Free TV Australia says reforms in adtech could unlock millions of dollars for local media companies struggling with weakening advertising revenue.
The representative body for the commercial TV industry made a submission to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's (ACCC) inquiry into the supply of digital advertising technology services and agency services, which came off the back of the Digital Platforms Inquiry.
The new inquiry was called in February after the Digital Platform Inquiry’s final report found that only 20-75% of money spent by advertisers ends up with publishers, with the rest taken up by suppliers in the adtech supply chain.
Bridget Fair, Free TV CEO, says reforms are needed to ensure greater transparency around where money is going in the adtech stack.
“Every dollar that does not end up in the pockets of publishers means one less dollar to invest in Australian content and local services,” she says.
“The problem is that neither advertisers or publishers can see where the money is going and do not have the information required to be able to choose more efficient providers.”
Another PwC report in the UK found that 51% of money spent by advertisers ends up with publishers.
“Most of these costs were identified by PwC as technology fees in the ad tech stack,” Fair says.
“However, PwC was not able to account for 15% of the loss of value through the supply chain. It is telling that a world-leading audit firm like PwC struggled to determine where the money is going.
“Reform is needed to increase the amount of pricing transparency for these services. This includes ensuring that there is a consistent approach to logging transactions and a streamlined approach to accessing data so that participants can much more easily track where their money is going.”
Free TV is also calling on the ACCC to create market rules for adtech that would govern the conduct of dominant platforms such as Google which receives a market share of about 75% in some segments of the adtech stacks.
“The proposed ad tech market rules would include protections to ensure that advertisers and publishers were free to choose their own technology supplier in response to better pricing information,” Fair says.
“Addressing the inefficiencies in the ad tech stack will make a material difference to the return that publishers receive on their inventory—which directly relates to the sustainability of investment in great Australian content that our community relies upon.”
The adtech inquiry will deliver its interim report by the end of this year and its final report by September next year.
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