The question of whether marketers will go straight to market without the need for an advertising agency has been hypothetically posed for the past few years -- but now it's beginning to be discussed
openly at industry events, such as last week's Cannes festival.
When you consider that half of British display is now bought programmatically -- three-quarters forecast within two years -- then
it's not hard to see why a brand marketer may feel that having a string of agencies is an expensive luxury. One the one hand, data hubs can be set up to know what demographic box a person falls in and
what they're interested in, judging by their recent activity. On the other, this data enables target lists to be drawn up to whom apt display can be fired off with less need for smart buyers and
planners to become involved.
But hang on a minute -- is anyone else hearing an alarm bell ring here as ad fraud figures keep on suggesting there is a huge problem in letting technology
take over? Nobody can truly know for sure how big a problem it is, but click fraud appears to be a billion-dollar industry which some extreme estimates suggest can account for anything between 15% to
50% of display budgets. With variances so wide, it's hard to pinpoint a figure, so the only real conclusion is that it's a massive problem that will only get worse. Why worse? Well, I see very little
evidence that it has been tackled globally, and as the rise of programmatic leads to a wave of new money coming into automated display buying, it's not hard to imagine that this will create more
opportunity for fraudsters.
The trouble for media agencies here is that ultimately, they are pretty powerless. They are the middleman who oversee campaigns. However, the issue does raise a
huge question mark over advertising networks and publishers selling their inventory through automated platforms. Will they both grow a spine and begin to investigate one another and their sources'
traffic to make sure they are legitimate? Will they sign up in great numbers to schemes, such as that run by the IAB UK, to show they are taking these steps and so are more reliable than companies
which do not?
The quandary for media agencies is that certainly in the case of the large holding companies, they now have massive trading desks that global giants are throwing huge display
budgets at. Do they truly need to lift up any rocks looking for bugs? Or should they sit back and enjoy the double-digit annual growth that most are reporting? If they go fully legit and question
everything, will they have enough inventory left for the swelling demand caused by the huge rise of programmatic?
At some point, agencies will have to be perceived as not only the clever
guys who know how to interpret data and turn it into cost-effective programmatic campaigns, but as the police officers who can pretty much guarantee a brand the media they're buying is being seen by
humans.
But therein lies another problem. If there is such a guarantee that media has been seen by humans, it is likely to come from a tool that measures behaviour (a "customer" who
constantly logs onto multiple page for just a second is likely to be a robot) and only allow media to be bought via companies that are signed up to a code that compels them to vet traffic and
publishers effectively. When this becomes achievable, it's not hard to imagine that it will be made available as a single tool that brands can simply use themselves. Many are already building data
hubs, and some are buying their own media and learning how to deal with going direct to market. If they have a means to better qualify traffic sources and judge an ad network's efforts in routing out
fraud, then that would be a significant enabling tool that could persuade more to go straight to market.
When technology is how display is bought and sold, and hopefully also the answer to
cleaning up the process, it's hard to validate your existence on the human qualities or the experienced wise people you employ -- particularly when ad fraud has ballooned, often unchecked, on their
watch.