The Future of Programmatic Is Built on Truth in Advertising

Turn is committed to trust and truth with advertisers. We believe that transparency provides a foundation on which the programmatic advertising industry will flourish.

The Association of National Advertisers’ media transparency study released today noted a lack of consensus on how agencies and brands should work together and pointed out troubling conduct among some players in the media-buying landscape.

It’s unclear how pervasive non-transparent practices are. Some say there are only “a few bad actors,” and others maintain there’s a widespread industry crisis of trust. In any case, murky business practices are surely introduced when partners don’t communicate or operate in a transparent way.

There’s no fix-all strategy for the situation that the industry finds itself in. I can say, however, that only by engaging in genuine partnerships — in which the agency, brand and ad tech partner sit at the table together, each leg playing an equal, essential part — can we begin to tackle these issues.

Where Turn Stands

We rally around helping marketers in their quest for truth, including what works, what doesn’t work and why — things that aren’t possible without transparency.

Turn is proud to be a media-agnostic, unbiased platform. We’re a technology company and an independent entity. We don’t own media or work directly with publishers.

Our value to customers is in presenting a completely unbiased, advertiser-centric view of media, data, audience and the ecosystem. The auction model we work with guarantees our transparency; all media is bought in real-time after our system determines a digital impression matches an advertiser’s custom criteria. Additionally, our platform gives complete visibility and transparency into every impression a client buys or chooses not to buy. We don’t take a position on media, and we don’t arbitrage.

For an example of the transparency at the center of everything we do, have a look at a mockup of one of our invoices:

The Keys to Advertiser Empowerment

The best place to start is data. Any brand concerned with transparency should be working aggressively to get control of its data. After that, it’s time to consider activation, as well as the levels of transparency down the supply chain.

Brands must educate themselves, too. With clients, we look to work with the in-house evangelist who will help the process: the go-to programmatic person, the one who knows programmatic will be central to how they run their business in the future. You don’t have to take the technology in-house, but you should negotiate your prices, control your data and govern how you are doing programmatic.

The only way for advertisers to ensure they’re getting what they pay for in this fragmented media environment is to get smart about the technology now. It’s up to us in the programmatic industry to push for transparency and help them get there.

About Amobee

Founded in 2005, Amobee is an advertising platform that understands how people consume content. Our goal is to optimize outcomes for advertisers and media companies, while providing a better consumer experience. Through our platform, we help customers further their audience development, optimize their cross channel performance across all TV, connected TV, and digital media, and drive new customer growth through detailed analytics and reporting. Amobee is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tremor International, a collection of brands built to unite creativity, data and technology across the open internet.

If you’re curious to learn more, watch the on-demand demo or take a deep dive into our Research & Insights section where you can find recent webinars on-demand, media plan insights & activation templates, and more data-driven content. If you’re ready to take the next step into a sustainable, consumer-first advertising future, contact us today.