Marketing Math Blog

Oct 18
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Exchanges Seek Outside Support to Reform

By Digital Media, Exchanges, Marketing Accountability, Programmatic Buying No Comments

Tag LogoMuch needed reforms could be coming to the programmatic digital media marketplace. Earlier this week it was reported that several of the top exchanges had reached out to the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) for help in cleaning up some of the non-toward practices that have plagued advertisers.

Of note, these exchanges have agreed to not to charge hidden fees or give rebates to unduly influence agency holding companies. Further, they pledge to notify buyers in advance if they change auction dynamics, to clearly mark first-price and second-price auctions and not to bid cache without notice.  

Translation, the exchanges 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… Read More

Sep 27
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Never a Wrong Time to Do the Right Thing

By Advertisers, Advertising Agencies, Contract Compliance Auditing, Marketing Accountability No Comments

Do The Right ThingDoing right by others is certainly a core value and one that many of us subscribe to. For me personally, as a former ad agency account director, I have always been fond of the quote by Victor Hugo, the nineteenth-century French author: “Initiative is doing the right thing, without being told.”

In the professional services business sector this credo was once considered “cost of entry.” Today, however, having one’s advertising agency and or intermediaries “do the right thing” isn’t a given and, in the current environment, very likely will come at a cost.

As an example, Forrester recently interviewed thirty-four media agency clients and found that “transparency” was a key priority for marketers. However, many of the media agencies that they spoke with indicated that they “are only transparent if clients require it in their contracts.” Nice to know.

Perhaps you’ve been following the trend among influencer marketing agencies and their vendors who are now charging clients incremental fees for conducting content reviews or brand-safety checks to safeguard advertisers’ placements. For years, influencers have been paid largely based upon the number of followers that they had. Sadly, many influencers had engaged in buying followers to boost their appeal to advertisers and, in turn, their revenue. Now that advertisers are savvy to this practice and are looking for assurances on the influencers utilized and the nature of their followers, influencer agencies want to incorporate an upcharge to advertisers.

What about those instances where trading desks and DSPs are now charging premiums to access content from exchanges that will ensure proper placement, safeguarding brands and minimizing the incidence of media fraud? Whoever said that it was okay to purchase high-risk, low return inventory to begin with?

Maybe you’ve experienced abnormal delays with regard to your ad agency partners closing and reconciling projects to actual costs or in receiving post-campaign media performance recaps. Or perhaps you were expecting your agency to competitively bid your production work, only to find out that they were relying on the same vendor(s) that they’ve always used (maybe even an agency affiliate). Or, you were of the belief that your media campaigns were being monitored and that audience delivery guarantees were being negotiated in-flight, only to find out that there was no such stewardship of your media investment.

What is going on? What happened to doing the right thing? When you query your agency partners they suggest that the Scope of Work (SOW) didn’t specifically call for those activities nor did the agency Staffing Plan allow for providing that support at the frequency or within the time frame that you had come to expect. This obviously begs the question, “When did the agency stop providing the level of service and oversight support that it once did?”

The message is clear, advertisers can take nothing for granted and certainly cannot assume that their agency, adtech, production and media vendors have their back. Simply stated, we are operating in an era when advertisers must incorporate legal terms and conditions, which provide the requisite safeguards and controls that govern the behavior and service levels that they expect, into their agency agreements in order to have each vendor in the advertising supply-chain do the right thing.

As importantly, having solid contract language and tightly written scopes of work in and of themselves does not guarantee that agents and intermediaries will fall in line and comply with advertiser expectations. Experience suggests that adherence will typically only be achieved through performance and accountability monitoring. As the old adage goes; “What is inspected is respected.”

Please note, that we are not suggesting that an advertisers shouldn’t pay for the level of coverage and service that they expect to receive. That said, advertisers can no longer take it for granted that certain service standards, which historically have been part and parcel of agency standard operating procedures and hadn’t been necessary to be called out in an agreement or an SOW, are still being followed. If a service provider drops or alters the nature of a service being provided, it should be incumbent to at least communicate those decisions to the advertiser and engage in discussions to ascertain if the changes are acceptable or negotiate additional fees to cover the desired level of support.

In the end, successfully aligning advertiser expectations and supply-chain member service delivery standards comes down to all parties committing to a policy of open, honest, two-way dialog to ensure that there are no surprises and to incent an environment of Initiative taking.

