Advertising: Who Cares?

25 April 2024

The craft of advertising faces a crisis. And without the craft the business per se is in trouble, adrift in a sea of creative and media sameness without verifiable, solid data to cling on to.

Consider low levels of viewability and attention, ad fraud, MFA sites, unverified (and often unbelievable) audience data, agencies who make more money from their suppliers than from their clients (thus threatening the very objectivity they’re hired for in the first place), bland creative generated by AI, and an audience that increasingly resents our work.

Articles, speeches and tweets from those who make money at arm’s length from the actual advertising, whilst not caring a jot for anything except short-term revenue, are everywhere.

Nick Manning, ex Manning Gottlieb and Ebiquity, and I share concerns over this sorry state of affairs.

We see two choices.

Write yet another article, give another conference speech, and accept the headlines whilst knowing in our hearts that nothing will change.

Or at least to try to start to change things for the better.

It is easy to dismiss us as two old gits, whose time of influence within the industry is past and who now can do little else except meet up for a moan.

This would be true but for one rather inconvenient fact. There are many who seem to agree with us who are neither old nor past it but who are worried. Most feel unable, and literally cannot afford to speak out.

Nick and I care about the ad business. We don’t care about pay checks, future jobs or mortgages.

So, as planners, we’ve hatched a plan.

There are a number of inconvenient truths in adland.

The first is most of us know what’s going on. Yet no-one in any position to influence anything talks about the issues.

Take media agencies. Here we should acknowledge those independents who have for years made transparency in media selection and fees a point of difference from the networks. Valuable though they are, it’s the networks who drive the market, and whose behaviours create the weather.

Everyone at any level of seniority in every agency in the land knows that ad fraud is a massive problem. Everyone knows about MFAs.

Everyone knows that too much advertiser money is spent on unproductive adtech, and that the network agencies are forever looking for new ways to make undisclosed margins.

But no-one wants to talk about these issues.

The reason for the silence is obvious. For years, the largest network media agencies have made more money from their suppliers, be they media vendors, fraud detection specialists, or adtech companies than they have from their clients.

Holding company revenues are largely dependent on revenues from their media arms – whose margins are high. Anyone running a holding company media operation is all too aware of the pressure to deliver high margins; their parent simply can’t survive without them.

So – do a deal with a fraud detection business / adtech vendor / specialist research supplier, pretend to the client that everything is under control, and don’t rock the boat.

The problem is that courtesy of all sorts of interfering so-and-so’s the cat is now well and truly out of the bag. Clients are asking difficult questions; questions which cannot in all truth be answered without compromising a valuable supplier.

Consequently (and we can argue which came first, chicken or egg) trust between client and media agency has eroded.

Respectable media vendors have found themselves disadvantaged unless they play the game. No matter their quality brand-safe environment, their valuable audiences, unless they play in the agencies’ sandpit they simply can’t generate sufficient revenue to fund their uniquely valuable content.

Some of our trade press too largely ignores these issues – there’s a symbiotic relationship between journalists, adtech vendors, platforms and agencies. There’s advertising to consider, and pitches to get excited about.

What about independent auditors? Too many still rely for their bread and butter on old-fashioned cost grids, and audits based on the same dodgy principles that were around in my, and Nick’s day. There’s much talk but the truth is they’re not sufficiently tooled up.

Trade bodies, and the verification organisations? Take the IPA as an example, it’s well-funded, but it faces a dilemma.

If the IPA is to represent and protect the interests of its members, what is it to do if those members’ interests are not necessarily aligned with a healthy, trusted ad business?

Stay schtum seems to be the answer. When did you last see an employee of a major agency break cover to comment publicly on ad fraud (and keep his or her job)?

What can two old guys, who do care, do?

We intend putting on an event whose shape and scale will be driven by the interest we generate. Maybe we’ll need a conference venue, maybe a large table, maybe a small desk.

If there are costs (for the venue for example) we will charge a modest fee to attend, with any profits being passed on to the advertising charity NABS.

We will not accept sponsorship, although we will approach a select few to ask for practical assistance.

We will select speakers on the basis that they will be well-informed and prepared to speak the truth. Everything will be on the record. We won’t pay speakers, nor will we pay ourselves.

We will invite journalists from serious business titles, as well as advertisers. From early soundings we think many will attend.

We will publish who we’re inviting (we’ll invite all the big players), who attends, and as importantly, who doesn’t.

We will produce a set of actions from the event.

This post is our first attempt to gauge interest.

If you’re interested you can comment as usual, or if you would rather remain anonymous for now you can mail me at brian@bjanda.com  or Nick at nick@encyclomedia.international.

We hope that interest will win out over apathy; and that the seriousness of the situation we’re all in will overcome short-term concerns.

We’ll see.