• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, July 24, 2014

Motivity Marketing CEO-Founder Kevin Ryan went straight for the elephant in the room during a presentation at OMMA RTB in Los Angeles: Margins. No, not the margins of marketing difference for brands utilizing RTB and programmatic exchanges, but the profit margins of agencies, publishers and ad tech providers.

To illustrate the point, he utilized some math, albeit highly metaphorical numbers measuring the sector’s “stupid factor.”

Actually, Ryan showed a hockey stick like chart showing three sets of numbers: media costs, profit margins and the “stupid factor.”

“The media cost is staying the same. The margins are going through the roof for the people buying and selling,” Ryan explained, adding, “And the clients are going to figure it out, and I wonder when they’re going to figure that out.”

Ryan had numbers for that too: “six to nine months,” thanks to the fact that publicly traded companies such as Rocket Fuel are actually disclosing their margins to investors now.

“People can see. Big clients can see the numbers,” Ryan said, adding, “‘Wow these agencies are making money, and so are the publishers.”

He then showed a photo posted on Facebook of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Google’s Nikesh Arora simultaneously kissing GroupM digital chief Rob Norman.

Why, he said, because “WPP is the cream filling in the Facebook/Google sandwich.”

“Can anyone tell me what’s wrong with this picture,” Ryan probed, rhetorically answering, “Where’s the client?”

His point, he said, is that big agencies are cavorting with big media companies in places like Cannes (the location of the Norman kiss photo) or reasons that have to do more with their respective margins, and not necessarily their marketing clients’.

“What could the client possibly be thinking,” Ryan asked, and then answering again: “How are you spending my money?”

He completed his “stupid factor” point by suggesting that Sandberg and Arora were actually “kissing the wrong cheek” if they really wanted to get Norman’s budgets.