Agencies increasingly make money through principal-based buying, a practice that is now spilling into the ad tech world.
In recent weeks, The Trade Desk and agencies have been tussling over fee structures, and WPP Media and Dentsu exited OpenPath.
This week, Publicis stopped recommending The Trade Desk to clients, which it claimed was because it found TTD was charging hidden fees beyond what was in its contract – a story eerily reminiscent of the one Sarah Caputo told a couple of weeks ago as our guest on the Big Story. Hired to analyze a smaller agency’s contract with The Trade Desk, she discovered fees of which the agency wasn’t aware.
What does it mean if companies must charge opaque fees in addition to the upfront fees charge? And if there are only so many fees to charge, is that why ad tech companies and agencies are tussling over who gets the take?
Prompted by this story, as well as WPP Media’s lawsuit with an employee who said he was fired after raising concerns about rebates, AdExchanger Senior Editor James Hercher discusses how agencies are rebranding principal-based buying, hiding it in earnings reports with names like “non-product-related income” and “purchase risk media deals.” Instead of disappearing, the practice is morphing – and history suggests it will transform, not go away, under scrutiny.
The rise of sell-side agents
Then, we discuss the nascent trend of publishers and ad tech companies using AI to optimize their internal processes. For example, some are building sell-side agents so AI can help them respond to RFPs, identify pockets of high-value inventory and match inventory with a client’s bespoke needs.
AdExchanger News Editor Andrew Byrd, who spoke to publishers and an ad tech company about their early tests to build sell-side agents, walks us through the problems they are trying to solve and how it’s going so far.
