“One-sided.” “Inconclusive.” “Immense shortcomings.” The ad world’s response to an anonymously sourced 2016 study on media transparency conducted by the ANA, K2 Intelligence and analytics company Ebiquity was almost universally negative. As Publicis Media CEO Steve King put it, “The whole industry was tarred by one or two rogue players.”
Yet the report, which focused on cash rebates and other markups that publishers allegedly paid to major media shops without their clients’ knowledge, has had an undeniable influence on the most profitable part of the agency world in the two years since its release. Its findings frayed an already fragile sense of trust between clients and agencies, and they continue to affect the ways the world’s largest advertisers manage their own…
