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ARTICLE · 22 MAY 2017

Another Wake Up Call for Transparency

Reed Smith
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On May 18, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) released a critical study under a joint initiative led by Ad/Fin in cooperation with the ANA, the Association of Canadian Advertisers (ACA), and Ebiquity.

United StatesMedia, Telecoms, IT, Entertainment
Douglas Wood
Douglas Wood
Keri Bruce
Keri Bruce
Matthew Kane
Matthew Kane
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On May 18, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) released a critical study under a joint initiative led by Ad/Fin in cooperation with the ANA, the Association of Canadian Advertisers (ACA), and Ebiquity.  The study investigated the transparency and economics of programmatic media; particularly what percentage of an advertiser's programmatic media spend actually went to "working" media (compared to supply chain data and transaction fees taken by the media agency, trading desk, demand-side-platform and supply-side platform).  Here are some key takeaways:

 – The project analyzed more than 16 billion media impressions purchased on behalf of 7 major advertisers.

– Across the full supply chain, the overall ratio of "working" to "non-working" spend was found to be 58/42 percent. In other words, for every dollar spent by an advertiser, only 58 cents actually purchased media inventory while 42 percent was lost as a "programmatic tech tax."  Earlier studies

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