An In-Market Analysis Of Programmatic Media At The Transaction Level (2017)
Ever since reports from the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and others estimated that the programmatic “technology tax” could exceed 60 percent of an marketer’s media budget, questions have been growing around the “hidden costs” of the programmatic ecosystem and the inherent lack of transactional transparency. These concerns have been exacerbated by non-disclosed buying agreements for programmatic media, which do not allow for the close inspection, analysis, and auditing of a buy’s transactional details, costs, and fees.
This study, done in partnership with the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), digital analytics companies Ebiquity and Ad/Fin, set out to create a data-driven fact base around the economics of programmatic media trading to understand:
- Flow of spend from Marketer —> Agency —> Trading Desk —> DSP —> paid to Exchange
- Actual costs of media inventory (“demand-side working media”)
- Actual costs/fees of data and execution (“demand-side non-working media”)
- Actual baseline ratios, ranges, and norms based on this data (all display, video, and mobile programmatic digital impressions served in U.S. and Canadian households)
- Activity comparisons across an anonymized, aggregated participant pool
The study ran from May 2015 through Decemeber 2016 and analyzed 16.4 billion media impressions purchased on behalf of seven major marketers across five programmatic DSPs.
Read on for recommended steps to help all marketers take greater control of their programmatic investments.