The programmatic advertising sector is marred by dodgy numbers, solutions that don’t work as sold and campaign reports which don’t reflect reality, says Andrew Hughes, founding consultant of independent Sydney-based consultancy, the Louder Group.
Speaking at today's Programmatic Summit, he says the behaviour of some, including faking online traffic and inflating costs, and a lack of transparency, is a challenging yet huge opportunity for the industry.
Hughes gave what he called a light-hearted view of the murky world of programmatic advertising – the automated buying and selling of online advertising -- by referring to 14th century poet Dante's Explorations of Pandemonium, the capital of Hell.
But he made a point of telling the audience that his points have “substance”. Later, when asked to name names, he replied that the practices were “relatively” prevalent in the industry.
“It's been very challenging for all of the supply chain with the question being asked: Where's the money going?” says Hughes.
Dante’s work describes various types of people trapped in hell.
“We have a similar kind of diverse group here,” he says. “We have representatives from people throughout the industry. You will be able to apply your own experiences to this.”
Each of the characters in Dante’s work is being punished in different ways at different levels of hell. For example, fortune tellers have their heads on backwards, unable to look where they're going.
At the eighth level of hell, where Hughes places advertising, are those who are intellectually corrupt.
“I hope that I can start to highlight both the moral and intellectual sins that we find here,” he says.
“Starting with the likes of the seducers who deceive and find favour with publishers or buy favour with agency representatives … holidays and trips.
“We have the minimum viable product which will solve all of the all of the business’s woes, but it doesn’t ever get beyond the minimum viable product, a solution that was sold as kind of world beating, problem-solving nirvana.
Hughes says that selling premium inventory is in the heart of the seller and not necessarily in the interest of the buyer.
He noted a marketer friend of his saying he had never been presented with a campaign report that never succeeded.
"Everything always works. There is no failure. The impressions were better than the impressions sold last time," he recalled.
Hughes says that fake numbers is a pattern in this market, with "numbers just plucked from thin air and shared with advertisers".
“The credibility of the supply of information back to people spending the money has to be considered. For advisors, this is an interesting patient," he adds.
“The sorcerers sell vapour ware, the solution that solves all problems. When you get to actually purchase, (you find) it doesn't actually exist in this build, or it needs to be developed, or only works in a different market or it doesn't work for your particular product.”
"Many businesses now represent themselves as transparent and platform agnostic but then fail to mention that they own a share in the company they put most of the ad spend through, he says.
At the end of Dante's journey in hell, he achieves enlightenment by climbing Satan's body.
“We have the opportunity to get that level of granularity of knowledge to move to a position of bettering ourselves and our industry so that we don't revisit what's happened over the last five years,” Hughes says.
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