Many agencies try to keep everything in-house with a self-serve model, but with depleted time and resources, a fully-managed platform may provide the relief they need.

The self-serve model sounds exactly like what it is—you do everything yourself, with little-to-no guidance depending on the platform. If you are the one pulling the levers, then all bad performance that may occur is your responsibility, and the self-serve platform will usually make that point very clear. Hence why they build them that way.

A fully managed service, on the other hand, brings in a powerful advertising technology partner to help you reach all of your goals, without the added stress on your shoulders. In a day and age where hiring experienced marketing experts is proving more difficult, it’s no wonder why agencies are turning more often to fully managed platforms—it just makes sense.

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• Pro: Agencies can set their own margins with some platforms, such as Genius Monkey
• Pro: Ability to white label their dashboard, reports, collateral, etc.
• Pro: Live access to a reporting dashboard
• Pro: A dedicated team of campaign managers, account managers, and account executives helping every step of the way. This team is held accountable for performance, so they have every reason to ensure the campaign is built in the best format to drive performance, which includes educating the advertiser when needed.
• Pro: Ability to use the platform’s team to act as members of your company on client calls so you have professionals that speak the technical language to make you look good in a white-labeled capacity.
• Pro: Ability to save countless hours in campaign set-up and maintenance, which in turn saves exponential money, allowing the advertiser/agency to grow.
• Pro: Lets the agency focus on what they do best; branding, design, message, creative and more

• Same: Ability to set your own margins
• Same: Ability to white label
• Same: Live access to a reporting dashboard
• Cons of Self-Serve Platforms: “Transparency.’ Agencies can log in and pull the levers they want when setting up and maintaining campaigns. But unless they are seasoned professionals in campaign building, more often than not they end up doing something wrong or building the campaign in a way that would not benefit performance. The Self Serve Platforms are OK with this because they have no accountability for lack of performance, due to the campaign that the user built incorrectly.

All in all, it comes down to time saved and performance. With a fully managed platform, you can save hours and money. You’ll see exponentially better performance because that platform knows they will be held accountable if they don’t perform.

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Client Results—What Happened When This Company Switched to a Fully Managed Model

Open Lock Marketing wanted to expand its offerings into the programmatic space and hire employees to help build that technology internally. They quickly found it would be very expensive and take a long time to do correctly, so they turned to Genius Monkey to be a white-label programmatic partner in their agency.

Genius Monkey soon became an extension of their team. Genius Monkey was available for client calls, acting on the agency’s behalf, and providing white-label versions of all documents, such as onboarding and targeting questionnaires. They also provided a reporting dashboard that looked similar to Open Lock’s existing software.

When you’re deciding whether to use a Self-Serve system or a Fully Managed one, keep in mind the time saved and the stress removed when using a Fully Managed platform like Genius Monkey. You’ll be in better hands and have time to focus on other responsibilities in your business.