Switched from a managed service to in-house with Basis. Here's the real cost.

Everyone talks about cutting out the middleman and saving 20%. They never talk about the real bill.

Switched from a managed DSP to Basis in-house. The license fee is just the entry ticket. You need a full-time trader now, that's a salary. You need a data analyst to untangle their reporting, that's another salary. Your dev team spends weeks on the API integration and building dashboards they promised would be out-of-the-box. The "self-service" support means you're on your own when campaigns tank. After six months, we're at 150% of our previous managed cost and our performance is volatile. The managed service was inefficient, but at least it was a predictable cost with a throat to choke. Now we just have more work and more blame.