On this week's #MediaSnack we kick off with some more troubling transparency news from the US, where the Wall St Journal reports that the Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into major US creative agencies, which it accuses of "bid-rigging" on creative production. A similar investigation years ago ended up with agency people in jail, so standby. Why is this on a media vlog? Well, the DoJ launched their investigation following receipt of information from K2 Intelligence, which the intelligence firm had discovered during their reporting earlier this year on behalf of the trade body Association of National Advertisers (ANA) into Media Transparency. The evidence on the potential rigging of production costs (bid rigging is in violation of US anti-trust laws and wholly illegal) was not included in the ANA's final report. But now the DoJ are following up and have announced this latest scrutiny over agency behaviours. They have, according to WSJ issued, K2 with a subpoena to collect relevant information - this information currently sits within all the evidence K2 gathered in their media transparency investigations - so there may some nervous media agency execs in US hoping the DoJ don't get visibility of K2's media rebate evidence and launch a subsequent investigation aimed at them. It's a realistic possibility. Major holding group IPG has admitted they have been contacted by DoJ, we wait to see how far this will reach. If you remember, the K2/ANA report suggested that un-transparent financial practice amongst media agencies was "pervasive" but the ANA felt it (rightly) appropriate not to name any individuals or agencies. The DoJ may not be so cautious. What we find also amazing in this story is that marketers have evidently been asking their creative agency to manage a rendering process for them in which the creative agency themselves will bid, and are now wondering why this created a conflict of interest which may well turn out to be against the law. This illustrates the pitfalls of blind trust, you really need to engage with a specialist independent who can help you validate agency scope and costs, don't ask agencies to mark their own homework. Next, we discuss findings from a report by research boffins Nielsen which has analysed 44,000 digital marketing campaigns across Europe and found that nearly 50% of all served impressions did not reach the intended Target audience. This is alarming news for marketers who have been confronted this year with numerous questions over the way digital marketing is measured. What was promised as an era of data-fuelled accountability is turning into a right mess, which some had foretold. This comes on the back of reports earlier this year that there are estimates of huge volumes of fraudulent clicks to digital display advertising, and continuing revelations by Facebook of errors in the methodologies of their own performance measurements. Looking ahead to next year, we consider how marketers will want their digital marketing partners to help them solve these issues and inaccuracies. Finally, in the continuing saga of the big consulting firms eating the agencies’ breakfast, lunch and dinner is news that Accenture Interactive (their marketing services division) has paid $50m to acquire leading UK independent creative shop Karmarama which is their most high-profile agency purchase so far. It sets a new milestone in the spread of consulting scope into traditional areas of agency work. Accenture has stated an ambition to offer an "end-to-end" marketing service which questions how they might consider moving into traditional areas of media buying, which could be a conflict of interest based on Accenture’s global media auditing business. It seems unlikely that the industry would tolerate Accenture buying media themselves whilst also auditing the prices paid by other media agencies, this is something that they are going to have to resolve.
