‘Improved transparency’ the main motivation when choosing programmatic models

For 70% of marketers, improved transparency was the reason behind their choice of programmatic model. Followed by Data Strategy (63%) and Ease of Control/access (63%).

That’s the latest data uncovered by the WFA, World Federation of Advertisers, in partnership with IPONWEB in their fourth wave of research intended to build a picture of the programmatic approaches and data being used by multinational companies.

The research found that levels of respondents with non-disclosed trading desk operating models are tumbling as clients are rejecting the concept of agency as Principal, or reseller of inventory, and choosing to work on a more transparent basis out of concern for pricing and data ownership. Representing approximately US$ 76 billion in marketing investment – 48 individuals from 37 companies took part in the research and reported that 41% of their total digital media investment was spent through programmatic channels – a significant increase from 2016 (16%).

In light of this recent research, the AANA welcomes IAB Australia’s call to adopt their transparency standards in the programmatic advertising supply chain.

Amit Shetty, Senior Director of Product at IAB Tech Lab explains that “sellers.json and the SupplyChain Object when competently utilised together with ads.txt will provide buying platforms (DSPs) and intermediaries full transparency into the origins, paths, and legitimacy of ad inventory.”

IAB Australia has identified five clear areas that industry should action today:

1. Mandatory and immediate adoption of sellers.json & SupplyChain Object standards by all SSPs, DSPs and Ad Exchange vendors.
2. Widespread industry adoption of OpenData, the IAB Tech Lab Taxonomies and the IAB Tech Lab Data Label to provide standardised and consistent language for vendors, agencies and publishers to utilise in all campaign reporting.
3. DSPs should prioritise Supply Path Optimisation and related best practices whilst also insisting upon always using separate trading seats for each of their clients to improve reporting, minimise bid duplications and improve the overall efficiency of RTB.
4. The industry should review the inclusion and adoption, and logging, of some form of transaction ID (similar to the source.tid) within the OpenRTB protocols to enable cleaner retrospective audits.
5. Industry-wide standardisation of essential T&C’s with ad tech vendors and the mutually agreed permissions access to data between publishers, SSPs, DSPs and agencies – to build upon the recommendations included within IAB’s AdTech Buyers Guide.

These standards are in line with the ISBA and PwC programmatic advertising report’s key recommendation, namely that “standardisation is urgently required across a range of contractual and technology areas, to facilitate data sharing and drive transparency” and come on the back of the launch of the updated Australian Digital Advertising Practices (ADAPs) in June. Industry commentators also suggest that advertisers that have strong contracts in place with programmatic intermediaries will have significantly lower “unknown deltas” than those that don’t. This is because contracts can stipulate the required data standards acceptable to the advertiser and also insist on audit rights.