Networked: The Impossibility of Impartiality
Now the dust is starting to settle on ‘digi-gate’ and the swirling narrative around trust and transparency in the media industry calms, it’s time to take stock on a specific related topic of philosphical importance to us: neutrality.
Post the The Guardian and The Times exposes, it is now publicly acknowledged that media networks make income from a multiplicity of sources, some of which are ‘hidden’. Media owners, technology providers, software providers and OOH specialists all offer cash rebates to media agencies. These rebates, plus various mark-ups on programmatic inventory represent a significant proportion of agency income. This is no longer a secret, no longer a hushed conversation in the corridors of holding companies.
Some clients are aware of the situation and negotiate their own rebate deals with agencies. Full disclosure, audit rights, and a share of rebates (even 100% of rebates) are not uncommon for advertisers. However whilst such agreements give the advertiser greater transparency and the ability to access media at net costs, they still provide absolutely no guarantee of neutrality when it comes to the agency’s strategic recommendations.
Simply put, clients may get plans from agencies that are built with more than just the client objectives in mind.
The stark reality is that until every single advertiser in a networked deal demands and is granted the rebates in their entirety, the agency trading machines will continue to favour suppliers that generate kickbacks. This means every client — even those with ‘transparent’ contracts — contribute to the volume targets and, whether they like it or not, are being delivered plans day in, day out which simply aren’t built with their sole interests at heart. The deal book becomes, in practice, the most important client in the agency.
The self-interest goes deeper: will a client’s ‘transparent deal’ stop them being pushed their agency’s holding group’s own media inventory? Or technology solution? Analytics solution? Or the network’s music publishing business that’s now conveniently housed next door? The list is endless, because the internal commercial objectives — and costs — of the agency network model runs incredibly deep.
For these reasons a non-transparent media agency cannot offer a genuinely transparent deal, whatever it might claim. Transparency is about more than just the finances on one piece of business; it’s a philosophy, a code of ethics and a way of working that is woven into the very fabric of the agency. It informs everything, directly or indirectly, that the agency creates for the client and it directs and guides everyone that works in the business. So it stands that the converse is true, too. Non-transparency affects everything, and everyone, regardless of any ‘special provisions’ that an agency might make for one client (which, with delicious irony, makes the entire agency less transparent in the process anyway!). It’s all or nothing, not client by client.
Ultimately, we firmly believe that only a media agency with a single source of client income — and as such no ingrained bias or agenda — can offer genuine neutrality of thought and advice and can genuinely call itself impartial.
That’s why Bountiful Cow operate with total transparency with all of our clients and have no supplier incentives whatsoever. Because, frankly, it allows us to do our job properly.
