ISBA aop pwc programmatic supply chain transparency study

Agency: AOP + 12 premium publishers

"A joint collaboration between ISBA and 15 advertisers, AOP and 12 premium publishers, and PwC's Marketing & Media Assurance team who conducted the study.

This is a pioneering world-first study into programmatic advertising: mapping digital ads all along the advertiser-agency-adtech-publisher chain.

The study uncovered industry-changing issues, primarily: (i) deep challenges with data access and data formatting; and (ii) 15% of spend disappearing into an unattributable “unknown delta”.

The Financial Times and worldwide trade press ran extensive coverage of the study, and DCMS/CMA interviewed us to understand the implications for competition, legislation and regulation.

An industry taskforce has been convened to take the study recommendations forward, for the benefit of all advertisers and publishers.

Worldwide reaction has been hugely positive, for example:

- ""The level of detail that we received, from DSP to SSP, is beyond anything we've received before” (Steven Pollack, Nestle)

- “The ISBA/PwC study has allowed us to get into the detail of what goes on in the digital market” (Graeme Adams, BT)

- ""This is a terrific piece of work. By lifting the lid on the programmatic landscape PwC has done the whole industry a huge service. All sides - advertisers, agencies and publishers - now have a much better idea of what is really going on and how they can do something about it individually and collectively."" (Dominic Mills, Mediatel)"