Marketing departments worldwide have spent the past three years quietly redrawing an internal org chart, and the line they keep moving is the one between the agency that sells the idea and the production house that actually delivers the film. Survey data from the World Federation of Advertisers puts the scale of the shift in plain numbers: 82 percent of client side organizations now report running some form of in house agency, up from 78 percent in 2018, and more than half, 56 percent, say they plan to move even more production work in house over the next three years. The consequence for a market like Vietnam, where international brands increasingly shoot and finish, is that the traditional full service agency retainer is no longer the only door into a shoot.
The holding company numbers tell a parallel story. Worldwide ad spending grew 8.6 percent in 2025 on most trackers, yet the big agency groups posted a 1.2 percent revenue decline over the same period, according to reporting compiled by eMarketer on the state of the agency model in 2026. Growth in the number of agencies has slowed even as total ad revenue climbs, a pattern analysts read as consolidation: fewer, larger holding groups (the Omnicom and IPG merger completed in late 2025 created the largest of them) absorbing share while clients route an increasing portion of their budget directly to specialist production and post production partners instead of paying an agency markup on execution.
Two different jobs wearing one label
Part of the confusion in the Vietnamese market, as in most emerging production hubs, is that the words agency and production house get used almost interchangeably by clients who have not yet had to compare the two. A creative agency is built to originate: strategy, positioning, the campaign idea, the media plan that carries it. A production house is built to execute: directing, cinematography, editing and color on a defined brief, on a defined budget, on a defined delivery date. Forrester's 2026 predictions for the agency sector describe a model under real pressure, noting that agencies competing purely on volume of output are losing ground to specialist partners who can prove craft and speed on a narrower scope. That is precisely the gap a dedicated production house is built to fill.
The distinction matters commercially because the two models price and staff differently. An agency retainer typically bundles strategy, account management and production into one fee structure, which works well when a brand needs an idea built from zero. A production house engagement is scoped project by project, with the director, cinematographer and colorist named on the brief rather than rotated through an account team. Studios operating this way in Ho Chi Minh City, among them Hoang Films, position themselves explicitly as the second model: a single creative hand carrying a project from the first frame to the final grade, rather than an agency handing a script down a production chain it does not fully control.
Why the line is moving toward Southeast Asia
The regional angle sharpens the picture further. Ad spend forecasts from Dentsu and WARC put global online video ad investment growing at roughly twice the pace of the overall ad market in 2026, and a meaningful share of that growth is being sourced from production markets outside the traditional London, New York and Singapore axis. Brands that have already in housed strategy and media buying, per the WFA's in house agency findings, are the same brands most likely to shop production and post production separately, by capability rather than by relationship, and Vietnam has become one of the destinations where that shopping list gets filled. A production house that can demonstrate its own reel, its own case studies and its own delivery discipline competes on that list without needing an agency's brand recognition to get considered.
"Clients are no longer buying an agency because it is the only door to a shoot. They are buying whichever partner proves the craft fastest," is roughly how Forrester frames the 2026 shift, a reading echoed across multiple trade analyses of the holding company slowdown.
What the buyer actually needs to evaluate
For a brand or agency scouting Vietnam for the first time, the practical question is not which label sounds more prestigious but which structure matches the brief. A campaign that still needs positioning work benefits from an agency relationship. A campaign that already has a script, a brand deck and a media plan, and needs a director, a cinematographer and a colorist to execute it on time and on budget, is better served going directly to a production house in Saigon. That is also where the numbers above point: as in house teams absorb more of the strategic layer, the remaining external spend concentrates on production partners chosen for demonstrable output rather than pitch decks.
The practical test that keeps recurring in trade coverage of the 2026 agency landscape is delivery accountability. A production house with one director and one colorist attached to a project, visible in a portfolio of finished work rather than described in a capabilities deck, gives a buyer a shorter chain to hold accountable when a deadline slips or a grade needs a second pass. That accountability, more than the label on the door, is what a growing share of the in housing brands identified by the WFA say they are actually shopping for when they look at a market like Vietnam.
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