Mark Pritchard, the marketer who is key to Procter & Gamble's $8 billion advertising budget in the United States, is calling for greater transparency from digital platforms. You know what that means. This is a special time of year when marketers dust off their soapboxes and preach the virtues of honesty and clarity in advertising.
As soon as Mr. Pritchard, P&G's chief brand officer, walked back on those remarks at last week's Association of National Advertisers media conference, marketers figuratively joined forces in a show of solidarity.
A quick look at the social conversation surrounding Pritchard's words shows how much of a stir they caused. There were enthusiastic nods of agreement punctuated by exclamation points, messages filled with cheering emojis, and even the occasional #ROAS thrown in for good measure.
The world's most high-profile marketer has once again put transparency in the spotlight, making it the talk of marketing town.
But let's be real. Usually it's all talk and no walking, right?
Sure, there are small steps here, like doing an audit or hiring a consulting firm, but the result is that marketers rarely take concrete steps toward transparency.
For proof of this, let's take a look at the so-called debate surrounding arbitrage sites.
But if you look closely, you can certainly see signs of real change. Sure, it may not seem like much, but it's a long-awaited beginning.
And nowhere is this more evident than in the wake of the recent uproar, marketers are demanding more clarity about what happens to their hard-earned money once it's funneled into Google's ad machine. do not have. They've talked about this many times before, and now they're starting to put it into action. And they have the battle scars to prove it. Examples include agency changes, ad tech disruptions, and internal human resources.
In fact, some marketers are going above and beyond in promoting this transparency by hiring independent consultants to work with their agencies.
They urged the agency to secure as much advertising data as possible in Google's ecosystem for consultants to analyze. This speaks volumes about the authorities' capacity, or lack thereof, and the sheer complexity of the task at hand, and is itself a microcosm of the fundamental dynamics underlying the transparency problem.
“We've been talking to agencies to get data from Google, but the problem is we don't have immediate access,” said the marketer, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to Digiday. .
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Once you have the data, you need to analyze it, package it, and present it to senior board executives in a way that makes sense. Because, let's be clear, this isn't just about how much money is being thrown down the drain, it's about making that money work smarter, not harder.
Well, that may be true to some extent.
Marketers – to be fair, not this one – talk about transparency and go to great lengths to clarify what they actually buy from Google's vast marketplace. They spend a lot of effort and spend much of their money on opaque, performance-oriented areas. , the same company's generated AI-based advertising product.
This is a paradox worth pondering. Certainly some marketers have done this. They conclude that even just one step forward and two steps back can lead to progress by providing valuable lessons, building resilience, and prompting the adjustments needed to progress more effectively. Masu. It's better to do something than to do nothing, even if it's imperfect.
After all, marketers are publicly evaluated for their social benefits but are privately compensated financially. Reconciling these two aspects is like trying to untie a knot. Although progress is being made, there will always be points that prevent the threads from unraveling further.
These efforts, learned from Digiday's conversations with marketers over the past year or so, include setting unique KPIs that are directly tied to real outcomes, avoiding proxies and gaming techniques, and reinforcing the role of agents in driving real outcomes. Changes are focused on several key areas, including: It's not just about increasing media spending.
“Years ago, transparency issues were either a checkbox for marketers or something they could just button up and put away,” said CEO of Goodway Group, an independent media and marketing services company. ), says Jay Friedman. “Now, for the first time, more marketers we're talking to are saying, 'We think this could potentially give us a competitive advantage.'”
Indeed, Friedman's views may be colored by Goodway Group's vested interest in transparency. But this puts them at the forefront of change.
Fundamentally, this shift means moving away from simply assessing whether issues like MFA, fraud, or ad viewability are high or low, and digging into the details behind them. This approach allows advertisers to understand why certain behavior is flagged as fraudulent, allowing them to make more informed decisions about purchasing ad inventory, for example. .
