. They'll be the ones who built a scoreboard nobody inside the building gets to mark alone. See how your marketing measures up against your industry.
Methodology: The data and tracking averages above are drawn from New Rebellion's benchmark dataset of 721 scored Australian businesses across dozens of industries as at July 2026, filtered to businesses tagged with an internal marketing team structure (n=134). Each business is scored 0-100 on six weighted dimensions using site, analytics and public signal data. Full methodology at how-we-score.
Frequently asked questions
Does consolidating marketing internally automatically improve measurement?
No. Our data shows internally run functions track roughly in line with the market average on measurement infrastructure. The gap that actually matters is independent verification, not tooling.
What should a business check before ending an external contract?
Whether return was ever independently verified. Most exit decisions rest on a feeling that the relationship went cold, not on a figure that proves the spend wasn't earning its place.
Is running marketing internally always cheaper than using an external partner?
It typically removes a margin line, but that saving is often paid for by losing the outside check that made results verifiable. Cheaper isn't the same as clearer.
How does a business keep verification honest after consolidating the function internally?
Keep sign-off structurally separate from production. A trusted dashboard, a finance partner asking hard questions or a scheduled external benchmark all work, provided it isn't the same group running the campaign and marking its own results.