Clients, get control of your media data or get ripped off
There’s a strange state of affairs brewing in adland, where agencies are withholding digital and social media data from their clients. Henry Innis offers a stark reminder to these clients: ‘it’s your data.’
Something’s been bothering me conducting media spend reviews in recent times: clients not owning their own digital and social media data.
This practice has been around for years in some badly behaved media agencies and other murky ad-tech players. Here’s how the scheme works: they agree a media savings target upfront based on a certain budget, charge a fee or commission to the client, then try and negotiate deals, rebates and use other trading methods (consolidation, early payment discounts, tech discounts etc) to get that media at a significant discount.
Media agencies have graduated from the Homer Simpson school of ‘yoink’
Nice plug for his own services..
Attention: All clients – hire me now to fix the problem I just told you about
Yes imagine creating a demand for something! Hang on what industry are we all in?
Mumbrella really hates agency doesn’t it.
Every day, another article claiming that agencies are just ripping off their clients blind, written by someone who has something to gain by that thought becoming more widely believed.
Agencies I guess will just have to be content sitting here actually working their asses off to deliver client results and deal with the tidal waves as they hit. Maybe they can just work a few more weekends.
The simple solution to this is to charge clients based on the work (i.e fee-based renumeration) instead of volume of spend (i.e commission based). Creative realised this years ago, why can’t media?
You know it’s the client who dictates this right?
In my experience clients think creative is free. Clients only like to pay for what they can see, not the hours of work that went into it.
Why can’t you realise that media agencies have realised?
Your tales of caution reflect the circumstances of an ever-diminishing pool of old school media businesses and have little to do with the successful reinvention of agencies models that has been undertaken and will continue to be undertaken.
Your “simple solution” screams how ill-informed you are regarding the dynamics of client / agency relationships.
Bring back the sweet Fonzi black jacket from the last article Henry!
Not happy with this cheeky new DP.
@Henry – have you looked at much media rem models recently? Most, if not all, either a) charge full FTE for all services even programmatic media, or b) run a disclosed programmatic fee model. Some do run undisclosed prog models, but even in those cases, the fact its undisclosed is known to the client.
Sure they are going to be rare exceptions, but the above is the norm amongst all major players, and generally correct.
Hi MMAR,
Short answer is yes, and this article was also run by a number of senior media executives.
I’m not sure it is the ‘norm’ as you claim, and a lot of media buyers as well don’t know that these models necessarily exist (what happens is they are given certain targets on media + the rebate is hidden in a different ‘buying’ OpCo, which keeps it somewhat distinct and hard to audit).
As I mentioned – the telltale sign here is access to your own data – and there are good actors and bad actors, as I mention below. Chances are if you can see your media data, you’ve got a good agency. If you can’t, you’ve got one running something ugly in the black box.
Sure in an ideal world you own your data however what this guy fails to mention are the costs associated with setting up, resourcing and managing tech stacks and the transactional aspect of media buys (both in terms of $ and time). Any client can own their own data, they just need to cover 100% of the costs and have the desire to set it all up (FYI a number of large clients already do this). When a client leverages an agencies set up and resources (at a reduced cost), often sharing with other clients, they don’t get access.
Bullshit, Alex. You don’t own another companiy’s data and you can’t bar access.
I’m sure Facebook and Google let you own all your companies data across their assets… If you own the infrastructure and clients consent you can.
Isn’t this the conversation we had 3 years ago?
Yeah. We still haven’t solved it.
Henry, I am sure you know that many clients don’t own their adservers or FB accounts because of internal disorganisation or an inability to get sign off for such responsibility, notwithstanding the fact that the digital ad tech platforms have an inferior rate card for client direct deals.
Good luck targeting SMBs whom fit your diatribe whilst the holding groups have to deal with the nightmare that is ‘global clients’.
There is no simple solution. But you also don’t have to paint such a stark picture that isn’t 100% contextual either..
The sweeping generalisations and factually incorrect statements in this article are disappointing and offensive. There’s a few but my particular favourite is this one:
“All of this can be found out, but only if you own your own data. Because if you don’t, you’re going to have to accept two things: you’re being ripped off and you’re giving our industry a bad name.”
As other people already mentioned there are plenty of reasons a client may not have their own tech stack but this doesn’t even suggest, let alone guarantee, they’re being ripped off as the author says.
You don’t need to own your data to access it, and if the level of distrust exists in the agency relationship where you’re willing to fork out unnecessary dollars setting up your own stack then your problems are probably far bigger than adtech platform data ownership.
Keep your chin up mate, just keep stabbing in the dark and you might actually hit something..
@Tim Burrows, you will keep missing the agencies (mumbrella.com.au/mumbrella-awards-shortlist-and-why-well-miss-the-missing-agencies) if this website keeps publishing this rubbish. It’s uneducated on the modern media agency structure (it’s like he is addressing concerns from 5 years ago) and is simply a bashing on media agencies to further his own business agenda.
Interesting state of affairs for the industry isn’t it? I’m getting ripped off…by *advertisers* ….say it ain’t so?
Most of the comments here do little to actually disagree with the point.
Not all media agencies do this, but quite a few do. It’s a big minority I’d say.
Every brand should be setting up their own customer data tech stack anyway. Relying on an external part of your business is just dumb.
Plenty of people have put forward valid points to disagree with the article. Not every brand needs to or even can set up their own tech stack – in fact there is a minimum volume you need to be serving before Google will actually let you set up a standalone stack for adserving/DSP. Yes there are alternatives to Google but saying a brand is “dumb” for not leveraging agency rates and trusting them to do their jobs is pretty unhelpful.
That comment seems a little naive. Sure in a purely theoretical sense have an easily operable data stack and complete view of your customer and media performance, as well as the talent to implement, manage, interpret and provide actionable insights would be fantastic. Most people would also like a golden toilet seat but its just not on the cards is it. Try walking into a boardroom obsessed with driving down costs and putting all that on the table. Calling advertisers without that operation in place “dumb” is really just an insult to everyone’s, including yours, intelligence.
Can I at least have some orange sherbert?
Sometimes when there’s smoke, there’s a fire. Other times it just being blown out someone’s ass.
His examples all seem legitimate. For examples, the Facebook API provides enough data to work out how much time has been spent servicing an account within the platform. It’d be a very manual calculation so it makes sense they’d automate it (with an algorithm).
There is no question agencies hate giving clients unimpeded access to their data wherever there is transaction or financial information – it’s unusual given the client is the one who has paid for these transactions but it is still happening in 95% of instances.
Don’t believe me – if you’re a client go ask your agency for logins to DSP and visibility on supply. You will see it go into a maze of commercial stalling which it will never escape.
I think we’ve probably had enough of Henry.
Quick tip for Henry – your posts across platforms are full of spelling errors.
Perhaps hire and editor to check your raw data because it’s full of errors.
But what of his cheeky, impish grin?