• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, August 3, 2016

Well, isn't this interesting. Conduct a study that sends "shockwaves" through the advertising industry but doesn't name any names and then launch a new business unit to go out and hunt down the very agencies the study supposedly identified as taking kickbacks. Ingenious! Brilliant!  

K2 Intelligence, the research company behind the ANA report that identified non-transparent ad agency business practices such as taking kickbacks from media companies, has followed that study with the launch of a new business unit that is said to help advertisers monitor the behavior of their media-buying agencies supposedly insuring those media buying agencies play by the rules. 

Of the launch, K2 Intelligence EVP Richard Plansky said: “Advertisers are being victimized by these nontransparent practices on a very broad scale, and the tools that they have been using to detect them have been ineffective. It [our solution] could be investigative research, investigative interviews, forensic accounting, cyber investigations and a whole host of other skill sets that we employ on behalf of clients across the spectrum every day.”  

K2 Intelligence isn't yet saying which advertisers have hired the firm to investigate on their behalf but the Wall Street Journal reported J.P. Morgan has hired the firm to investigate Publicis Groupe's Zenith. 

The new division will have five people dedicated to the practice and plans to hire more people if and when the demand increases from advertisers. 

Commenting further on the approach the new unit will take, Plansky added: “It will be a combination of first understanding in granular detail how the advertiser agency relationship works and second relying on traditional investigation techniques like human source interviews, forensic accounting and public records and open-source research to determine whether or not the client has been exposed to nontransparent practices.” 

If any wrongdoing is found, K2 will then work with law firms to help advertisers recover any lost money.