There are really two different frightening stories to be told about programmatic advertising.
The first story is about lying, cheating, and fraud.
The second story is equally compelling. It is about the astounding incompetence that is everywhere to be found in the advertising industry, and in particular, in the digital advertising ecosystem.
Let's take a minute here to recap some of what the research has shown us.
We'll start with the transparency reports from the ISBA in the UK, and the ANA in the U.S. In both cases it was shown that about 50¢ of every programmatic ad dollar was evaporating into the Black Box of fees, commissions, "unknown deltas"and who knows where. And the shocking thing was that agencies and marketing leaders didn't know this. It's not like they weren't warned by researchers and blogweasels. They just simply refused to exercise due diligence.
Next we have the scandal involving Gannett Publishing. Billions of ad bids went to the wrong places. For nine months ads that won these bids for some of the world's largest brands (including Sears, Nike, Adidas, Ford, State Farm, Starbucks, Kia and Marriott) ran in the wrong places. And no one knew.
The media buyers for the agencies didn't know
The marketing people at the brand didn't know
Not a single fraud detection company, or media auditing firm knew
Presumably, each of these brands were getting reports during the nine month period telling them how beautifully their media buy was performing.
According to The Wall Street Journal, at least fifteen different adtech companies that were part of the chain of buying, selling, and verification for Gannett had enough information to see what was going on. Not a single one of these companies discovered or reported it. As far as can be told, not a single company even understood what they were looking at.
Then we have Google Video Partners scandal. For years Google was cheating hundreds of organizations including: The United States government; the European Parliament; JPMorgan Chase; American Express; Macy’s; Disney; Best Buy; Mercedes-Benz; General Motors; McDonald's; IBM and Ford. Agencies that transacted business with Google Video Partners and had no idea what was going on included Interpublic; Dentsu; Publicis; Omnicom; WPP; Havas and Horizon. Once again, not a single agency, media buyer, CMO, fraud detection or media auditing company knew. Not one took the time or effort to find out where their money was going. One can only wonder what these people think their jobs are?
Let's end this with the MFA (made for advertising) scam site generated by Forbes that has been around since 2017. The advertisers conned by Forbes were not clueless idiots from Cheap Charlie’s Discount Plumbing Supplies, these were clueless idiots from Microsoft, Disney, Ford, Johnson & Johnson, Mercedes Benz, Oracle, Fidelity, Marriott, Ford, United Airlines. Agency networks that gladly put their clients money into this sewer - without having the slightest idea it was a scam - included Omnicom, Publicis, Havas, IPG, Dentsu, and GroupM.
Sadly, we have no idea how many scam artists are stealing from advertisers every day of the year by way of the unbelievably screwed up programmatic advertising system. All we know is that every time a conscientious researcher does a deep dive, they come up covered in sleaze.
There's one thing we know for sure. The people who are supposed to know what's going on and are supposed to be protecting advertisers from this corrupt system are clueless.
If we had set out to create a system so bewildering and opaque that it would guarantee marketers would be relentlessly cheated, we could not have done a better job. And if we had set out to police that system with incompetent personnel, well, you know the rest.