If you’re an advertiser, we have three brief questions for you to 
consider:
- Does your organization have contracts with its ad agency partners?
- Do those contracts contain right to audit clauses?
- Has your company ever enacted its right to conduct contract compliance and or performance audits?
Chances are your answer to the first two questions is “Yes” and very likely “No” to the third question. Why is this? Why would the majority of advertisers negotiate audit rights into their marketing supplier agreements and not take advantage of such an important control mechanism? This is particularly perplexing given the materiality of marketing spend and the many publicized challenges confronting advertisers and their relationships with advertising agencies. Challenges such as waning levels of transparency into agency financial management practices, lack of a direct line-of-sight into the rates paid by its agency partners, agency resource constraints and personnel turnover.
After years of conducting advertising agency contract compliance audits, our experience shows the agency community wants to do the right thing in most instances. Are there bad actors? Sure, as there are in any business sector. Are there lapses in oversight or judgment? Certainly. This is a people business and people make honest mistakes. Do errors occur? Of course, as in every organization… no entity is perfect in that regard. Beyond common lapses in judgement, follow-through and or mistakes the primary compliance challenge is often a sub-standard or outdated client/ agency agreement which does not supply an advertiser with the requisite legal safeguards and financial controls.
It is for all of these reasons that “Right to Audit” clauses exist and why it is considered “Best Practice” to engage independent audit support to assess an agency’s contract compliance and financial performance. The benefits of auditing are meaningful and many, with the resulting financial true-ups, identification of process improvement opportunities and new learnings in general, providing substantial contributions to future efficiencies.
These outcomes can have significant financial impacts for both stakeholders. For agencies, who have made oversights, misinterpreted or misapplied certain contractual conditions there is the obvious impact of correcting those items and reconciling their fee and or third-party expense billings. Advertisers benefit from the collection of past due credits, trueing up financial matters, identifying and eliminating unauthorized, non-transparent agency revenue and realigning its scope of work and agency resources on a go forward basis.
It is true that the consequences of an audit can sometimes cause an agency some discomfort and even be outside an advertiser’s comfort zone. However, these important accountability programs are more than offset by the positive outcomes that ultimately drive compliance with the agreement and motivate more effective financial stewardship. To this end, it was with interest that I read a recent article entitled, “Mix Enforcement with Persuasion” by Lucia Del Carpio, Assistant Professor of Economics with INSEAD. Professor Carpio wrote about the topic of improving compliance with laws and regulations. One of his observations had particular relevance to our compliance auditing experience and crystalized what we often profess:
“Compliance sometimes requires nothing but enforcement.”
The cost to conduct agency contract compliance auditing is nominal relative to the benefits yielded by these initiatives. In our experience, we have never seen an instance where the financial and operational benefits of an audit didn’t provide a return multiple times its attendant cost. Factor in the notion that compliance auditing actually incents agency contract adherence and it is easy to understand why “Right to Audit” clauses exists in client/agency contracts to begin with.
Interested in learning more about agency contract compliance auditing? Contact Cliff Campeau, Principal at AARM | Advertising Audit & Risk Management at ccampeau@aarmusa.com for your complimentary consultation on this topic.