PwC worked with ISBA on a UK study in 2020 which found publishers collect just 51p out of every pound spent on digital advertising.
In a statement the ANA chief executive Bob Liodice described the ad tech supply chain as “riddled with material issues, including a lack of transparency, fractured accountability, and mind-numbing complexity.” He added, “These issues impair critical decision-making, leading to wasteful and unproductive media-buying decisions.”
The investigation will have two parts: the first scheduled to start this month will examine how advertisers’ budgets are distributed across the web, whereas the second will investigate the ad tech set-up within the industry itself.
PwC’s principal of marketing and media transformation, Derek Baker, told Digiday how different media models impact transparency. He explained, “So, how does the supply chain look for brands that exclusively use agencies versus brands that might have in-house teams executing the buys.”
Baker told Digiday that the study will look at how different tiers of the ad tech ecosystem impact on marketers’ budgets. “If you look at the first ANA study, it primarily focused on the demand-side, and the ISBA study looked at demand- and the supply-side,” he said. “We’re going to look at demand-, supply-, and ad quality for verification. So we really want to go all the way from brand advertiser to audience and understand what that full supply chain looks like and where the value is to advertisers and where the gaps are.”
Baker described how marketers have often been hindered in their ability to act upon previous transparency studies.
“I don’t think that there has been a lot of tangible actions that advertisers have taken, because, oftentimes, the tools and techniques don’t exist in the marketplace today for advertisers to get that level of transparency,” he added. “That’s the challenge that advertisers have right now…that’s where this study is going to differ is because we’re actually going to outline what are the tools and techniques that brands can use to take action.”
Keep up-to-date with publishing news: sign up here for InPubWeekly, our free weekly e-newsletter.
