ANA launches investigation into "mind-numbing" programmatic ads | WARC | The Feed

ANA launches investigation into "mind-numbing" programmatic ads

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the US industry body for client-side marketers, has launched an investigation into programmatic advertising in a bid to address everything from transparency problems to “mind-numbing complexity”.

While the ANA noted that programmatic is a “powerful tool” for marketers, its Request for Proposal (RFP) has asked for consultants to analyse the numerous “material issues” that characterise this space.

Why it matters

Programmatic is responsible for a large share of digital advertising expenditure, but, despite long-standing complaints from brand owners, is still frequently opaque at the levels of operation and execution.

Programmatic under the microscope

The RFP for the ANA study – which is supported by the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA) and the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) – laid out the following objectives:

• Its core goal will be to “provide the first full analysis of the end-to-end programmatic marketplace in its entirety”, running from the advertiser to the publisher, and the publisher to the consumer.
• Most previous studies have focused on the Open Web, but this analysis will include “walled gardens” – like Amazon, Facebook and Google – which hold an estimated 70% of the market.
• One type of transparency the report is seeking to achieve is transactional, and spans “undisclosed markups, rebates and the ‘unknown delta,’” with the latter phrase referring to spend that is lost to unattributed parties in the supply chain.
• A second element of transparency involves “inefficiency and waste”, such as the data and processes needed to try and determine return on investment.

The big idea

“Marketers do not have a fully transparent line of sight into their programmatic supply chains … We believe this lack of transparency is costing advertisers billions of dollars in waste” – Bob Liodice, CEO, ANA

Sourced from ANA