Time to clean up digital ad buying
Advertising is big business. Over $190 billion was spent on advertising in the United States in 2016.
And, like most industries, advertising is going digital, with 2017 being the first year that spending on digital ads beat the amount spent on TV.
But like many large industries that are going digital, the underlying legal documentation and management is still a major inefficiency:
Managing display ad campaigns can take up 28% of the budget in overhead, compared to 2% for TV. Which means for every $100 you spend on display, $28 goes to process management such as negotiation with multiple sites, re-planning, faxing insertion orders, trafficking hundreds of ad tags and so on.
Even the rise of programmatic adverting hasn’t eliminated the constant exchange of PDFs, according to Adweek.
A particular source of pain are insertion orders, which are agreements between a company (or its agent) and the publisher of a website or other venue promising to run the company’s ads. Insertion orders often require the ad buyer to pay the full price up front to be entitled to services.
For example, RMS Media has the following language in their insertion orders:
Payment terms are payment due upon signature of the agreement with check or credit card made payable to RMS Media Group, Inc….RMS Media Group, Inc. (the Publisher) agrees to insert the ad(s) indicated above in the designated media for the advertising client upon payment in full.
Likewise, an industry conference requires sponsors to pay in full “to guarantee the selected package and/or advertisement”.
When an insertion order is submitted on a website or signed via PDF, the payment must made using a separate system, adding complexity, errors, and administrative headaches when there’s a gap between signature and payment.
At Clause, we believe that much of the overhead in advertising is unnecessary — especially the costs that come from managing and paying insertion orders and other legal documents. That’s why we have made it easy to negotiate, change, sign, and pay for insertion orders by adding a Smart Clause into the order. You can watch a video of how the Smart Clause works here.
Simply log into Clause, upload your insertion orders, and drop in a smart payment clause to simplify the ad buying process. Full payment will be made upon signature, helping to ensure that media providers get paid and companies get the most for their advertising dollar.
(Photocredit: Rawpixel)
