ORLANDO, Florida – As the Association of National Advertisers continues to shine a spotlight on the issue of non-transparency in marketer/media agency relations, its Chairman says there’s a bigger issue at play. If he could, Tony Pace would “hit the reset button” on the entire digital media supply chain.
In an interview with Beet.TV at the ANA’s annual Masters of Marketing conference, Pace says that the supply chain doesn’t properly reflect the needs of marketers who are “providing the revenue for this entire ecosystem.”
The former Global Chief Marketing Officer at the Subway sandwich chain says there’s still a fundamental disconnect between marketers and their media agencies. The ANA’s independent assessment from outside companies “found that the media practices right now have pervasive use of rebates across the entire ecosystem, which is not a good circumstance from the perspective of the marker.”
While the use of non-disclosed rebates from media sellers to media agencies and other opaque practices are being addressed on a company-to-company level, there is a bigger backdrop to consider.
“The entire digital media supply chain has some significant issues in it,” says Pace, referring not only to continual apprehension about ad fraud, viewability and other metrics but basic inefficiency. “There are an awful lot of intermediaries in the digital media supply chain that may or may not be essential to the entire process,” Pace says, adding “My perspective is that we need to take more control of that digital supply chain.”
Asked how this could be accomplished, Pace says “To be perfectly candid with you, if it were up to me I would push the reset button on the whole supply chain.”
He describes a scenario in which consumers, content creators, marketers and publishers could come together and be at “the center of the conversation.” If this group could choose from an a la carte menu of their desires and needs, “I imagine you would have a much sleeker digital media supply chain, which in the end would benefit everybody,” Pace says.
Is there a role for the government in reforming the digital media supply chain? “I’m a self regulation kind of guy,” Pace says. “I don’t think we need the government to get involved. But having said that, I think the marketers need to assert themselves.”
We interviewed him at the ANA Masters of Marketing annual meeting in Orlando. This video is part of a series produced at the conference. Beet’s coverage is sponsored by Cadent. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