 

 

Sep 25
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Iconic Ad Agency Brands Continue to Disappear

By Advertising Agencies, Marketing Agencies No Comments

Y&RI was with struck with both a twinge of disappointment and nostalgia when I read the news that WPP is considering folding the Young & Rubicam agency into VML, renaming the entity VMLY&R.

Born in the 1920’s at a time before television and digital media even existed, Young & Rubicam was truly an iconic agency brand that went on to produce memorable work for clients such as Jell-O (“Bill Cosby with Kids”), Lays Potato Chips (“Betcha can’t eat just one”) and Bristol-Meyers (“Excedrin headache”) during the 1960’s and 70’s. A cutting-edge agency that produced the first color TV commercial perhaps it is only fitting that it is being merged into an agency which specializes in leveraging emerging technologies and digital media to help brands forge and manage consumer connections in the twenty-first century.

For sentimentalist, however, who remember the golden era of advertising, when full-service agencies ruled, serving their clients’ as valued, trusted strategic partners and when remuneration was straightforward and transparent (15% commission rate) Young & Rubicam’s transformation into VMLY&R is but another sign of an industry in search of a new identity. Thus the Y&R nameplate will join the likes of other legendary shops that have become distant memories of a bygone era:

  • Ted Bates
  • N.W. Ayer
  • Marsteller
  • Needham Harper & Steers
  • Wells, Rich, Greene
  • Kenyon & Eckhardt
  • Papert, Koenig, Lois

The decade of the sixties ushered in the rise of the agency holding company, courtesy of Marion Harper and his Interpublic Group of Companies and a turn to Wall Street for public funding to fuel three decades of merger and acquisition activity, the likes of which we will probably never see again.

This ultimately led to the decoupling of agency services and the emergence of specialist agencies. Initially, this was a tenable situation when there were a limited number of agencies including, creative shops, media agencies, diversity firms and direct marketing agencies. But as the number of areas of specialization continued to mushroom, so too did advertisers’ agency rosters as shops focusing on disciplines such as; experiential marketing, digital media, social marketing and brand activation were born.

The industry’s move toward specialization led to fragmentation, increased competition, margin erosion and talent acquisition and retention challenges for the agencies themselves. Some have argued that this scenario, coupled with the emerging role of corporate procurement in the marketing arena, and the downward pressure on agency fees that resulted, fueled the growth in non-transparent revenue practices implemented by many agencies.  

Ironically, while these practices satisfied the holding companies short-term profit motivations, the revelation of these non-toward initiatives, which belied what advertisers believed to be an agency’s fiduciary responsibilities ultimately cost them the trust and confidence of advertisers. This, in turn, has opened the door for management and tech consulting firms to challenge ad agencies traditional market position.

Interestingly, the approach taken by the consulting firms is more reminiscent of the old “full-service” agency model, than the multi-brand specialist approach, which epitomizes today’s holding company model. Monolithic, global consulting brands delivering strategic, end-to-end, integrated solutions through a team of diverse, highly trained consultants steeped in their firm’s culture, processes and tools.

It is likely that WPP’s move to merge Y&R and VML signals the beginning of the next wave of holding company consolidations and potentially divestitures as they seek to pare their agency brand portfolios in an effort to eliminate redundancies, reduce overhead costs and streamline service delivery. Wave one this effort led to the disappearance of many of the great names in the agency world, either dropping them from their respective company nameplates or opting for acronyms, which resulted in Ogilvy, Benson & Mather being shortened to Ogilvy, Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn becoming BBDO and Doyle Dane Bernbach adopting the DDB moniker.

In the end, agencies can only hope that their consolidation and repositioning efforts boost their position with advertisers and assist them in defending their core business. After all, the challenge, as the legendary Bill Bernbach once intoned, is; “Getting your product known isn’t the answer. Getting it wanted is the answer.”

 

 

Aug 31
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Agency Compensation: The “More for Less” Trap

By Agency Compensation, Marketing Budgets, Working Media No Comments

More for LessFor many marketers, cutting agency fees is an obvious target when it comes to meeting budget reduction goals. The reasons are understandable given the need to balance achieving in-market results and preserving or improving working media levels, while achieving the desired savings target.

