Publishers still powerless to take action

Mediavine, which served as an early tester of Confirming Gross Revenue, said that, so far, it has only used the tool on behalf of buy-side clients and that the tool has revealed no hidden fees.

Others, like head of programmatic sales and data at Prisma Media Paul Ripart, are quoted in the press release also saying the tool revealed no hidden ad-tech fees.

However, some are less bullish on the tool’s efficacy.

“Publishers are doubtful this will do much to alleviate concerns,” said Jason Kint, CEO of publisher trade body Digital Content Next.

Early testers of Confirming Gross Revenue only gave publishers information about the endpoints of a campaign and not the hops along the way in the notoriously murky supply chain, Kint added.

I’m not sure how [the tool] incentives or even vaguely encourages change.

Anonymous publisher ad-tech source

“If a publisher and advertiser find a discrepancy, our team can check common causes, such as currency and time zone differences and invalid traffic detection mechanisms,” Dan Taylor, vp of global ads told Adweek. “If there’s still missing information, we will help the customer dig deeper to uncover the issue.”

A publishing ad-tech source, who was not authorized to speak to the press, said that no matter what the tool reveals, publishers are often powerless to take action.

“[If] your spend disappears with 50% gone between you (buyer) and me (publisher)…now what?” the source said. “Is that relevant to the buyer if they got all the ad impressions they wanted to the right place at the right price?”

“I’m not sure how [the tool] incentives or even vaguely encourages change,” the source added.

Taylor said Google’s advertising partners have also asked for fee transparency.

“Buyers want to make sure their entire media cost reaches the publisher and they’re getting the full value of their spend,” Taylor said.

The news comes on the heels of new roadblocks within an industry initiative from trade body the Association of National Advertisers to conduct a transparency audit of the programmatic supply chain.

The ANA parted ways with PwC as auditor, Digiday reported, and there are reportedly challenges getting the requisite data. Google said it only had access to buy-side data and could not share sell-side information.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the Confirming Gross Revenue tool includes the fees of the demand-side platform.