What just happened at Ikon?
As gobsmackers go, last night’s announcement on the departure of Dan Johns from Ikon was up there.
One of the architects of one of Australia’s all-too-rare local media agency success stories, his exit after a decade with the agency is a shock.
While Johns wasn’t there quite from the beginning, he was close to the agency’s original DNA.
This is a symptom of a much wider malaise across media agencies, and if Paul McIntyre in AdNews (sorry Tim, not trying to promote a rival….) is correct the Ikon crew wanted to fess up to clients and drive greater transparency from their trading desk activity.
Media agencies are hopelessly conflicted when they are both the media buyer and the supplier (via their trading desks). You can’t blame the agencies, as the margins are so attractive, but if their trading desks are so great at what they do, then they should compete on an equal footing with independent trading desks, and DSPs. From our perspective, we definitely see agency trading desks buying super-cheap inventory (one of Ikon’s bigger clients turns up on some very interesting sites…) and, anecdotally selling it at market rates.
One wonders if agencies need to split their trading desks out as separate businesses, or work more to a fee for service or fixed %?
M
DSPs are a great money maker for media agencies – buy up lge amounts of unsold….and so called ‘premium’ inventory on the short term and on sell it to clients who have agreed to prices that seam too good. nobody ever really knows what the margin is but would be fun to have a publisher chat to a client direct wouldn’t it…..
All said and done if this is the case we should all be able to understand the announcements – management weren’t happy with the ethical practices to their clients and have done something about it……..let’s just hope the rest of the industry moves in the same direction when it comes to any sort of DSP – especially with video trading deks…..who knows where, when, and to who blind video buys are being shown and also at what margin?
The trading desk issue needs to be put into perspective. The main problem is transparency, some trading desks aren’t charging very much at all, some are. The problem is that none of them will reveal the fees. Most however charge less than an ad network so the clients are getting a better deal anyway.
The have the ALP account … mirroring Canberra perhaps.
Does Ikon still hold the ALP account? Now who is up for some Synergy?
Unlike the ALP, I hope they get through this and the great people there arent negatively affected by all of this. Im sure Whitey can get his house in order
I’ve been in this industry a long time and worked at IKON. I feel sorry for the young people entering this industry. It’s an unstable, unpredictable merry go round. In particular, clients hate it when this sort of thing happens. Witness what happened in Melbourne when a long term IKOn senior staffer was marched out the door because of a personality conflict with the new boss….the consequences? Accounts were lost. It’s about time staffers were told the truth instead of all this subterfuge and cover up. Stability is the key to success but most of the time egos just get in the way.
Served.
there goes the annual agency of the year nomination..
@Dan …. yeah Tim, you cursed them 🙂
I sense some sour grapes from honesty knows best. Sometimes you have to cut some dead weight to move ahead
Karma karma karma chameleon to the People and Culture club
Came across http://www.adweek.com/news/tec.....web-148032 which was published a day or two before the ikon bldepartures.
Some of the sites mentioned in the article have major Aussie brand ads running.
If you check some of the sites mentioned in available traffic estimation tools, it is clear that they have been gaming their stats and ad impressions (likely with bots and/or malware).
I didn’t notice any ads from ikon advertisers running today, but I wonder if any were running before the bloodshed began.