April 3, 2017 - There are about 121 billion cans of food and beverage shipped commercially in the United States each year. Do you know how many cases of botulism can be attributed to those canned comestibles?
Approximately one. Not one
percent. One. Fewer than .00000000001% of
all commercially canned food and drink are seriously harmful to human
beings. The food industry's enviable safety record is due to decades of
progress in the science, storage, shipping, self-regulation, and regulation of
the U.S. food industry supply chain.
And therein lies the digital
media, advertising, and marketing industries' challenge, and our goal. We must
create a fully trustworthy supply chain. We must make harmful impressions as
rare as harmful food.
The
big news of last week is that marketers, after a long decade of ostrich-like
ignorance, are finally taking charge of their own digital destiny. JPMorgan Chase, an early adopter of "programmatic advertising," as simple digital ad automation is confusingly called, looked at the 400,000
sites on which its advertisements run, and decided to do a human-eyes review to
determine how many of those sites were safe for its brand. The giant bank
eliminated about 395,000 of those sites from its media plan. And JPMorgan Chase
discovered that its ad prices did not go up, and its ad effectiveness didn't
decline.
"It's only been a few days, but we haven't seen any deteriorating in our performance metrics," the bank's Chief Marketing Officer, Kristin Lemkau, told The New York Times.
"It's only been a few days, but we haven't seen any deteriorating in our performance metrics," the bank's Chief Marketing Officer, Kristin Lemkau, told The New York Times.
Consumer Safety First
The
soft sound you hear is the song of sanity that at long last is bringing harmony
to the dangerously discordant digital advertising supply chain. It's being billed as a big step forward for brand safety. But it's much more than that: It's an acknowledgement by the marketing and media industries that we are responsible for consumer safety, too.
JPMorgan
Chase was following the program I outlined at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting two months ago, when I told the thousand senior ad industry
executives gathered in Ft. Lauderdale, FL that it was up to them as individuals
and their companies to "repair the trust."
Rest
assured that JPMorgan Chase is not alone in its effort to demand a clean
digital advertising supply chain. Procter & Gamble has begun calling major
media companies and advising them they must join the Trustworthy Accountability Group, the industry's supply-chain self-regulator, or they will be removed from
consideration by the world's largest advertiser. The company is following
through on a vow made by P&G Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard, also at
the IAB Leadership Meeting, to force all its advertising vendors to comply with
basic industry standards... or lose its business.
Compliance Calls Surge
Since
Mr. Pritchard's speech, TAG - which was co-founded and is co-led by the IAB,
ANA, and 4As - has reported a near-doubling of signups for its Registry, the
basic "trust program" it offers. The Media Rating Council, the
industry watchdog for authentic measurement practices, has reported a surge in
inquiries from ad agencies about its viewability standard - a response to
another of Procter's demands, that all its agencies follow only the MRC's viewability standard for digital impressions.
In response to a third P&G requirement announced at the IAB event, both
Facebook and Google's YouTube have agreed to MRC audits of their measurement practices to assure they comply with industry norms.
"Partners, together, we're making progress and gathering momentum," Mr. Pritchard wrote me and ANA CEO Bob Liodice on Friday. "Let's keep it going!"
Indeed, the digital publishing industry is. Google, embarrassed by a brand safety imbroglio in the U.K. that spread across the Atlantic, in which legitimate brands' advertisements were found on several dozen terrorism-related and other unsavory YouTube videos, implemented a series of changes to assure the quality of YouTube's inventory. Among the moves: removing flagged videos within two hours instead of 48 hours; adding new filters for advertisers to screen out hate speech, sexually suggestive material, profanity, and sensational or bizarre content; and partnering with accredited, third-party brand safety vendors to assure compliance with the procedures.
"Partners, together, we're making progress and gathering momentum," Mr. Pritchard wrote me and ANA CEO Bob Liodice on Friday. "Let's keep it going!"
