Is “seeking assurances” enough. Something just doesn’t feel right. What would motivate an advertiser, any advertiser to continue to invest their media dollars on a digital platform that monetizes inappropriate content, running their ads adjacent to such content? If advertisers are willing to turn a blind eye toward this practice, where is the “red line” when it comes to brand safety? … Read More
Over the last several weeks, there have been many pronouncements from ad tech providers, publishers and agencies that ad fraud and transparency concerns, which have beset advertisers for the last several years, have largely been addressed and that it is safe for advertisers to resume their programmatic digital real-time bidding (RBT) media activities.
What? Sounds a bit like the movie Jaws where a profit minded Mayor, Larry Vaughn attempts to convince Sheriff Brody to keep the beaches of Amity Island open for the 4th of July holiday, when tourists will flock to the Island, driving tourism revenues.
Granted, there have been positive developments including the efforts of the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), the adoption of Ads.txt, the implementation of fraud solutions by ad tech providers and agencies and the involvement of the FBI, which has successfully busted a number of email, digital and cyber fraud operations over the course of the last year.
However, it would be a mistake for advertisers to let their guards down and assume that ad fraud has been solved and non-transparent practices have been cleaned up. Sadly, invalid, unviewable and non-human traffic continues to plague the industry and requires continued vigilance.
Honest, in-depth conversations between advertisers, their agencies and ad tech vendors should be ramped up before advertisers eschew the safety of private marketplaces (i.e. programmatic direct, premium, reserved, private auctions) to reallocate funds to RTB. Discussion topics should include, but not be limited to:
- Determine whether or not the agency and ad tech vendors are using TAG Certified channels.
- Assess if these same entities are screening programmatic domains to eliminate those that have not yet adopted Ads.txt from consideration.
- Scrutinize the efficacy of the fraud and brand safety software solutions being deployed on the dvertiser’s behalf.
- Confirm whether the advertiser is being provided a direct line of sight into the fees being charged for data, technology, and campaign management for both the demand and sell side of the ledger.
- Verify whether the agency and ad tech verification vendors are examining 100% of the advertiser’s programmatic impressions for suspicious activity or whether they are instead sampling.
- Check if agency and ad tech vendors are retaining log level files and if so, substantiate they will make them available to the advertiser or their auditor.
- Assess how the agency and or ad tech vendors identify platform auction methodologies (i.e. second-price, first-price, header bidding) and adapt their bid strategies to optimize the advertiser’s investment.
We would counsel that it should be the results and learnings from these conversations, rather than self-serving proclamations, that the “water is all right” that influences an advertiser’s decision as to whether and when to jump back into the RTB marketplace. In the words of the Roman writer Publilius Syrus:
“It is a good thing to learn caution from the misfortunes of others.”
When agency holding companies were birthed, they did nothing that directly impacted client businesses. They were corporate entities that owned a number of smaller agencies and the attendant portfolios of real estate, trademarks, copyrights and licenses attached to those agencies. Their primary role was to create shareholder value through structural leveraging.
As time progressed, three things happened that form the basis of the challenge faced by agency holding companies today.
Firstly, aided by low barriers to entry, there was a proliferation in both the number of agencies and the types of functional specialist shops that came to be. In the early days there were “above the line” full-service agencies and “below the line” shops such as sales promotion, direct marketing and PR. Over time, specialists in diversity advertising, shopper marketing and digital media have come into vogue. Highly focused agencies continue to emerge today, as witnessed by the arrival of Amazon “specialist agencies” that assist marketers seeking to do business with or sell goods online via Amazon. Along the way, specialization led to fragmentation and full-service agencies fell by the wayside. Marketers in turn saw their agency networks expand in size as they added specialist firms to their rosters creating a range of agency stewardship and coordination challenges.
Secondly, the holding companies continued to acquire marketing services and advertising agencies. Part of their acquisition strategy involved bringing on specialist firms across a range of competencies to fill out their service offering. Another part of their strategy involved the acquisition of branded agency networks to consolidate activity within select clients (e.g. WPP’s acquisition of Ford agencies J. Walter Thompson, Ogilvy & Mather and Young & Rubicam) and to create walled silos that would allow them to handle competitive advertising accounts. Financial benefits were realized by consolidating functions and paring expenses in areas such as human resources, legal and finance while allowing the acquired agencies to operate independently in virtually every other area.
