New Frontiers In Outsourcing: Digital Media Advertising Management Illustrates The Potential

HfS Research has been receiving an unprecedented number of inquiries about marketing business process outsourcing, leading us to believe it is one of the next frontiers in the industry. To many, the concept is still a bit foreign: Isn’t marketing strategic? Is it not core to the very essence of the enterprise—the brand? Marketing is all of those things, but supporting successful marketing efforts are hundreds of tactical, monotonous, sub-processes and tasks that add little incremental value or differentiation—just like paying vendor invoices, they have to get done. Chief marketing officers, just like their CFO colleagues, can choose whether to focus on the strategic or tackle the entire fleet of processes their organizations must execute. HfS Research sees this as a highly fragmented market with lots of specialists and no established end-to-end providers. Furthermore, we see this as a multi-tier outsourcing industry, where enterprises hire ad agencies (effectively outsourcing creative processes) but also expect them to run campaigns, buy advertising, and collect analytics around efficiency and effectiveness.

In this RAPIDInsight, we explore the way ad agencies and third-party digital media buyers can work together to create a better solution for their clients. It is just one example of a larger trend, but one that supports all the good things we remember about outsourcing: cost savings, effectiveness, and efficiency.