
As Americans, we sometimes take our rights for
granted. But should U.S. planners, buyers and their clients also have certain inalienable rights?
That’s a question that was put to a group of industry executives on both the buy and the
sell sides of the cross-platform television marketplace this week during one of Simulmedia’s periodic Salon events.
Specifically, they discussed the merits of advancing a draft of an
"Advertisers' Bill of Rights" proposed by Simulmedia CEO (and MediaPost columnist) Dave Morgan to ensure transparency in streaming and linear TV advertising buys.
It should be no surprise that
Morgan, who began his career as a First Amendment lawyer before becoming an ad-tech entrepreneur, would use a Constitutional metaphor to advance the idea.
What is surprising is the five
amendments included in the bill. It was surprising to me, anyway, given that they should be fundamental principles for any advertising buy, not just cross-platform ones:
- Advertisers have the right to know the programs, networks, services and apps where their ads appear.
- Advertisers have the right to know the devices on which their ads are
viewed.
- Advertisers have the right to know the sources, composition and methodologies of the data and models used to target and measure their ads.
- Advertisers have the right to independent, transparent, accredited, third-party measurement of their campaigns.
- Advertisers have the right to verify that their ads are being
viewed by real users and not bots or fraudulent sources.
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"A lot of suppliers in CTV won’t tell you the show your ad is on," Morgan told PBI before Tuesday evening's
rollout of the bill, adding: Even if you bought rotators in DR you'd know what shows your ads ran on."
Morgan said the goal is not necessarily to codify the elements of the bill as rigid
industry standard, but to get the discussion going -- and who knows, maybe some buyers and sellers might even tie them in contractually.
I found the concept interesting coming on the heels of
the Association of National Advertisers' recent release of the first phase of its programmatic transparency report, which found some similarly basic things aren't even part of the contracts
advertisers have with their programmatic suppliers, like actually having access to the log files of where, when and to whom their ads were served.
In a recent interview I published with Kroll Regional Managing Director
of North America Forensic Investigations and Intelligence Richard Plansky, one of the authors of the ANA report, he attributed these breakdowns to "information asymmetry" and "misaligned incentives,"
and after reading Simulmedia's new bill, I'm thinking the same things pertain to the burgeoning CTV marketplace.
I'd probably be stretching the metaphor if I called Simulmedia's salon (see
below) akin to the Constitutional Convention, but it's a start.