A factor which clouds this issue, is the general level of uncertainty among marketers as it relates to the overall competitiveness of the fees being paid to their agency partners. Are we paying our agencies too much? Or are we already at a competitive remuneration rate? Without being able to objectively address this item, there will likely be internal pressure brought to bear from finance and or procurement to reduce agency fees as part of the budget right-sizing initiative.

It should be noted that we believe in regularly reviewing agency fees, assessing their competitiveness vis-à-vis the market and in looking for ways to optimize a marketers return on its agency fee investment. That said, we also firmly believe in compensating agency partners fairly and in proportion to both the agreed upon scope of services and the agency’s ability to contribute to the attainment of an organization’s marketing and business goals.

Experience has taught us that organizations which focus solely on reducing agency fees, without adjusting the scope of work and or the agency staffing plan upon which those fees were based, can negatively impact agency relations and jeopardize the quality of the work generated by the agency. Further, we have found that when an advertiser involves its agency partners in the budget reduction process there is a greater likelihood of successfully addressing the near-term goal, with the least risk of negatively impacting brand sales.

While it should go without saying, we will say it any way, advertisers must adjust their expectations downward with regard to key agency deliverables in the wake of a budget reduction. It is not an agency’s responsibility to fund the advertiser’s savings goal. As it is, budget reductions create financial challenges for agencies in the form of reduced levels of revenue, which in turn create staffing and resource constraints that they must deal with. Thus, asking an agency to reduce its negotiated overhead rate or to lower its profit percentage to preserve planned deliverables (e.g. do more for less) is simply not appropriate.

There are specific areas that an advertiser might consider, in addition to right-sizing the scope of work to align with the revised marketing budget, which can reduce agency time-of-staff requirements and therefore fees:

  • Review the creative briefing and approval processes. Streamlining and reforming current practices in these areas can reduce the number of steps and therefore the number of agency personnel involved in the creative development process. This in turn can lower the level of “re-work” required, yielding meaningful time savings.
  • Extend current campaigns, rather than developing new approaches, leveraging current creative assets and forgoing the investment in both hard costs and agency fees required to conceive of and launch new creative campaigns.
  • When it comes to the creation of regional versions of creative or the production of collateral materials, embrace an “adapt” versus an “origination” mindset, optimizing existing content, rather than spending time and money to re-create the wheel. The age old acid test of “nice” or “necessary” is the best filter to apply in this area.
  • Reduce the number of media plan revisions over the course of a year. Establish clear goals, implement compelling and relevant strategies and tactics and “work the plan,” rather than revising and re-selling plans.
  • Assess the number of meetings, their frequency and the number of agency personnel required to attend. Attendance, travel time and expense and meeting prep time reductions can yield meaningful savings for both client and agency.
  • Work with the agency to adjust its staffing plan, evaluating both the number and level (e.g. experience) of personnel required to deliver against the revised scope of work.

Finally, once the planned reductions have been identified, consider adding or enhancing the agency’s performance bonus, with a large portion of the incentive compensation tied to in-market results. This is an excellent way to let the agency know that your organization understands both sides of the “share the pain, share the gain” partnership mantra. Taking this approach will deliver on the budget reduction mandated by the organization, without negatively impacting relationships with the organization’s agency network.

 

 

Aug 20
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Will Programmatic Ever Address Advertiser Transparency Concerns?

By AdTech, Digital Media, Marketing Accountability, Martech, Media Transparency, Programmatic Buying, Working Media No Comments

questionIt has been two years since the Association of National Advertisers released its study on media transparency issues impacting advertisers within the U.S. media marketplace.

While much has changed, there remain reasons for concern. Most perplexing is the fact that with all of the intermediaries in place between advertiser and publisher, few seem to be looking out for the advertisers’ best interests.

The reasons for this lack of an advertiser-centric perspective are many and include greed, a lack of knowledge, insufficient oversight processes and often times indifference up and down the programmatic digital media supply chain.

Thus, it was with great interest that I read a recent article on Adexchanger.com entitled; “Index Exchange Called Out for Tweaking Its Auction.” In short, the article dealt with the fact that Index Exchange had altered its auction processes, without notifying advertisers, ad agencies or DSPs. Ostensibly, the exchange’s motivations for this move was to boost its market share, although in fairness, they claimed that they believed their approach reflected “industry practice.”

