Media Buying 2018 Transparency at a Crossroads Research Reports Research Studies All MKC Content

The managements’ understanding and support will encourage CMOs to deploy the right audit partner to ensure financial compliance. These regulations have catalyzed a paradigm shift, wherein advertisers are mandated to secure explicit consent for data collection and usage, thus fostering a culture of accountability and transparency. He testified that after he determined Global Tetrahedron’s bid to be higher, he worked with the company and its lawyers to iron out details about the creditors waiving their share of the proceeds. Whether online or offline, buying something should grant the purchaser the right to access and use it anytime, anywhere.

You should be able to read your books, watch the shows and movies you’ve bought, play your games, and listen to your music as long as you’d like, anywhere you’d like after buying them. But once you purchased something — a VHS tape, DVD, Blu-ray, cassette, or CD — it was yours to keep. Technology has changed over time, but changes to format didn’t mean direct and swift control over what appeared on any shelf, anywhere, at any time, or the retroactive removal of content you’d already purchased and put in your entertainment cabinet. Our self-serve, transparent software helps advertisers use the best available data to reach audiences on the open internet at every stage of the funnel – from awareness to engagement to conversion.

Sustainability measurement in advertising: the Scope3 approach

Indeed, programmatic algorithms are improving all the time and are much quicker than humans at refining ad performance – if set-up correctly. Now that we’ve established what media buying entails, let’s identify the role of a media buyer. Media buying is the process of purchasing ad space and time on both offline and online channels. This can range from websites and video-hosting platforms through to television adverts and radio slots. AI and machine learning force human assumptions to be completely transparent in the mathematics, reducing the potential for unintentional human bias that still occurs in scientific research today. Incorporating these new technologies presents the opportunity to change decision-making and business outcomes for the better.

Updating contracts regularly and auditing agencies’ financial compliance are two proactive actions that Advertisers can take to ensure better media transparency. Adopting this process will also improve Advertisers’ overall understanding of the media market and the issues and solutions surrounding media transparency, particularly in digital. An estimated 90% of previously manual tasks are now performed automatically. This includes value-based bidding in programmatic, leveraging personal and behavioural data along with media performance data to continuously optimise campaigns.

The Media Leader

It also relates to having full disclosure on agency rebates, benefits and more in general on AVBs (Agency Volume Benefits or Annual Volume Bonuses). Advertisers should not only scrutinize the legal aspects but also the technicalities of media buying while drafting the contract. Given these complexities, it is advisable to conduct media finance audits – as it will ultimately check adherence to the contractual clauses. There is a desire among Advertisers to ensure a healthy level of transparency in the media process.

One significant challenge lies in the sometimes opaque practices surrounding media buying. Advertisers frequently find themselves facing limited visibility into crucial aspects of their campaigns, such as where their ads are precisely placed, the true costs involved, and the breakdown of fees. This lack of transparency can give rise to suspicions of undisclosed markups, hidden fees, and an overall sense of uncertainty regarding the efficiency of their advertising expenditures. To make sure that brands get ready for the transition for AI in media planning and buying, they need to focus fundamentally on people, process, and technology in using AI. For process, it’s about governance and guardrails that go beyond security and privacy. And for people, it means spending at least the next couple of years getting staff and partners to basic literacy levels.

That’s why we’re expanding Confirming Gross Revenue to more publishers and buyers, as well as working with others in the industry to help the ecosystem verify that hidden fees haven’t been taken. The most common way brands purchase third-party audience data is via media buying platforms, which removes the ad buyer from the data selection process. This approach also involves a hidden ad tech tax collected by exchanges and DSPs, adding to market inefficiencies. The new year will be a critical time if transparency and accountability are to take the spotlight in online advertising and media buying practices. Goliath tech companies are already under increasing threats from forensic adtech startups intent on exposing dark arts and dominance.

Goals for 2024: industry-wide transparency and accountability

• While buyers often receive insights into top-line pricing, they’re not always able to review the quality of the data, which is just as important.
• Machine learning and natural language processing are also being used increasingly in media buying and planning to maximise ROI.
• Media Finance audits are often confused or compared with media performance evaluation.
• From an advertiser’s point of view, the term media transparency refers to having information about what media has been bought, where it was placed and how much it was bought for.

All advertisers can make sure their media agency is compliant with media transparency best practices. To do so, clients can employ the services of a media expert to review a media agency contract. High quality assessment options are available free of charge, which makes them suitable for advertisers of all sizes. While the intent of bringing these layers might have been to bring bulk efficiencies, with standardization of rates, transparent transactions that benefit everyone in the eco-system.

Agencies are also offer flexibility given timelines when it comes to signing contracts and drawing scope of works. While a contract is important to the agencies as it ensures their partnership, it is equally important to the advertiser as it secures their rights to get complete accountability and transparency from the agency partner. Confirming Gross Revenue builds on years of work to give businesses and people greater visibility into digital advertising.

In court Tuesday, Walter Cicack, a lawyer for First United American, Blockchain4Media alleged that the second component of the Global Tetrahedron bid consisted of “amorphous, non-cash currency.” He said his client’s all-cash offer should have won. “These families, who have already persevered through countless delays and roadblocks, remain resilient and determined as ever to hold Alex Jones and his corrupt businesses accountable for the harm he has caused,” he said in a statement. The bill was sought by the Anti-Defamation League and other groups, which said the measure is key to combatting online hate speech. Media buying has been in the same place for the last years, and is due a change. Explore the depth and breadth of ANA content through our product subcategories.

Some DSPs have opted for an opaque data quality grading system baked into the buying algorithm, but the approach is often murky. In digital media, rebates are estimated to reach significant values ranging anywhere between 20% and 35%. Numerous studies have been carried out on the topic and some of the general findings are universally applicable. There’s a basic disconnect pertaining to the advertiser and agency relationship.

Unlike other companies in ad tech, Google’s advertising platforms don’t take hidden fees. We’ve since tested the solution with dozens of partners, including publishers such as Raptive and Prisma Media and buyers such as OMG and Jellyfish. Along the way, we’ve incorporated feedback from our partners into the product. Many advertisers had not yet updated their legal agreements with their media agencies, to include things like the right to access data, the right to audit, the requirement of disclosure of rebates and other hidden compensation, etc. Updates to terms in the legal agreements typically occur during media reviews, when a new media agency is vetted, selected and awarded multi-year “agency of record” contracts.