After years of clutter and browser abuse, content consumers started fighting back with the only blunt instrument they had - ad blockers. The IAB admitted to having “messed up” and suggested new “LEAN” guidelines. But who really is driving here? A new power center of ad blocking software has emerged even as publishers contemplate their best response to a new business dynamic. And what can publishers do to reform the UX if they are increasingly dependent on programmatic systems making nano-second decisions on what appears on their pages? Suddenly it has become unclear who controls ad serving, who manages experiences, how to communicate ad/content value exchanges with consumers. Who is controlling the ad experience now? Who should? Who could? What exactly needs “fixing” here, and by whom?

Even before the lack of transparency in the ad tech stack…even before 4As task forces on “rebates”… even before digital fragmentation challenged the “AOR” tradition…even before clients started protecting their data by bringing ad tech in house…even before the wave of agency reviews - trust, transparency and communication between marketer and agency has been a signature quality of the industry. But have all of these developments in recent years made a perpetually strained relationship downright dysfunctional? Can some level of trust be restored between the parties? Is greater transparency of business practices the answer? A different way of organizing the relationship? We ask our panel to get beyond empty promises of “improving communication” and outline practical steps this couple can take to ensure that a rough patch in their relationship is not a permanent breach.

How long has the industry been assuring consumers that tracking their online behaviors, preferences, personae and compromising their privacy gives them more relevant and better advertising and more free content? The unprecedented harvesting of data on the behaviors of free citizens appears to be progressing without regulation, assurances of security or safeguards against abuse. Advertisers, agencies and the ad stack all wrangle over who controls the data, and distinguishing among first/send/third party sources, but consumer “ownership” of the data seems left out of these arguments. Adding insult to injury, the purported upside to all of this tagging, tracking, profile building and site slowdown is invisible, not transparent. From a consumer perspective the data-driven ad revolution deservedly seems at best like a broken promise, at worst a violation of personal privacy for no good reason. Will U.S. regulators continue to sit back even as their EU counterparts crack down? Are industry self-policing policies really adequate responses to the breadth, depth and intimacy of content harvesting already commonplace, let alone the kinds of consumer surveillance that wearables and the Internet of Things make inevitable?

Honestly, do buyers and sellers of digital ad inventory even know all the intermediaries now in the digital ad supply chain? What do all of these companies do? Who gets paid what? For what (if any) added value? The “stack” has become costly and increasingly opaque as the number of middlemen between demand and supply sides increases. Publishers see the majority of their CPM eaten by tech. Data leakage, fraud, uncertain viewability standards seem to be symptoms of dysfunctional complexity that bakes distrust and doublespeak into the system. Is this a permanent condition? And will it spread as these technologies themselves migrate beyond online display to digital video, OOH, TV?

Despite its promises of transparency, programmatic advertising introduced new complexity and opaque cost structures into the advertiser/agency relationship. One of the leading brand consultancies reflects on how the rise of advanced ad tech heightened perennial questions about the role, value and honesty of agency relationships…and what is being done to fix them.

Once considered watchdogs, gatekeepers, impartial observers, defenders of clarity and truth -- an “institution” -- today most media companies don’t seem to mind much if you mistake a “native ad” for some of their own editorial content. Was that feint grey microscopic “Sponsored” label not prominent enough? Oopsy. In fact many of these same companies are now producing that faux editorial on behalf of their sponsors. Are this all just low-level fibbing and minor church/state trimming or are there real consequences here? How should publishers be communicating with their audiences about these changes in their business and editorial models to maintain trust and accountability.