For years, advertisers and publishers alike have complained about the “tech tax,” the programmatic fees they see as eating into media budgets. But programmatic trading requires infrastructure and partners just to function—let alone effectively. And those partners have to get paid.
According to an eMarketer report, Adtech tax amounts to $12 billion. But the real problem is transparency, meaning buyers and sellers understand fees as they have complete visibility into the transaction. Unattributable costs representing around one-third of supply chain costs need investigation and resolution. Concerted action is required by all industry participants – advertisers, agencies, adtech, publishers and possibly regulators – to minimise these costs, in order to drive up the proportion of advertiser spend that reaches publishers.
Key recommendations from this study were determined for advertisers, publishers and the industry as a whole.
The two critical conclusions are:
● Standardisation is urgently required across a range of contractual and technology areas, to facilitate data sharing and drive transparency; and
● All industry participants should collaborate to further investigate the unattributable costs and agree industry-wide actions to reduce them.