Of note, Index Exchange made the aforementioned change more than one year ago, employing a technique referred to as bid caching. In short, bid caching is where the exchange retains losing bids in an effort to run advertiser content on subsequent content viewed by the consumer. From an advertiser perspective there are a number of issues with this practice, as detailed by author Sarah Sluis of the aforementioned article on Adexchanger:

  1. Buyers will bid higher prices for the first page in a user session. Thus, if the losing bid is retained and the ad is served deeper into a user session, the buyer will have overpaid for that inventory.
  2. Any delay between the initial bid and the ad actually being served, using a bid caching methodology, increases the chance that the DSP will have found the user elsewhere, resulting in the campaign exceeding the pre-determined frequency caps.
  3. Brand safety definitely comes into play, because even though the ad is served on the same domain, it is on a different page than what was intended.

What is truly remarkable about this scenario is that buyers just learned of this practice and, according to Adexchanger, “not from Index Exchange.”

How many advertisers were negatively impacted by Index Exchange’s unannounced move? What were their agency and adtech partners doing in the placement and stewardship of their buys that an exchange’s shift in auction approaches went undetected for more than one year? Unsettling to be sure.

Ironically, this exchange had implemented a similar move previously, adopting a first-price auction approach, which was known to publishers but not announced to buyers.

Advertisers would be right to raise questions about the current state of programmatic affairs; exchanges not notifying the public of shifts in auction methodology, agency buyers and DSPs unable to detect these shifts to adjust their bid strategies, ad tech firms not catching the shift to safeguard brand ad placements, and publishers that were aware, but settled for the higher CPMs resulting from the shift, rather than informing the buy-side.

This is disheartening news, particularly when one considers the percentage of an advertiser’s dollar that goes to fund each of their intermediaries (at the expense of working media). Yet, advertiser fueled growth in programmatic digital media continues unabated.

Clearly a case of buyer beware. Advertisers that have not already reviewed their supplier contracts or enacted the “right to audit” clauses of their agency and adtech supplier agreements may want to make plans to do so as they begin finalize their 2019 digital media budgets. As the old saying goes:

“The buyer needs a hundred eyes, the seller but one.”

 

Aug 16
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Marketers: Are you Optimizing Your Data?

By AdTech, Advertisers, Marketing, Martech No Comments

visionWith the dramatic expansion of data availability and the explosion in marketing technology solutions ranging from Data Management Platforms (DMPs), Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) and A/B Testing Platforms to name a few, the opportunity for marketers to optimize the data available to them to improve execution has never been greater.

Yet, too few marketers and their agencies are fully utilizing these tools to synthesize this data to drive marketing insights that can boost the efficacy of their marketing investment. Mass personalization, the mapping of customer journeys and the ability to improve the organization’s responsivity to competitor actions and market conditions are all possibilities if these tools are properly deployed.

If you feel as though your company could deliver greater value from the investment it has already made in martech, you will want to read this article from McKinsey & Company entitled; “Making the Most of Marketing Technology to Drive Growth.” … Read More

Jul 25
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Don’t Start There

By Advertisers, Advertising Agencies, advertising legal, Contract Compliance Auditing, Right to Audit Clauses No Comments

Most would agree that the days of conducting business on a handshake are long gone. Make no mistake, honesty, forthrightness, trust and respectability are still qualities that we look for in our professional relationships. However, when it comes to transacting business the protection afforded to all parties is greatly enhanced with the use of a contract versus a verbal agreement marked by a handshake.

“A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.” ~ Samuel Goldwyn

The good news when it comes to the advertising industry, most client-agency relationships are governed by a contractual agreement. That said, there is one common mistake made by many advertisers when it comes to contracting with their agency partners… they start with the agency’s base contract.

Unfortunately, this creates a handful of challenges beginning with the fact that by its nature, agency contract templates are not client-centric. Then, when the advertiser turns the draft agreement over to counsel for review the document will likely require major modifications or, depending on counsel’s degree of advertising industry knowledge, there is a risk that key terms and conditions, which safeguard the advertiser’s interest will not be included in the agreement.

For advertisers, getting the contract “right” is important for two reasons. Firstly, the client-agency agreement establishes the legal nature of the relationship (e.g. principal-agent), while clearly articulating both stakeholders’ roles, responsibilities and rights. Secondly, the agreement establishes expectations and guidelines related to key aspects of the relationship, including; agency performance, staffing, remuneration, reporting, audit and record retention and intellectual property and data rights.