Indeed, the digital publishing industry is. Google, embarrassed by a brand safety imbroglio in the U.K. that spread across the Atlantic, in which legitimate brands' advertisements were found on several dozen terrorism-related and other unsavory YouTube videos, implemented a series of changes to assure the quality of YouTube's inventory. Among the moves: removing flagged videos within two hours instead of 48 hours; adding new filters for advertisers to screen out hate speech, sexually suggestive material, profanity, and sensational or bizarre content; and partnering with accredited, third-party brand safety vendors to assure compliance with the procedures.
But
there is much, much more left to be done. It's not just digital ad tech
companies that are culpable - agencies, publishers, and the brands
themselves bear responsibility. As I said at our January Leadership Meeting, "There is no one culprit in this
ugly scenario. All of us in this room play a role: the marketers pressing for
billions of additional impressions at unsustainably low prices; the agencies
pressuring the publishers for more and more free 'added values'; the publishers
so desperate for revenue that they run ads disguised as news and source
'audience extensions' on unsavory sites; the tech companies whose
algorithms drive consumers to deceitful content; the journalists who
complain but remain in their silos, unwilling to understand, let alone
participate in correcting, their industry."
By putting
its money on the line for standards compliance, Procter & Gamble launched a shot across the bow of entire
marketing-media ecosystem. JPMorgan Chase doing a quality review of all
its sites and eliminating 98% of its publishing partners is an equally industry-shaking move.
Together, these giant brands are saying the digital advertising supply chain isn't too
complex for the average marketer to understand. They are saying that brand
safety is a prerequisite for advertising that drives growth,
and everybody needs to comply - or else. They are saying that industry
associations and the work we do bringing companies together to agree on the
standards and practices that should and must bind us matter.
Leadership Priority
I have no doubt that P&G and JP Morgan Chase will be followed by a wave of big brands taking similar actions to secure the digital industry supply chain on behalf of brand and consumer safety. The Association of National Advertisers, declaring that "marketers must take their industry back," has made supply chain transparency one of the core objectives of its new ANA Masters Circle, an elite group of senior marketers tasked with making changes happen in the profession of marketing.
"It’s time for CMOs to demand a simpler, more-transparent, highly productive supply chain, one that aligns core metrics with goals for incremental business growth," the ANA says in its recently released 2017 CMO Leadership Agenda. "We can reach this objective if each CMO ensures their teams and agencies pursue the recommended actions for transparency, measurement, viewability, and ad fraud — while creating a highly productive, extraordinarily efficient, streamlined supply chain."
I'm pleased to say that IAB has been committed to the cause of supply chain trustworthiness
since I came to this job in 2007 and extolled the importance of "a supply chain that’s more transparent, less complex, and less costly" - so it's great to have the ANA as a partner in this vital endeavor.
Critics already are caviling
that new demands for quality will definitively lead to higher advertising
prices in digital media. Well, of course they will - for the same reason that
food in supermarkets costs more than food that fell off trucks. There is no
such thing as a free lunch - unless you want to risk botulism.
Others fret that one of the
glories of the Internet - the long tail of small specialty sites that generate so much
valuable niche news, entertainment, opinion, and services - will be
disenfranchised as marketers
start limiting their programmatic buys to pre-qualified lists of publishers. To
which I say: I have little doubt there are a hell of lot of long tail sites that made
JPMorgan Chase's cut from 400,000 to 5,000.
Besides, even the smallest hot dog pushcart has to follow the city's health code.
Besides, even the smallest hot dog pushcart has to follow the city's health code.
And
finally, in no other industry on earth do retailers put goods on their shelves
before checking that they're safe for human consumption. Wal-Mart doesn't do
it, Kroger's doesn't do it, and we - the retailers of ideas, journalism,
entertainment, and ads - shouldn't do it either.
It's time for you - you brands, you agencies, you publishers, you tech companies - to build a real civilization in this murky swamp we've invented. It's time for you to follow the industry's health codes, comply with consensus standards, and stop the toxin of ad fraud, piracy, opaque metrics, and fake news. It's time for you to make our supply chain 99.9999999999% safe.
It's time for you - you brands, you agencies, you publishers, you tech companies - to build a real civilization in this murky swamp we've invented. It's time for you to follow the industry's health codes, comply with consensus standards, and stop the toxin of ad fraud, piracy, opaque metrics, and fake news. It's time for you to make our supply chain 99.9999999999% safe.