Finally, along the way the holding companies began to compete as agencies, creating stand-alone client service entities such as; Enfatico (Dell), Team One (Toyota), GTB (Ford) and We Are Unlimited (McDonald’s). The value proposition with these dedicated agency teams was to provide larger advertisers with scalable, seamless solutions served up by the most talented personnel from across the holding company’s portfolio of agency brands. While the premise was certainly compelling, the holding company model did not readily lend itself to a blended workforce concept and often suffered from the lack of centralized business platforms.
Fast forward to 2019 and advertiser preferences remain unchanged. Advertisers desire breakthrough, transformational business solutions served up on an integrated basis and of course, they want them faster, better and cheaper.
In their search for a better “mousetrap” advertisers have begun to take certain aspects of their advertising in-house and or have engaged non-traditional partners including management and technology consulting firms to augment their traditional agency rosters. Of note, the consulting firms, represented by global monolithic brands, blended workforces, common processes and centralized business platforms have made significant inroads with CMOs. This has raised speculation among many industry pundits with regard to whether or not the consulting firms would supplant advertising agencies. Fueling the speculation has been the management consulting firms’ pursuit of agency acquisitions to round out their marketing/ advertising service offerings, it will be interesting to see how well they fair integrating those acquired firms into their organizations both structurally and culturally.
Many in the industry are waiting for the revelation of a new “agency model” that will emerge to magically address advertiser desires and resolve agency holding company challenges. It is our belief that these pundits will likely be waiting for some time.
Advertisers, for their part, will continue to seek out and retain responsive, agile marketing partners that can provide breakthrough, scalable business enhancing solutions. While the idea of an integrated, end-to-end provider is intriguing, it is likely not feasible. Rather, assembling a team of specialists, albeit narrower marketing agency networks, with the advertiser serving as strategist and integrator across the “marketing ecosystem” as Martin Sorrell, Chairman of S4 Capital refers to it is the most likely solution.
As for agency holding companies, we believe that Arthur Sadoun, Chairman of Publicis Groupe got it right when he stated that “the old holding company model is dead” in April of 2018. Advertisers will not embrace a one-stop solution from any of the holding companies. Thus, the holding companies will likely continue their recent focus on right-sizing their networks through the consolidation of both brands and functions and the divestiture of redundant and non-core entities. After all, how many agencies that place or distribute digital media or in-house studios does a holding company need? There may also be a subtle shift from a focus on cost reductions to enhancing the holding company’s ability to cost efficiently scale operations. This could include an expansion of the old “shared services” model, looking beyond HR, Finance and Legal to create centers of excellence around functions such as Data Sciences, Technology, Media Procurement and Production to provide clients across their network with faster, better and cheaper solutions in these areas.
While many lament the decline of the agency holding company, other than the world’s top advertisers, most organizations hire agency brands. While some of the agencies they hire may be owned by the same holding company, more often they are not. Thus the challenge of finding “integrated” solutions for the development of relevant, quick, agile and engaging solutions has been the purview of marketers… at least since the days when the full-service agency model was the standard. As such, the evolution of the advertising delivery model will more than likely be driven by advertisers and less so by agency holding companies.
With 2018 now in our rearview mirror and all of our attention focused on the coming year, we thought that you might be interested in learning what our “Top 5” blog posts were over the past twelve months, according to our readers.
While familiar issues such as; trust, transparency and brand safety continued to be at the fore of advertisers’ attention, new topics including programmatic audio, AI-powered personalization and federal privacy regulation crept into our field of view. Click below to access 2018’s top posts.
We’re all familiar with the old adage: “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” Strange as that may sound, the notion behind this saying is simple. No matter how complex a situation may appear, nor the rate or nature of changes that we may be dealing with, there tends to be an underlying corollary that remains constant.
To test this hypothesis, I spent some time browsing through the archives of Duke University’s John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History to gain a perspective on what marketers were dealing with at the beginning of the twentieth-century. As importantly, I wanted to compare their reality with the environment in which we operate today.