Over the course of the last several years the nature of client-agency relationships has certainly evolved with the advent of emerging technologies, changes in the regulatory environment and a move away from principal-agency relationships, which once held agencies to a much higher fiduciary standard. Thus it comes as no surprise that the complexity of the legal agreements that govern these relationships has increased dramatically.

Larger advertisers certainly benefit from working with marketing procurement departments and in-house counsel that are adept at contracting with a myriad of marketing vendors. Many organizations have developed standardized marketing vendor Master Services Agreements (MSAs) that can be used across their agency network, with some modification. These are typically “evergreen” agreements that don’t need to be renegotiated on an annual basis. Complimentary annual Statements of Work (SOW), which include key deliverables, agency staffing plans and remuneration program details are designed to be reviewed every year.

Additionally, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and The Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA) have both developed comprehensive, client-agency contract templates for use by their members that reflect industry “Best Practice” trends in this area. For small advertisers, or relationships with smaller, independent agency partners, the ANA and ISBA contract templates may not be wholly appropriate, but will provide a worthwhile guide for key terms and conditions that will certainly be applicable.

In our experience, advertisers will be much better served by taking this approach as opposed to accepting or attempting to retro-fit an agency’s base contract.

Of course, once the contract has been executed, marketing and advertising team personnel have an obligation to their organizations… monitoring contract compliance and financial management across each of their agency partners. The first step in this process, one which is often overlooked, is to socialize the agreement. Since an agreement is intended to serve as the basis for the client-agency relationship, it is important to share a summation of this agreement with those client-side individuals responsible for managing these important relationships.

As it relates to ongoing contract compliance monitoring tactics, these can include the tracking and reviewing agency time-of-staff commitments, retainer fee “burn” rates, budget control and project status reports and annual fee reconciliations. Progressive advertisers compliment these efforts with periodic business review meetings (i.e. quarterly or semi-annually) and by conducting independent agency contract compliance audits every year or two.

Good contracts can be the building block for great relationships. The time and effort invested in fashioning them and insuring compliance to them will yield dividends and across an advertiser’s agency network.

 

 

 

 

Jul 09
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4 Keys for Optimizing Direct Labor Based Remuneration Systems

By Advertisers, Advertising Agencies, Agency Compensation, Agency Fee & Time Management No Comments

punch clockAttorneys do it. So do accountants, consultants, architects and engineers.

What are these firms doing? Tracking billable hours. Why? Because time and material based compensation remains the predominant method of billing for professional services firms and this includes advertising agencies. In fact, according to the Association of National Advertisers’ 2017 “Trends in Agency Compensation” study, labor-based fees remained the “most used” method of remuneration for marketers of their ad agency partners.

There are many inherent benefits to direct labor based compensation systems from both an agency and advertiser perspective including simplicity and clarity, particularly for marketers utilizing multiple agency partners that may be collaborating on overarching campaigns or playing specific roles on comprehensive, integrated projects.

We believe there are four key steps to successfully implementing and managing direct labor based remuneration systems:

  1. Establishment of a clear, concise Statement of Work (SOW), with specific deliverables and estimated timelines.
  2. An agency Staffing Plan that identifies the individuals that will be assigned to the client’s business along with information detailing their department, title, bill rate and utilization rate.
  3. Build-up detail supporting the agency’s suggested billable hourly rate (i.e. direct labor, overhead, profit margin) to accompany the agency’s annual fee proposal.
  4. Timely, accurate time-of-staff reporting to facilitate the monitoring of burn rates and to support the fee reconciliation process.

While there are contractual language considerations that will also help to insure transparency and establish client and agency expectations, including limiting agency revenue to that which is agreed upon as part of the remuneration program, we want to focus our thoughts and recommendations on tracking billable hours.

Aligning advertiser expectations with agency resource requirements is the basis for any compensation system. Thus collaborating on an annual Statement of Work, complete with detailed deliverables and timelines is a critical first step in the process. The resulting document will inform the agency’s efforts to construct its Staffing Plan, which in turn will form the basis for its fee proposal.

Experience suggests that conversations should be had in advance of the agency’s development of its Staffing Plan. Specifically, the parties will need to agree upon the basis for the annual full-time equivalent (FTE) calculation and the rules related to the application of agency employee time in excess of the FTE standard for fully-utilized employees and how utilization rates are impacted by an employee’s “total” annual recorded time. As it relates to FTE standard, there is no normative data for the advertising industry. That said, an 1,800 to 1,875-hour standard (35 hours per week, multiplied by 50 weeks per year) represents a typical FTE range.