Now, skeptics may roll their eyes and say, “I've heard this song and dance before,” perhaps even here. But what's different is that technology and services are leveling up for marketers. They are now doing things that were previously unthinkable. That means real-time insight into publisher disruption, instant alerts on unnoticed advertising, and questions like “How much of the newspaper goes unread?” “Did Nielsen miss the mark on cable ratings again because of sample size?”
This is by no means a completely new ball game, but it is a game of inches where small adjustments in budget allocation can ultimately lead to significant increases in efficiency and effectiveness.
Anti-fraud and security researcher Augustin Fou shared a recent interaction with a client: The marketers in question say that the ad verification tools they use show that the ads they buy are seen 80% to 90% of the time, and that's been going on for years. I told him that I was there. But according to measurements from Fou's tools, that percentage is closer to 40% for him. This difference confused marketers.
According to Fou, the explanation was very simple. The technology they originally used was not designed to measure the likelihood of seeing these ads on mobile apps. It was tailored for static pages, not mobile apps.
As always, the root of the problem here is a lack of understanding. This is a complex issue, and marketers have little incentive to address it. But often, for some reason, things are changing. Adam Chugg, Head of Data and Technology at the7stars, said: “Ultimately, advertisers need business results, and these can only be delivered by serving ads.” The right environment.
This means advertisers need to take a long hard look at their own actions, not just criticize others. As this trend grows, the conversation around transparency is evolving from a simple story about advertisers being treated unfairly to a more nuanced conversation.
“Marketers are becoming more aware of this these days: There is no silver bullet for complete transparency about the media that actually works,” said Ryan Kanguisser, managing partner of strategy at media advisory firm MediaSense. . “This means they are focused on buying the right thing, rather than just buying at the lowest possible price.”
A recent conversation Digiday had with a marketer brought this into sharp focus.
Marketers acknowledged that transparency efforts are most achievable within the direct supply chain, where conflicts can be easily identified, such as between agencies and DSPs. They note that the ad tech (demand-side platforms) they use to make programmatic bids often employ complex pricing models that charge a percentage of the total spend, including media, data, and additional fees, while at the same time generating revenue. He explained that he also conducts distribution transactions. But they acknowledged that despite the complexity, the actual price difference may not be that large.
After all, the inability to measure accurately should not be mistaken for the absence of a gap. There are many reasons why it can be difficult to access the data you need to track your spending.
One reason for this is privacy. Contractual restrictions on sharing log-level data are primarily driven by privacy concerns and business requirements, complicating efforts to achieve full transparency while maintaining data integrity and user privacy. I am.
It's a perspective that gives hope to executives at agencies like Goodway Group and The Seven Stars. They're betting their business on this kind of thinking becoming more widespread, and in the case of the7stars at least, they're actually building the technology and services.
Last year, the7Stars introduced Prospero, a “fully transparent” programmatic advertising platform. Prospero, aptly named for its clarity, is powered by technology from French programmatic company Hawk. The goal is to source all ad inventory directly from the platform, giving agencies control over the pricing of both technology and data. With access to detailed log-level data on both the supply and demand sides of programmatic auctions, 7Stars meticulously tracks how our clients' advertising budgets are allocated and provides transparency. and maximize efficiency.
This is a radical solution to a complex challenge, but as the saying goes, necessity drives innovation.
Wider (and robust) acceptance of these innovations ultimately depends on behavioral changes. Transparency challenges, whether financial or data-related, boil down to unrealistic price expectations and distorted incentives. If that sounds too pessimistic, consider why many of the marketers who are most vocal about transparency are the biggest hurdles to achieving it.
“If advertisers wanted this supposed transparency that much, they would already have it,” said Tom, a consultant who compiled a report last year on the state of programmatic transparency for ANA.・Mr. Triscali says. They don't have it because it's not a real priority, but somehow they're put in a position to talk about it as if it makes sense. Transparency is an illusion until you want to make it a reality, and you can make it a reality whenever you want to.
