• by Kendall Allen , June 7, 2010

Has it dawned on you that the long-hailed total accountability of digital, while never really 100% true, has also never even yielded to anything approaching meaningful transparency?  Whenever I hear "experts" talk about accountability, I wonder if they've ever read a campaign report, let alone executed a buy on a network.  

Fortunately, as the industry as a whole gets more honest about where we really are on so-called accountability -- raising the bar on measurement, verification and transparency -- we continue to see important advances across multiple segments. Progress can be seen on the publisher side; by third-party serving companies; at agency holding companies and independents; within the better buyer/seller relationships; and at the networks worth their salt. These advances are represented in any number of ways: commitment to robust tracking and analytics at agencies; submission to verification by publishers and networks; broadening participation by all in the ramping self-regulation movement in response to privacy concerns -- and more.

Generally speaking, though, the greatest boon to accountability will be the singular principle of transparency. Just... transparency. It's become more commonly acknowledged that lack of basic transparency is in fact what's  keeping brands on the sidelines. In a piece in the New York Times in April, Steve Lohr shared some specific confirmations coming out of the Ponemon Institute that brand trepidation is a huge factor impacting our ad economy: "Privacy issues have prompted marketers to use online behavioral advertising - based on tracking a user's Web browsing habits - 75 percent less than they would otherwise, according to a report by the Ponemon Institute, a privacy research group.

The 90 companies and organizations surveyed curtailed their behavioral advertising, even though they estimated the tracking-based ads were 50 percent more efficient in generating sales than conventional online display ads."

These co-mingling issues around data, privacy, targeting are all reflections of the perceived general state of questionable transparency. Leaders among us would say there are some very fundamental things a company can do to participate in fostering transparency one measure at a time, and making it a reality. Like: throw open the blinds.

In a conversation I had recently with Jason Krebs, executive vice president at ScanScout, a company of growing importance in the in-stream video network sector, he talked a lot about safety, engagement and transparency. Yes, if you've been around, that list of words can sound like a little bit of corporate-speak. But sometime very soon, ScanScout will be going fully transparent by sharing its site list, top to bottom. From what most people I know can tell, no one else in the video network space is planning to do such a thing anytime soon. That one measure in the world of video networks is foundational to transparency. It's as fundamental as it gets.

"There's a lot of work to do to make this happen. But we effectively help clean up [the] environment and move away from the black box. In that environment, tech is no longer out of advertisers' grasp," Krebs says with some audible relief.

In our industry circles, we talk about all kinds of factors that are big and complicated but incredibly important to our progress. They include undertaking the phased roll-out of self-regulatory infrastructure and associated standards for communicating to advertisers and consumers. Also on the list: understanding options for verification and what partnerships and deals look like, should you be inclined to get on that train. If you are a network, these things mean actively engaging your publishers and your advertisers in wholesale change.

Of course, on some level, it's a mind-bender that the very media and technology we've hailed as utterly accountable, have been used to create blind spots for ages -- and are only now being mobilized to lift the veil. But, like all significant journeys to any promised land, it's about measures. Step by step, it's not a frightful dare to just commit to being true. On the point of transparency, it's really just about cleaning up, as Krebs might call it, and finally using the technology and media we've long puffed up -- to "true" things up.