Transparency should be a competitive advantage, not merely the industry standard, writes Henrik Staib, Managing Director at Adnuntius Norge.
When both Dentsu and WPP recently moved away from Publicis's DSP OpenPath, citing a lack of transparency and concerns about conflicts of interest, it was one of the most talked-about stories in the industry. It shouldn't have been a surprise.
A global ad network is currently conducting audits of DSP providers, and what they're finding is telling: clients are automatically enrolled into tools without clear documentation of the value they receive. Meanwhile, The Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green suggested in a LinkedIn post that an auditor had attempted to share data that would breach confidentiality agreements with other customers — raising serious questions about who the system is actually designed to protect.
The programmatic supply chain is notoriously difficult to explain. But that complexity is not accidental. Many of the players involved have a direct financial interest in keeping it that way. When advertisers don't fully understand what they're paying for, who is taking a margin, or what value is being delivered at each step, it becomes very easy for costs to disappear into the chain.
This is not an isolated incident. It is a symptom of a market that has grown far too comfortable with opacity. Technology vendors, ad buyers, and intermediaries have together created a supply chain so murky that advertisers often have no real visibility into what they're funding.
The good news is that this is changing. Advertisers and agencies are increasingly demanding clearer pricing models, better documentation, and genuine accountability. Regulations across Europe are tightening, particularly in the areas of premium publishing and political advertising.
The fact that some of the world's largest media buyers went this long without conducting an external review of a central platform should be a wake-up call for the entire industry. Transparency should not be a competitive differentiator — it should be the baseline. When it isn't, trust erodes. And right now, that trust is very much on the line.
Henrik Staib is Managing Director at Adnuntius Norge.