ANA study finds programmatic supply chain challenges ... again

Welcome to another edition of The Programmatic Pulse by TPA Digital .

The biggest news this month is the release of the Association of National Advertisers ' Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study. And that's exactly where we're starting here ...

The ANA's Programmatic Supply Chain Transparency Study

Most industry professionals are aware of the call to arms by P&G CMO Marc Pritchard a few years ago describing the programmatic supply chain as ‘murky at best, fraudulent at worst’. Since then the industry bodies and its members have taken it upon themselves to try and clean this up. This cleansing process has resulted in several studies, and the latest from the ANA outlines areas for improvements.

The ANA, due to timing constraints and volume of data, have released a ‘first look’ report and will follow up with further findings later in the year.

There are 7 initial findings that advertisers should take note of:

1. Information asymmetry is a serious issue for advertisers
2. Data access is lacking, leading to inefficiencies and waste
3. There are misaligned incentives as advertisers prioritize cost over value
4. The average campaign ran on 44,000 websites, leading to more waste
5. Made For Advertising (MFA) websites represent 21 percent of impressions
6. Sustainability efforts can be enhanced with productive programmatic media buying
7. The previously identified ‘unknown delta’ (15% of money that was untracked in the last supply chain study conducted by ISBA and PWC) can be virtually eliminated with a full path log-level (LLD) analysis

TLDR; quite a lot of challenges, however none of these findings are particularly surprising and the majority are avoidable and can be overcome by advertisers that lean in.

At TPA we support a number of global advertisers on their SPO journey as it’s a huge lever to generate effectiveness and efficiency.

However, SPO isn’t ‘one thing’, it’s a series of initiatives that need to pull in the right direction and requires a pragmatic approach to be successful. Advertisers who read this report shouldn’t be scared or concerned, the supply chain is at wholesale improving, but those that lean into it further will drive significant competitive advantage.

Read the report here: https://www.ana.net/miccontent/show/id/rr-2023-06-ana-programmatic-transparency-first-look

The Trade Desk announces partnership to enable the programmatic buying and selling on connected and linear broadcast devices.

This is a big coup for The Trade Desk who have made great strides in CTV in the US but have, in comparison, somewhat lagged behind in their efforts to crack the CTV market at scale in Europe. This partnership provides them with reach into 30 million households across Austria, France, Germany and Spain and will dramatically increase the availability of CTV impressions available to be bought via The Trade Desk. Notably, RTL explained their wariness over the fact that Google own YouTube contributed to their decision to partner with The Trade Desk rather than DV360. Perhaps Google operating in the demand side tech, sell side tech, and publisher roles can have its downsides….

Read more here: https://digiday.com/future-of-tv/rtl-and-the-trade-desk-ink-addressable-tie-up/

Cannes 2023: Storms and Roadworks

This year's Cannes can be summarised in one short phrase which can double suitably as a metaphor for such times: "Storms and roadworks".

The strip was not looking its best. Roadworks made it noisy and disruptive and in some cases they had even obscured company logos and entrances down to corporate beach events (can I have my 250,000 Euros back please?).?

The weather didn't play ball this year either. High winds rocked the yachts (causing some panellists to complain of sea sickness) and tore down merchandise. The most devastating and potentially lethal being the huge wooden ‘A’ that had been constructed on the front of Adobe's yacht crashing down unexpectedly. Luckily no-one was hurt. But the parallels of the physical environment and the state of the industry were writ large from the get go.

Read Dan Larden's three key takeaways from this year's Cannes here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/cannes-2023-roadworks-storms-dan-larden

Thanks for reading this month's Programmatic Pulse