Three Steps You Can Take To Clear Up Confusion In Programmatic Buying

June 22nd, 2016 | Joan Brehl, Vice President and General Manager, AAM

Joan Brehl
Joan Brehl

In a comprehensive new series titled the 2016 Guide to Media Transparency, the Alliance for Audited Media (AAM) talks to leaders from all sides of the industry to better understand the issues and how to build more accountability and transparency between parties for the long-term success of digital media. Throughout the next several months, AAM will share tips with ACA readers on solving problems with viewability, adblocking and general transparency. Here are some of the thoughts they gathered on programmatic advertising and suggestions on how to increase transparency.

What is media transparency? In its simplest form, media transparency can be broken into two main points:

  1. Advertisers know where their ads are running and what they are paying each part of the digital supply chain to get their ads in front of their target audience.
  2. Publishers understand the nature of the creative running on their properties.

Programmatic advertising technology has revolutionized how ads are bought and sold. And it has changed the ways ads are served to consumers and how they interact with those ads. Advertisers can instantly target audiences at scale by demographics, shopping behaviour, location and more. And publishers can quickly and easily sell unsold inventory.

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While programmatic advertising has brought efficiencies, cost savings and benefits, it has also uncovered bad actors and flawed systems that are not as evident in a direct-buy environment.

“We see operations and numbers that don’t make sense, and we have to hunt down what the issues might be and talk to other vendors,” explained Ted Boyd, CEO of Brandworks Advertising. “It can be quite time-consuming. There’s a certain irony that the more automated we get, the more we have to go back and validate when we discover something has gone awry.”

Dominik Majka, senior vice president of digital strategy at MediaCom Canada, explained that fraud is top of mind as an industry issue now that programmatic advertising has intensified.

“Fraud has clearly been around longer than programmatic but it’s never been as prominent as it is right now,” Majka said. “It’s the number one most concerning element in the media industry today.”
When ads are bought and sold in milliseconds, how can each side of the industry better ensure more transparency?

Here are three steps you can take now to increase transparency in programmatic buying.

  1. Know your options and discuss the level of transparency your organization desires.
  2. Have an open and frank discussion within your organization to better understand the level of transparency you require to feel safe and confident in your buys. Do you want to know where your ad is running at the site level? What controls do you have in place to ensure that the level of RTB transparency you’re looking for is reflected in the bid request?

    “Advertisers first have to embrace transparency,” said Khoi Truong, director of media and data optimization at L’Oréal Canada. “We need to be ready to accept what we’re going to find out. We used to buy on a CPM basis and think that CPM was pure media. And then, when we opened the transparency door, we realized that wasn’t the case. Now that we have that transparency information, we need to accept it and decide what we’re going to do with it. It’s a big mess and we have to face it.”

  3. Decide how much transparency you want to provide your partners.
  4. Programmatic advertising transparency works both ways so buyers should consider how much information their organizations want to provide publishers. Ideally, publishers should be having those same conversations about the transparency they provide you.

    Cynthia Young, head of audience for The Globe and Mail, explains why quality advertising is important to readers.

    “Just as much as we care deeply about the quality of our content, we care deeply about the quality of our audience and the content they receive. We want to ensure that the ads placed on our site are from quality brands that have specifically selected our site. There are many different ways in which a lot of nonpublisher content and ads can appear on publisher sites, we just don’t allow those open networks access to our inventory. It’s a promise we make to our readers.”

  5. Work with certified vendors and ask questions.
  6. Vendors that have been certified to standards set for by the IAB, MRC or TAG have been through rigorous auditing and testing to make sure they have reliable controls and processes in place to ensure that their systems are functioning correctly. Ask your vendors if they are certified. To what standards? Do they have a compliance officer? What controls do they use to ensure their systems and processes are functioning? And most importantly, ask for their Description of Methodology, which provides even more information around their processes and procedures.

Steve Guenther, vice president of digital auditing operations at AAM explains, “If a company is compliant with industry guidelines and best practices and goes through the certification process, they’re committed to being good stewards of the advertiser’s dollar. When you think about being a good steward, it means that you don’t take your business partners for granted so you provide complete transparency, which earns their trust.”

Joan Brehl is vice president and general manager for AAM’s Canadian services. As such, she develops new strategic business opportunities in print, digital, mobile and other media channels to promote AAM Canada and its clients.