• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, May 16, 2012

Premium publisher panel moderator Mike Leo just asked his panelists a good, albeit tough question, that all of them seem to be side-stepping.

Noting that the “spread” for buying an old school medium right now is “like 2%,” meaning ad agencies get about a 2% commission on buying television time, Leo asked his panelists to predict where the spread for ad technology platforms would be in the future of the online industry.

I’m not sure what the spreads are like these days, but I know that at the early stages of the ad tech boom, the spreads were like 20% to 30% of a buy, and I think some platforms get even more.

The panelists are all side-stepping the issue, but Leo is pushing, noting that it’s in the best interest of both publishers and buyers to take the fat out of the buy/sell process by getting rid of middleman spreads.

Still no takers. Could it be that the “publishers” on this panel are also making out on the spreads?

That said, Microsoft’s Seideman offered a pragmatic response, noting, “We don’t stay up at night wondering about the value capture that’s happening in between [buyers and sellers of inventory]. We worry about whether we are getting fair value.”