Surely the fundamentals facing marketers had to have changed, I reasoned. There have simply been too many advancements and technological improvements for the aforementioned adage to hold true. However, a quick review of some key events then and now might suggest otherwise… you be the judge:
Then
- 1915 – Millions of dollars are spent on advertising and public relations to stimulate consumer demand
- 1915 – Modern market research begins, resulting in ads being increasingly targeted to specific audiences
- 1915 – The first transcontinental telephone line opens from NY to San Francisco
- 1916 – Self-Service retailing is invented by the Piggly Wiggly chain of grocery stores
- 1916 – U.S. automotive and truck production exceeds one million new units
- 1918 – The New York Times begins home delivery
- 1918 – Ad legend James Walter Thompson sells his namesake agency to Stanley B. Resor and partners
- 1918 – The Federal Government takes control of the nation’s telephone and telegraph systems
- 1921 – Badly hurt by the depression, Sears, Roebuck & Company Chairman Julius Rosenwald pledged $21 million of his own funds to bail the company out
Now
- 2018 – Billions of dollars are spent on advertising and earned media to stimulate consumer demand
- 2018 – AI aided market research and predictive analytics allow marketers to better chart the consumer journey
- 2018 – Number of worldwide mobile phone users expected to pass 5.0 billion
- 2018 – Amazon Go unveils revolutionary check-out free convenience stores
- 2018 – U.S. Plug-in-Electric Vehicle sales estimated to eclipse 400,000 units
- 2018 – The New York Times achieves 2 million digital only subscribers
- 2018 – The J. Walter Thompson brand is merged with Wunderman to form Wunderman Thompson
- 2018 – The Federal Communications Commission repeals net neutrality rules
- 2018 – Sears files for bankruptcy, closing 140+ stores, Chairman Eddie Lampert submits $4.4 billion bid to buy the chain and stave off closure
While the size and scale of the issues that our industry was dealing with are certainly different, the fundamentals are actually more similar than not. Whether in the context of advancements in retail models or modes of media distribution to the impact of emerging product sectors and government regulation or even developments related to changes in agency ownership, there is a certain “sameness” to our industry… even after an eventful 100 years.
Hopefully we can find comfort in the aforementioned adage and confidence in the fact that our predecessors were able to successfully navigate the challenges which they faced to help create what has become one of the world’s most stimulating and dynamic business sectors, advertising and marketing.
As we reflect on the passing of another year and contemplate the challenges and opportunities that will present themselves to us in 2019 all of us at AARM would like to offer up an old Irish toast to each of you:
“May the best day of your past be the worst day of your future. May your troubles be less and your blessings be more and nothing but happiness come through your door.”
To be sure, the end of the calendar year is a hectic time for advertisers and agencies. Tasks such as wrapping up ongoing initiatives, closing out jobs, addressing last-minute out-of-scope projects and readying for year-end financial reporting take on a sense of urgency and seem to consume more time than either party has available to invest.
Then, seemingly without warning (but never too soon) the holiday season is upon us and co-workers, suppliers and client-personnel scatter to the wind as companies close down for the holidays and individuals use up remaining comp time. This is followed by a “return to normalcy” the first week in January when we close-out any remaining prior year tasks and turn our attention to implementing the new year’s plans.
Sound familiar? Probably so.
Thus, it comes as no surprise to anyone that certain intended actions fall by the wayside as people adjust schedules for the December/January timeframe in order to balance hectic and often stressful workplace and personal schedules.
In our experience, there are two Client/Agency activities that often fall victim to this re-prioritization:
- Undertaking year-end agency financial reconciliations (i.e. time-of-staff, agency fees, expenses); and
- Conducting annual 360º agency evaluations.
On one hand, it is easy to understand how and why these activities get moved down the priority list, receive a lower-than-desired level of scrutiny or simply get passed over. On the other hand, these are incredibly valuable practices that yield a wealth of financial, process improvement and relationship management insights and opportunities, well in excess of the time and energy invested in their undertaking.
Sadly, missing these annual end-of-year activities once, significantly increases the odds of annualizing their omission from the standard operating procedures “playbook” moving forward. Further, human nature being what it is, people then begin to rationalize why it is appropriate never to reconcile and review. Perhaps Paul Harvey, the noted broadcaster, got it right when he quipped:
“Ever since I made tomorrow my favorite day, I’ve been uncomfortable looking back.”
From a practical perspective, our experience would fully support Mr. Harvey’s lack of comfort with “looking back,” particularly when clients and agencies forgo these important annual oversights and relationship management practices. Why? The lack of oversight can beget poor record keeping, which in an estimated billing system carries huge financial risks. Additionally, forgoing a 360º evaluation and the opportunity to discuss how to address open issues, correct performance shortcomings and leverage those things that are working well is not only costly, but can sow the seeds of discontent in the Client/Agency relationship, which is not healthy for either party.
