Why some ad tech vets have doubts about Havas’ new transparency platform

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While a digital ad needs to be clear to make the sale, the digital ad industry has been racking up zillions of sales in ad placements while being as clear as a muddy pond.

This week, the pond’s muddiness was confronted by major ad group Havas, which launched a platform that the company says is the first to offer full visibility into the programmatic digital ad system in real time. This comes on top of recent efforts at transparency-related solutions from Havas competitors Omnicom, WPP and Dentsu Aegis.

Called the Client Trading Solution, the Havas platform is intended to let advertisers track their exact ad spending as well as the real-time performance. To find out if this new platform matters, we pinged some ad tech veterans.

Jay Friedman, COO of programmatic media firm Goodway, doesn’t think this Havas offering will make much of a difference — and he doesn’t think the key problem is transparency.

“Whether a brand has access to the dashboard, the invoices, or any other information, there are ways agencies are getting around these things,” he told me via email. It’s not about the tech, he said, but human behavior.

[Read the full article on MarTech Today.]


About The Author

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.


 

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