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Last week saw the great and the good of the advertising world trundle to New York City for Advertising Week – four days of talks, events, awards and general navel-gazing. If you have been to any advertising event you can imagine how it generally went down: the usual ongoing orgy of ‘disruptive digital purpose’ and ‘purpose-driven digital disruption’, and of course the big keynote on ‘the digital disruption of purpose’. Take your pick.
If China is where the future happens, that’s bad news for media agencies. In China, big brands are increasingly moving their advertising budgets from agency trading desks to Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (known as the BAT) for more media transparency. It may make sense from a cost-saving perspective: If brands can strike deals with the BAT at a good price on their own, why bother to pay a middleman to buy media? Also, brands now have more campaign management service options like vendors and consulting firms, aside from their media shops.
Read More Digiday: In China, Platforms Are Cutting Out Media-buying Agencies
Call it WPP Wednesday: Surprisingly weak second-quarter earnings and dour forecasts by the giant agency holding company sent its stock plummeting 12%, pulling other holding companies down 3-7%.
Read More Advertising Age: Invisible Hand Behind WPP Wednesday: Transparency
WFA research indicates dramatic change on transparency measures, contracts, viewability standards, internal media knowledge and ad fraud
Read More WFA: Global Marketers Making Radical Changes to Media Management
Management consultancies are turning the trust problem between advertisers and their media agencies into an opportunity to muscle in on the number of budgets increasingly prioritizing planning over buying.
Read More Digiday: Consulting Firms Muscle in on Media Planning in Transparency Fallout
Nearly one in five ad executives acknowledge that ad agencies now take payments directly from their media suppliers to offset downward compensation pressure from clients, according to results of a survey of advertisers and agencies conducted by Advertiser Perceptions for MediaPost.
One year ago, the ANA (Association of National Advertisers) released two landmark reports on the critical issue of transparency in the digital media ecosystem. The first report, “An Independent Study of Media Transparency in the U.S. Advertising Industry,” revealed a wide range of non-transparent business practices. The second, which the ANA did in conjunction with Ebiquity/FirmDecisions, was called “Media Transparency: Prescriptions, Principles, and Processes for Marketers” and provided advertisers with a set of recommendations to address the issues identified in the first report.
Digital News Daily Editor Tobi Elkin wrote an article earlier this week asking if anything has changed in the marketing/ad world since the release of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA)’s Media Transparency Report about a year ago.
It’s been 12-months since the US Association of National Advertisers produced its landmark report on media transparency and, rather than gather dust, there has already been real impact:
A new report from media consultant ID Comms finds that media shops continue to be regarded with “suspicion” by advertisers, a number of which believe that non-transparent incomes, such as the profit from reselling media to clients, makes it harder to use fees and other contract terms to properly incentivize agencies.
Read More MediaPost: Report Finds Trust Lacking In Media Agency-Client Relationships