Therefore, we believe that these two “year-end” practices should never be forgone or given short shrift. The most practical approach to prevent this is to create project work plans for these practices, complete with timetables and milestones, the assignment of task level responsibilities to specific individuals and locking-in calendar placeholders for progress updates and report-out meetings.
In the end, everyone benefits from the enhanced levels of transparency, solid two-way communications and ultimately, improved performance.
“No one wants full transparency.”
It was alleged that this intriguing pull quote echoed the sentiments of agency buyers at a gathering of agency executives dealing with the topic of “Transparency in Media Buying.” The event, hosted by Digiday in London, provided participants with complete anonymity with regard to their name and or company affiliation in order to encourage an open exchange of information on the topic. Understood.
Participants shared a range of thoughts as to why advertisers weren’t truly interested in media transparency. The ideas proffered by this group included:
- A belief that advertisers were concerned about the costs associated with revamping how digital media is purchased.
- Advertiser concern related to the impact of “overhauling how much” they spend on media.
- A general lack of advertiser interest in the “mechanical” detail that underlies the media acquisition and delivery process.
There are two major problems with this perspective.
The first is the belief among digital media supply chain participants that advertisers should bear the financial burden related to the poor decisions made by agencies, ad tech vendors and publishers with regard to how media buys were executed, tracked and reported on. For years these intermediaries knowingly shirked their fiduciary responsibility to serve the advertiser’s best interest and to safeguard their media investment. To come back now and suggest that if advertisers want a return to normalcy it will cost them more in fees and the actual rates paid for media inventory is preposterous. Did these firms reduce their fees and costs to advertisers while they were participating in media arbitrage and purchasing low quality, high risk inventory (often without the advertiser’s knowledge)? Of course not. They padded their respective bottom lines at the expense of advertisers.
Secondly, the notion that advertisers aren’t interested in the mechanics and science behind the planning, buying, stewardship and performance analysis of media buys seems to be misguided. Or at the very least, not representative of the views held by a majority of advertisers, many who have cited media transparency as one of their most important concerns in industry survey after industry survey. Additionally, Gartner Research recently released the results of its “CMO Spend” survey and noted that chief marketing officers at advertiser organizations in the U.S. and UK were focused on areas such as email marketing, online media management and digital analytics as their top tech priorities. This further underscores advertiser interest in leveraging technology to improve transparency and drive media performance.
Perhaps the clients represented by the agency personnel at the Digiday event are different than those with whom we interact with on a regular basis or those who participate in industry surveys.
Or perhaps the more accurate sentiment is that no one on the agency, ad tech or publisher side wants full transparency. Either way, if the media supply chain doesn’t recognize and begin to address client concerns and the corrective actions that advertisers are already taking the risk of revenue contraction and ultimately disintermediation is real.
One only needs to read the Association of National Advertiser’s (ANA) October, 2018 study; “The Continued Rise of the In-House Agency” to understand the cost to intermediaries of not taking advertisers’ best interest to heart:
- 78% of ANA members surveyed had an in-house agency in 2018 versus 58% in 2013 and 42% in 2008.
- 90% of the survey respondents indicated that the workload of their in-house agencies had increased in the past year, including 65% for whom the workload had increased significantly.
Media Supply chain stakeholders may want to heed the words of 20th century Russian-American writer and philosopher Ayn Rand:
“We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.”
There was an interesting announcement earlier this month, regarding the potential for introducing much needed reforms to the programmatic digital media marketplace. Specifically, several of the top exchanges announced that they had reached out to the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) for help in cleaning up some of the non-toward practices that have plagued digital advertisers.
As part of the group’s efforts, these exchanges have agreed to not charge hidden fees or offer rebates that unduly influence agency holding companies. Further, they have pledged to notify buyers in advance if they change auction dynamics, to clearly mark first-price and second-price auctions and to not bid cache without notice.
Translation, the exchanges have been employing these practices all along to the detriment of advertisers as a means of shoring up their bottom lines. Step in the right direction or affirmation of the ongoing murkiness associated with programmatic digital? Advertisers will have to decide, or have they already weighed in on this initiative.