Once the SOW and Staffing Plan have been agreed to, reviewing and coming to agreement on the basis for the proposed billable rates is the next step in the fee negotiation process. The basic formula for calculating a billable hourly rate is as follows:

Billable Rate = (Direct Labor Costs + Overhead + Profit) / Total Projected Annual Hours

Ideally, billable hourly rates would be calculated by employee or by function, without revealing specific employee salary detail. As a fall back, calculating billable hourly rates by department are clearly preferable to a blended hourly rate for the agency as a whole. Thus for an agency associate with direct labor costs (salary + benefits) of $100,000 per year, an overhead factor of 1.0 x direct laborpunch clock, a target profit percentage of 15% and an 1,875 FTE standard, the billable hourly rate calculation would look as follows:

Billable Hourly Rate of $114.67 = ($100,000 + $100,000 + $15,000) / 1,875

From a reporting perspective, monthly time-of-staff reports detailing “actual” versus “planned” hours by individual are ideal to serve as the basis for regular discussions between client and agency on burn rates and what, if any, course corrections are required. The goal of the reporting and resulting conversations are to ensure that there are “no surprises” that would adversely impact either party. A formal time-of-staff reconciliation should be conducted annually, preferably by an independent third-party to validate that the time reported by the agency is consistent with the time in the agency’s time-keeping system.

Following the aforementioned steps will help protect the interests of both client and agency and will lead to a compensation program that is both transparent and fair.

Jun 01
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Media Agencies on Edge as Management Consultants Take Aim

By Advertisers, Advertising Agencies, Media, Programmatic Buying No Comments

agencies as media ownersIt came as no surprise to anyone in the industry when Accenture recently announced the launch of its programmatic ad unit. After all, weeks before Accenture had completed the acquisition of Meredith’s digital media unit MXM. Further, over the course of the last few years many of the large management consultancies, including Accenture, had acquired creative, design, digital, CRM, Social and full-service agencies as they looked to expand their presence in the marketing services sector.

The row over Accenture’s announcement, at least within the agency community, was focused on its Media Management practice and the work that they do globally in the media auditing and agency review space. The argument proffered by agencies and their associations, specifically the 4As and the UK’s IPA, was that it was inappropriate for Accenture to provide media auditing and search consulting services and programmatic media buying due to the potential for conflict of interest. In short, the agencies expressed concern that Accenture would utilize the data that is accesses in its media management practice to inform its work in the programmatic buying area.

Many would argue that the “conflict of interest” defense raised by the agency community rings hollow. This is due to the fact that Accenture and other management consulting firms routinely implement firewalls and processes to separate and protect data from one client or practice being co-mingled or misused intentionally or not by another.

Further, the agency community has had its share of “conflict of interest” challenges in the recent past ranging from its acceptance of AVBs to media arbitrage to ownership interests in intermediary firms not disclosed to clients that have served to undermine their credibility and the level of trust clients are willing to afford them. Thus, while Accenture’s announcement may be a sensitive topic for agencies, clients will likely have little concern.

Let’s face it, the world is changing and the media landscape has become more complex thanks in large to the growing impact of technology, accelerated levels of media fragmentation and fundamental shifts in consumer media consumption habits. Marketers in particular have become more highly focused on the effective use of data and insights to better target select audiences, geographies, behaviors, etc. Thus, organizations looking to boost their performance and to optimize their marketing investment, are seeking partners that can provide holistic, objective, strategic insights to guide their decision making.

Management Consultants are well positioned to provide the requisite marketplace, competitive and consumer assessments along with strategic recommendations and tactical implementation support across the evolving marketing funnel. Global in scope, the large consultancies have hundreds of thousands of employees, serving in a variety of specialized practices that can be tapped to work with marketers in the identification of problems and opportunities and the pursuit of strategies to achieve their business objectives. The addition of programmatic media capabilities to encompass planning and buying is a logical extension of the consultants service offerings.

Media agencies were long the profit engines for agency holding companies and the onset of digital media and the meteoric growth of programmatic buying represented a boon for media agency margins. Unfortunately, revelations about certain buying practices and growing advertiser concern over the lack of transparency surrounding their digital media investment ushered in a period in which advertisers began to actively evaluate new media agency partners, tighter client-agency contracts and new digital media models. It should be noted that among the new models that advertisers have pursued has been bringing aspects of the programmatic media buying process in-house, often with the counsel and assistance of management consulting firms. These trends have allowed the consultancies to curry favor with CEOs and CMOs and to expand their toe hold in what had been space traditionally dominated by ad agencies.

