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Renzo Dipasquale, VP of Enterprise and Self-Serve at AcuityAds discusses how in 2017, transparency will reinvent digital advertising – placing true real-time, data-driven insights at the core of every campaign decision – empowering advertisers and agencies alike to reap benefits. So, what changes can marketers expect the push for transparency to usher in this year?
Read More MarTech Advisor: 2017: The Year Transparency Pays Dividends
Media-buying agencies in the US are paying their clients secret multi-million dollar settlements rather than show them all of their contracts and service agreements with media owners.
Rebates have been an open secret for years. The payments and discounts that media owners give to agencies in return for certain volumes of spend are a fact of trading life in the UK. But few media owners like to talk about rebates for fear of upsetting agencies. Suddenly, however, the issue is being thrust into the spotlight for two reasons.
Read More Campaign: Should more media owners disclose agency rebates?
News Group Newspapers, which publishes The Sun, has disclosed the amount it sets aside in rebates for its advertisers and their agencies for the first time in its company accounts, Campaign’s Gideon Spanier first reported.
While rebates are a known — if controversial — practice in the U.K., hidden fees are different. In the latest installment of the Digiday Confessions series, where we grant anonymity in exchange for candor, a media agency veteran with over three decades of experience in advertising lifts the lid on the murky world of programmatic margins. Pressure from holding companies and clients has lead media agencies in a “downward spiral” to prioritize cost above all else, this person tells us.
Read More Digiday: Confessions of a media agency veteran: Hidden programmatic fees ‘must stop’
Transparency and the media industry aren’t typically synonymous, at least not according to the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). Earlier this year, the ANA released a 58-page report detailing an eight month-long investigation led by K2 Intelligence. The report suggests that unethical practices appear to take place between advertising agencies and their media partners. Following the report, Ebiquitypublished a set of media transparency guidelines for ANA members and the industry. All of this is helpful for those already in the field, but what do these findings and guidelines mean for business schools preparing the next generation of marketers?
Read More MediaPost: An Educator’s Take On The ANA Media Transparency Report
If the ad tech market is a mess in the U.S., it is worse in China.
In 2016, over $30 billion of media spend was put under review, with a majority of marketers citing transparency as a main reason. Several major agencies were put under legal investigation, and Facebook admitted to substantial errors in several of their metrics that influenced the marketers’ buying behaviors. Large and small brands woke up to realize they’ve been making decisions based on data they cannot trust or truly understand. No wonder the Association of National Advertisers’ “Word of the Year” for 2016 was “transparency.” Moving into 2017, data reporting will continue to be shaken from the ground up, with more investigations and admissions of inaccurate metrics from different distribution channels and even agencies. The industry will become more and more ruthless toward those who’ve either created the mess or turned a blind eye to it. But the real question at the onset of 2017 is: Can this modus operandi really change, and if so, who are the players who can change it and what can they do?
Read More Forbes.com: How To Make Transparent Marketing A Reality
2016 was an usually tough year for U.S. advertising agency executives. The list of things keeping them awake at night include shrinking margins, restless clients and a changing marketplace that seems to be moving away from historically reliable sources of revenue. Arguably, the biggest cause of those restless nights were the ripple effects of the bombshell 2016 Report published by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). The Report included the results of an eight-month investigation that found certain agencies had exploited clients through nontransparent, and potentially fraudulent business practices.
Read More Lexology: Good riddance 2016-will ad agency execs sleep better in 2017?
Digital has injected unprecedented complexity into the advertising industry. Exponential growth in inventory, channels, and technology intermediaries, coupled with audience fragmentation, has created a complex and oft-misunderstood landscape for advertisers. While digital complexity has created a world of new opportunities for brands and consumers alike, it’s also seriously undermined a fundamental value shared by advertisers and agencies: operational transparency.
Read More MediaPost: The Intersection of Technology and Transparency