ANA seeks probe of ‘industry waste’ in programmatic advertising in the US

On April 29, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) announced its plans to launch a study to better understand the complex programmatic media buying ecosystem in the US and address transparency and accountability concerns in the supply chain.

As a first step, the association issued an RFP (Request for Proposal) seeking a consulting firm to conduct the study which aims to “eliminate waste throughout the entire programmatic marketplace”.

Programmatic advertising spending is expected to exceed US$200 billion in 2021 globally. Despite digital now accounting for 56% of global ad spend, only 40-60% of ad dollars invested programmatically reaches publishers, according to previous studies from ANA, ISBA and WFA.

ANA CEO Bob Liodice said: “Marketers do not have a fully transparent line of sight into their programmatic supply chains. The lack of full transparency for ad delivery and ad quality is diminishing marketers’ ability to fully optimize investments and drive greater business growth. We believe this lack of transparency is costing advertisers billions of dollars in waste.”

ISBA’s programmatic study in 2020 is the first study that went beyond buy-side data and used data science techniques to match and map impressions and supply chains from end to end (advertiser-to-publisher). ANA plans to go beyond the size and scope of previous studies and look at advertiser-to-consumer, and from the Open Web only to all programmatic trading platforms.

RFP submissions are due early June and a shortlist of companies will then be invited to do a formal presentation. A winner will be determined, and the fieldwork will commence in the summer.

For more information, contact ANA.