In The News

ad:tech New York is only a few weeks away, and as I mentioned in a previous post, the event is moving back to its roots, into a new venue with a stronger than ever Board of Governors, if I do say so myself.

One of the keynotes will feature yours truly leading a discussion with three leaders in the business as we chat about privacy, transparency and ad quality. I’ve covered off on the agency perspective in my discussion with Rob Norman recently, so I thought I’d give you a sneak peak by sharing another discussion I had with Google’s Scott Spencer.

As I’ve mentioned in my last post, ad:tech is a great place to have a conversation that’s not tethered to an industry organization’s constituency obligated agenda. So, free of the ANA, AAAA and IAB theatre of war, if you will.

My conversation with Scott started with defining the role he has at Google. Google is one of the few (only?) companies that can afford hyper-specialists.

Scott is responsible for sustainable ads at Google. In case you need Google speak translated into advertising speak, that means focusing on the relationship between ads and content, draining the ad spam swamp (see what I did there?), looking at sensible approaches to the ad blocking problem and building ad models that will stand the test of time.

Google’s goals in the sustainable ad environment are pretty straightforward. In order to achieve ad success Zen, following the ad experience to the desired action is paramount to understanding ways of creating a long-term ad framework. That’s a wonderful world in which to live, but there are challenges. The business has yet to agree on viewability standards. That’s a problem when people are blocking ads and ad quality is in question.

In the recent past, the mostly underinformed media attacked Google and other networks (or sites) by pointing out that some ads are appearing near or around objectionable content. What constitutes objectionable is subjective and one man’s objectionable is another man’s target audience. I’ll get into this a bit more at the event, so you’ll just have to attend if you want to hear that unfold.

Some advertisers reacted to the media blitz by adding resources to weed out content, while others chose to be judge and jury in deciding what is and is not acceptable. This is a slippery slope, but Scott pointed out a notion very few seem to grasp; you don’t have to censor the content, you can just avoid monetizing it. In other words, give advertisers the choice to decide what is appropriate for them.

You can’t have an ad quality or viewability discussion without touching on the all too touchy subject of agency compensation transparency. Our conversation was succinct yet revelatory. In my opinion, the incentive for a sitting CMO to illustrate to her CEO how an agency might be ripping them off is minimal because said CMO would be ipso facto shining a light on her incompetence. In the end, Scott pointed out something we in the agency world know all too well; selecting an agency is a choice and a brand can exercise their right to choose as they see fit.

This article was originally published on LinkedIn.com

November is right around the corner and this year’s ad:tech New York event is set to be one of the best ever. The event is moving back to its roots, with focused content a more intimate venue at Metropolitan Pavilion and a stronger than ever Board of Governors, ahem, yours truly notwithstanding.

Part of my role lies in keeping abreast of what people are talking about and the issues our industry is facing. I’ll recommend content and pull together the people I think make the most sense to help with our discussion.

In November, I’ll be leading a keynote fireside with three leaders in the business to talk about one of the most controversial and seemingly never resolving topics in digital marketing: transparency. There are two key areas of transparency making headlines—ad quality and profits. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, agency and advertiser organizations have been at each other’s throats for the better part of two years over the issue of transparency in profit margins. The other issue making headlines is the ongoing controversy over ad quality. One journalist reporting on brand ads appearing alongside unsavory content led to a snowball effect in the business about ad quality controls.

ad:tech is a unique place to have this conversation because we won’t be tethered to an industry organization’s constituency obligated agenda. In other words, ad:tech is the Switzerland to the ANA, AAAA and IAB battleground, and we won’t be stuck between a rock and a hard place.

One of the business leaders I will be chatting with at ad:tech is GroupM’s Chief Digital Officer, Rob Norman. Rob was kind enough to make some time for me to have a chat about the event and what we’ll be talking about in our keynote.

First, let me say Rob is the kind of guy I want to be when I grow up. If I ever grow up, in spite of the fact that 40 is the new 20, I remain hopeful. Rob pulls no punches, and when we started to talk about transparency in agency margins, he let it fly with a lot of the things that frustrate me as an agency owner as well.

We talked about transparency in the context of what and of whom. What specifically is the value chain and “whom” refers to buyers and sellers. Rob compared—for the sake of argument—the relationship Facebook, Google and others have with disclosing margins, or better yet, how about a luxury watchmaker disclosing its margins to customers. They don’t, for two very good reasons. One, it’s no one’s business how the business is run, and two, when you buy an item, it’s up to the seller to convince the buyer of the product’s value. It doesn’t have to be any simpler than that.

So the issue becomes: is there transparency between the advertiser and agency? This is another area that Rob felt there needed to be further clarification. It’s a simple question of being compliant with each client’s contracts and if GroupM weren’t compliant, there could be criminal consequences.

Rob and I agree on the behavior of the ANA. Because no names have been named in the reports to date, it’s hard to gauge the scope of the transparency issue. As of our conversation, 90% of GroupM’s business had been audited and GroupM hasn’t had to give back a penny. Industry-wide, a year after ANA released the inflammatory reports, only about 60% of clients have completed an audit. So if it’s so important, why isn’t that number 100%?

I could get into the ad quality part of our discussion, but let’s just say when we started talking about the Times of London’s catchy headline from early this year that led to an industry-wide panic attack, “Big Brands Fund Terror,” we both had a few things to say. The words and phrases, “set up,” “entrapment” and “panic-inspiring uniformed dreck,” came up in conversation.

Of course, there’s a lot more to our conversation, but you’ll just have to wait until November to get it. See you at the show!

This article was originally published on LinkedIn.com