Given the size of the global programmatic marketplace, measured at $14.2 billion in 2015 and estimated to be $36.8 billion in 2019 (source: MAGNA Global, June, 2016), it is easy to see the appeal for the management consulting firms in general and Accenture in specific. As an aside, the market potential in this sector dwarfs the size of the media auditing and review market by a wide margin.

The media agency community would best be served by focusing on what it can do to leverage its position of strength to protect its share of the media planning and buying business. Time spent focused on “conflict of interest” claims as a defense against incursions from consultants or other non-traditional competitors will likely garner little support outside of the agency community and will therefore not be productive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 28
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Life in a Post-GDPR World

By advertising legal, Government Regulation, Marketing No Comments

GDPR LogoWhat can advertisers posit from the early market indicators in the wake of the May 25, 2018 enforcement of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)?

There are three takeaways that would seem to portend the near-term challenges for the ad industry:

  1. Consumers aren’t that interested in allowing companies to use their personally identifiable information to target them, contact them, monitor their online behavior or to profit from the sale of that information.
  2. The advertising industry as a whole was not prepared for the onset of the GDPR.
  3. Limitations on access to consumer data could greatly impair the efficacy of programmatic media.

The results of poll recently announced by TopLineComms found that 41% of those surveyed were “planning to opt out of current email subscriptions” with 82% indicating that they were “concerned about how companies use their data.” Many believe that the news surrounding the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal has helped to fuel consumer concerns about data privacy protection. Either way, consumers increasingly want their privacy protected and both marketers and publishers are going to have to find ways to deal with that concern and the growth in global regulatory actions in this area.

Adopted in April of 2016, the advertising industry had a two-year transition period too ready for the May 25, 2018 date, when the GDPR regulations would become enforceable. Unfortunately, too many companies proved to be lax in their preparations. According to a global study conducted by SAP Hybris, “49% of companies either have no plan for compliance or have not yet implemented one.” Readiness was made more complex because of different regulatory compliance burdens for data controllers and data processors and the role of third-party data processors. Gaining clarity among stakeholders as to who was responsible for what and how they were progressing on their compliance readiness proved challenging at best.

While early in the process, since GDPR went into effect, ad exchanges have seen dramatic drops in ad demand, with exchange volumes dropping up to 40%. According to digiday.com, “some U.S. publishers have halted all programmatic ads on their European sites.” In turn, this has led to a drop in publisher inventory in Europe. Of note, many within the industry are blaming Google for its lack of preparation and the company’s inability to vouch for whether or not its third-party exchange partners were compliant or not heading into May 25th. Unfortunately, Google did not notify advertisers of this issue until May 24th leaving them little “time to change media-buying tactics or inform clients.”

In addition, Google, Facebook and a couple of other internet portals have been hit with complaints and potential legal action by independent consumer advocacy groups over “forced consent,” claiming those entities threatened service cutoffs or restricted access if consumers did not consent to Google and Facebook’s privacy and data usage terms.

Near-term, organizations will have to focus on complying with GDPR. Looking ahead marketers, publishers and ad tech providers will need too ready for the likely expansion of privacy protection regulations to other countries and municipalities (e.g. California Consumer Privacy Act). After all, these new regulations are coming at a time when the importance of data and the value that it plays in an organization’s corporate strategy and marketing efforts has never been more critical. 

Perhaps most importantly, organizations will have to focus on developing sensible solutions to placate consumers that have legitimate concerns about how their personally identifiable information will be used. This is a necessary step if using first-party data to inform audience segmentation decisions, personalize consumer communications and monitor behavior is deemed a critical element in their marketing and content strategies.

Achieving these goals will require ongoing remediation efforts and will involve personnel from many disciplines within an organization. It is for this reason that many firms may turn to appointing a Data Protection “Tsar” to lead their efforts to embellish their consumer privacy protection policies, processes and compliance efforts. Not a bad move for companies that have the means to formalize this function.

In spite of the inauspicious start by many to comply with the GDPR regulations it is never too late to heed the old adage; “Proper preparation prevents poor performance.”