Dive Brief:
- The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) has described the ad tech space as complex, murky and confusing for advertisers.
- The issue is marketers don’t know if their agencies are fully disclosing rebates, inducements, investments and other financial instruments related to spending.
- At the Digiday Agency Summit, Bill Duggan, group executive VP at the ANA, said the current climate for advertisers vis-à-vis agencies is “the most opaque and the least transparent period.”
Dive Insight:
“Murky,” “confusing,” and “opaque” are all words used to describe the current state of ad technology and relationships between marketers and their agency partners. The ANA’s Duggan was interviewed by Digiday after the Summit presentation and the executive offered opinions on a variety of transparency issues facing marketers, largely offering a dim view of the current status.
On trading desks “double dipping” Duggan said, “The whole issue of transparency started five years ago with trading desks. Agency trading desks are a model that many agencies introduced without input from the clients and without providing the opportunity to opt in at the time. Agency trading desks can be interpreted as double-dipping in that the agency is making money and the trading desk is making money.”
On ad blocking he said, “The entire industry has the responsibility for the rise of ad blocking.” The sentiment has been voiced by several industry leaders. For instance, during Advertising Week in New York earlier this month, when the topic came up, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said ad-blocking only became a threat after advertisers failed to innovate enough on new ad formats and failed to deliver value to consumers.
And on agency transparency, Duggan stated, “Right now, agencies are primarily agents acting on behalf of their clients, but there are some relationships with agencies where they do take a principal stake in business. What’s important, if and when that happens, is for that be transparent and that the client has the opportunity to opt in to that model or not.”