Are brands moving away from creative agencies to in-house teams?

The signs have been building for a while. Over the past few years, large advertisers, from FMCG conglomerates to new-age D2C challengers, have quietly but steadily moved creative work inward. What began as social media execution handled by a small internal team has evolved into full-fledged content studios capable of producing brand films, performance assets, campaign ideation, and always-on content at a scale and speed that external agencies often struggle to match.

According to the In-House Creative Industry Report by the In-House Agency Forum (IHAF), over 64% of brands globally now maintain some form of in-house creative capability. This figure has grown consistently year-on-year. In India, the shift is no less pronounced, with brands across categories (from Tata and Reliance to homegrown unicorns) investing in internal talent, proprietary tools, and dedicated studio infrastructure.

The drivers of this shift are not difficult to understand. Speed, cost efficiency, and direct access to first-party data form the holy trinity behind the in-house argument. When a brand's internal team has real-time performance data, brand guidelines embedded in muscle memory, and no agency brief-to-execution lag, the turnaround on a performance creative or a social campaign can shrink from weeks to hours.

For categories where content velocity defines relevance, such as quick commerce, OTT platforms, and fintech apps, this is not a minor operational upgrade. It is a strategic advantage.

Read On: Creative agencies 2026 forecast: What will lead the advertising landscape

The cross-category advantage

Karan Arora, Revenue Head - North at YAAP, a full-service digital marketing and content company working with brands across FMCG, fintech, and lifestyle categories, frames this as the cross-learning advantage that in-house teams are structurally unable to replicate. "Agencies operate across industries. We see what's working in FMCG, Auto, Fintech, Luxury, D2C, and that cross learning sharpens strategy in ways a single brand ecosystem can't always replicate," he says.

Arora also raises what he calls the creative fatigue factor: a phenomenon that is rarely discussed openly but is well understood by anyone who has worked on a single brand for an extended period. "When you work on one brand day in and day out, even strong teams can slip into repetition. Agencies thrive on contrast: different categories, different problems, different cultural triggers. That diversity keeps thinking fresh."

The implication is that in-house teams, however talented, are vulnerable to a kind of creative insularity that compounds over time. Proximity to the brand, which is an asset in the short run, can become a liability in the long run.

Arora is clear about where this leaves the agency mandate, saying, "Agencies can't and shouldn't compete on speed and cost alone; that's the in-house advantage. We have to compete on depth and disruption." He also points to a practical gap that in-house teams frequently encounter: "Many in-house setups are still populated by younger generalists. When brands want to try something new (a new technology, a new platform, a new format), they either experiment internally without specialist depth or bring in an expert agency. That's where we must be indispensable: as specialist partners, and not vendors."

Where the ground is actually shifting

This view finds resonance across the industry. Priyank Dattani, Associate Creative Director at White Rivers Media, a Mumbai-based integrated digital agency with a strong footprint across content, social, and brand communications, is direct about what in-house growth has already claimed. "In-house studios haven't eroded agency authority, but they've redefined where that authority sits. Brands build internal teams for speed, brand familiarity, and data control. That's rational, but it concentrates effort on execution, not disruption."

Dattani notes that the data reflects a more nuanced reality than a simple either-or. "A survey data shows that the majority of brands still maintain agency rosters alongside in-house setups. What brands increasingly want from agencies is an external perspective, cultural fluency, and the kind of bold creative thinking that internal teams, by design, struggle to generate. Proximity to the brand creates insularity over time."

He also sees a structural shift already underway within agencies themselves. "The smarter agencies have already moved away from the Agency of Record model toward project-based, high-impact mandates. In-house growth is accelerating this transition. The agencies that will lose ground are those still competing on volume. The ones sharpening differentiation around strategic counsel and breakthrough creativity have more room."

According to Forrester's 2026 projections, agencies that continue to position themselves as traditional creative vendors risk being systematically deprioritised. The agencies with staying power, Forrester argues, will be those that function as tech-enabled managed service providers, combining strategic counsel with proprietary data capabilities and owned technology infrastructure.

Dattani proposes rebuilding the agency value proposition across three dimensions: moving away from retainer models toward fixed-fee, performance-linked engagements; building proprietary data and analytics capabilities that in-house teams, focused on a single brand, cannot easily replicate; and owning the creator ecosystem end-to-end, from strategy through distribution.

Read On: Ad world's consolidation wave tests future of independent agencies

The brief has changed

The deeper disruption, though, is not just about territory. It is about how the engagement itself has been reframed. Anadi Sah, National Creative Director, Chief Innovation Officer & Founding Partner at tgthr., says, "No marketer sets out thinking, 'Let me buy average work.' The problem is that the market has become so commoditised and volatile that the final call rarely rests with one person anymore. What you get instead is a committee decision, heavily influenced by procurement, where creativity and partnership are just two cells in a much larger Excel sheet."

As in-house teams absorb more executional and operational work, what brands are actually buying from agencies has shifted in character. "For a lot of them, the priority is hitting this quarter's targets and closing this year's gaps, rather than investing in a robust platform and a deep, long-term relationship with one agency," Sah adds.

The consequences are felt directly in how agencies are evaluated. "The levers that are easiest to compare are rate cards, number of deliverables, speed, AI capability, as compared to originality, strategic challenge, consistency of brand stewardship, or chemistry," he says. The outcome, as Sah frames it, is a structural bias: "quantity over depth, the lowest bid over the bravest solution, short-term optics over long-term brand value."

This isn't entirely new territory. The advertising industry has long wrestled with procurement's growing influence in agency selection. But the rise of capable in-house teams has given procurement sharper tools: a tangible internal benchmark against which to compare agency costs and timelines. When a brand's own studio can produce a decent social film in two days, a six-week agency production schedule (and the budget that comes with it) demands a far more compelling justification.

Read On: Could culture be agencies’ key competitive advantage in 2026?

A structural renegotiation, not an existential crisis

The rise of in-house teams has led to a reassessment of roles. In-house teams have already won the execution layer, and they probably should. That is a function that benefits from speed, cost efficiency, and data access that internal setups are structurally built for. Agencies, meanwhile, are being pushed to either own the thinking layer (the brand platforms, the cultural ideas, the long-term IP, the inflection points) or risk becoming optional.

Sah, for his part, is not pessimistic about the long-term prospects for agencies. But he insists that the model must be actively redesigned, not passively defended. "Great, long-term partnerships have not disappeared; it just means they now happen when both sides consciously push back against this default, and design the engagement to reward thinking and impact, not just volume and velocity."

Arora puts the choice facing every agency in plain terms. "If we reduce ourselves to execution partners, we become optional. If we continue to be strategic partners and problem solvers who bring depth, perspective, and fresh thinking, we remain essential."

Agencies that recognise this distinction and adjust their offerings, talent, and commercial models accordingly are well-positioned for success. They are shaping what success looks like in a fundamentally evolving competitive landscape.