Page 21 - AdNews Magazine Jul-Aug 2020

www.adnews.com.au | July-August2020 21
“Anything that is done by individual players within the supply chain, whether it be us, others or regulators, to ensure that there is an open marketplace with transparency and free flow of information, we believe that will only add to building a strong open internet and that’s a really good thing,” Bayes says.
Earlier in the year, The Trade Desk was one of a number of parties to participate in a landmark study by UK industry body, the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA). The study, which was compiled in conjunction with PwC, was the first of its kind to dive into the world of the programmatic supply chain.
The study revealed that 15% of advertisers’ spend could not be attributed for, falling under the category “unknown delta”. This per- centage makes up one-third of the supply chain costs.
Naturally, it caused widespread discussion as the figures were plastered across headlines with questions on the whereabouts of this 15% of digital ad spend.
Some say discrepancies are part of the industry. Others say the com- plexity of adtech means to find every single discrepancy requires an abun- dance of time and patience - something that not everyone is willing to do.
Barry says it is important to not jump to the conclusion that every discrepancy is fraud.
“We need to be mindful of the fact that it could be match rates, it could be latency, it could be currency fluctuations, it could be reporting,” he says.
“It can be a whole bunch of things, and yes, it can be fraud also. We’ve come so far in our industry, I think we need to make sure that we’re not setting ourselves back by just assuming that it’s fraud.”
The other key takeout from the study, that has caused a lot of dis- cussion, was the notion that publishers getting only 51% of digital ad spend was negative.
Bayes says the concept that 100% of every dollar should go from buyer to seller misses the value the supply chain offers.
“There’s a lot of partners within the programmatic supply chain who add enormous value in improving campaign performance,” he says.
“Understanding the context allows for the same kind of rich advertising conversation without necessarily breaching privacy regulations.”
Senior director, market development, Xandr
Samuel Tan
“Whether that’s a DSP that helps people identify the right impres- sion to buy at the right time and the right place. Or an SSP that helps publishers maximise their yield or a third-party data provider.”
Building standards
Alongside its findings, ISBA released two recommendations in the report: collaborate and build industry standards.
Developing standards sounds like a simple solution but in the fast- paced world of adtech where things are changing at lightning speed, some say this proves tricky to main- tain and have called out problems with industry adoption.
Tan says it is important to cre- ate standards that aren’t too rigid or curtail innovation.
“When it comes to standardisa- tion, you don’t want to be tinker- ing with it a lot because that cre- ates a lot more confusion,” he says.
“What you don’t want is to cre- ate a set of standards that only a few can comply with.”
By creating a framework that is accessible for all parties and not just the big players, Tan says that will help the industry con- tinue to innovate.
The IAB Tech Lab has been working globally to develop stand- ards such as sellers.json and OpenRTB SupplyChain object that the market can adopt to improve transparency and eradicate fraud.
Both were designed to identify all intermediaries that participate in the flow of money from the buy- ing platform back to the publisher. They build on ads.txt and app-ads. txt which require publishers to publish the lists of their authorised sellers and resellers to their web- sites in order for programmatic buyers to easily access those lists.
Together these protocols aim to achieve greater transparency, brand safety, and trust in the digi- tal advertising ecosystem.
Le Roy hopes the ISBA study will give the industry momentum. “We’re hoping to use this report locally to try and make Australia a bit of a superstar in terms of trans- parency,” she says.“We’re looking at the possibility of doing a local pilot here to work with the most current and up to date standards.”