Coincidentally, findings from an important research study and a forecast on digital marketing were also released earlier this month. The results of these efforts may very well shed some light on how advertisers are viewing the ongoing malaise within the digital media marketplace.
In the first study from the In-House Agency Forum (IHAF) and Forrester Research called “The State of In-House Agencies” it was revealed that 64% of corporate America have in-house agencies, which is up 50% from 2008. Interestingly, of those firms with in-house agencies, 38% have digital capabilities. The second piece of information came from an eMarketer forecast “Flight to Quality” which predicted that by 2020 open exchanges will see a declining share as programmatic money goes direct.” eMarketer is predicting that $4 of every $5 will go to private marketplaces. For reference, today, approximately 58% of all programmatic display spend, which totals $27 billion goes to private marketplaces.
The reasons for the move to programmatic direct are clear and compelling and have been at the root of advertiser concern for several years:
- A desire to minimize the risk of digital ad fraud
- The need to improve brand safety
- A concerted effort to move away from low-quality, non-viewable inventory
- Interest in a greater level of transparency (both as it relates to pricing/ fees and the content/ sites where their ads are placed)
Thus, it would appear that while the announcement by top exchanges to engage TAG to assist with reforming the practices employed by the exchanges may be a little too little, too late.
The time to take action to safeguard advertisers’ digital media investments and address advertiser concerns may have come and gone, at least as it relates to the open exchanges. Rebuilding advertiser trust and confidence was an excellent strategy… in 2016 at the height of the U.S. media market’s “Transparency Crisis.”
Unfortunately, as results from the aforementioned studies suggest, many agencies, adtech firms, and exchanges may have waited too long to remedy the woes that led to the epic level of waste that has negatively impacted advertisers’ programmatic digital media spend.
In the words of Og Mandino, the late 20th century American author:
“There is an immeasurable distance between late and too late.”
It has been two years since the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) published its blockbuster study on media transparency in the U.S. marketplace. Among the study’s findings were that the use of media rebates paid by publishers to agencies was “pervasive” and that there was a “fundamental disconnect” regarding client-agency relationships and the agencies assumed fiduciary obligation to act in an advertiser’s best interest.
Later that same year, December of 2016, the Department of Justice (DoJ) announced that it was conducting an investigation into the practice of “bid rigging” by agencies for TV and video production jobs. The bid rigging was allegedly being done to favor the agencies in-house production groups over independent production companies. This was done by urging outside production vendors to artificially inflate their bids, creating a reason and a paper trail for supporting the agency’s decision to award the production job to their in-house studio, which coincidentally bid a lower price for the work. At least four of the major ad agency holding companies were subpoenaed as part of this ongoing investigation.
One year after the release of the ANA media transparency study the ANA conducted research among its members that found:
- 60% had taken “some” steps to address the study’s findings
- 40% had not taken steps or weren’t sure if their companies had taken action
- 50%+ of those that had taken steps indicated that had revised agency contract language
- 20% of those that had taken steps had conducted audits of their agency partners
Given the $200 billion plus in estimated U.S. media spending (source: MAGNA, 2018) and the $5 billion U.S. commercial production market the aforementioned numbers are stunning in that more advertisers have not taken action to safeguard their advertising investment by implementing controls and oversight actions that mitigate risks and improve transparency.
It would appear as though the Department of Justice is taking these matters more seriously than many advertisers. The reason that the DoJ and FBI have undertaken probes of U.S. media buying and creative production bidding practices is quite simple… fraud, price fixing and bid rigging are prohibited under federal law.
The question is; “Why haven’t more advertisers, whose media and production dollars are at risk, been more proactive in constructively addressing these issues with their agency partners?”
The fact that the federal government has determined that it was necessary to launch two separate investigations into U.S. advertising industry practices is a clear signal that marketers should reinvigorate their oversight and compliance efforts. The stakes are high and the risks have not abated since the aforementioned practices first came to light.
If federal investigations into ad agency practices in these areas isn’t enough to spur advertisers to action, perhaps the words of Jon Mandel, former CEO of Mediacom in an interview with Mumbrella following his whistleblowing presentation regarding media agency “kickbacks” at an ANA conference in 2015 will provide the necessary incentive;
“Clients need to stop suspending disbelief. The agency is supposed to be a professional providing you with proper advice not tarnished by their own profit. Marketers need to know the limits of that.”