So, How's That Trust Thing?

The Jury Is Still Out On Whether Media Shops Have Entered An Era Of ‘radical Transparency.’

- Patrick Coffee

“One-sided.” “Inconclusive.” “Immense shortcomings.” The ad world’s response to an anonymously sourced 2016 study on media transparency conducted by the ANA, K2 Intelligence and analytics company Ebiquity was almost universally negative. As Publicis Media CEO Steve King put it, “The whole industry was tarred by one or two rogue players.”

Yet the report, which focused on cash rebates and other markups that publishers allegedly paid to major media shops without their clients’ knowledge, has had an undeniable influence on the most profitable part of the agency world in the two years since its release. Its findings frayed an already fragile sense of trust between clients and agencies, and they continue to affect the ways the world’s largest advertisers manage their own budgets.

P&G’s Marc Pritchard, for example, recently described the ongoing quest for greater transparency as “marketers taking back control of our own destiny.” “It gets to the very root of trust and value between clients and agencies,” said P.J. Leary of PJL Media, who oversaw much of the study while serving as chairman of Ebiquity. He noted that his company was “well aware of the issue” years before a 2015 ANA speech by former MediaCom CEO Jon Mandel first “lit the fuse” on the matter of kickbacks.