From agency, to ad exchange, to publisher – every link in the programmatic chain is broken
Dodgy ads, baffled clients, impoverished publishers and an industry-wide existential crisis. Mumbrella’s Tim Burrowes argues the promise of programmatic advertising is dead.
Over the years, I’ve sat through a lot of conferences, taken a lot of shorthand notes and written a lot of stories.
Some presentations stay with you though.
Cass: Hard truths about the holding companies
It’s now nearly a week since I watched Martin Cass, former boss of a big media agency in the US, unload at Advertising Week New York on the way that the global holding companies have lost their clients’ trust through their digital buying shenanigans. I’ve been thinking about it a lot on the days since.
What I don’t get is: why do people keep spending their money on programmatic???
It baffles me. The only way I’ve seen it work is if you 100% control the data and buy against that. Apart from that it seems to be a big scam.
Pull the money out and things may change.
Ideally switch off Adwords.
Otherwise review creative, block ad, show similar and block them
Or whitelist
Someone’s not doing their job
No wonder that most industry professionals seem to steer clear of exposing themselves to advertising when possible – no one I know watches live tv even though that’s their bread and butter. Similarly with the web, ignore everything!
“[No one] I know watches like TV”
What a pile of crap that line is.
Excellent quality journalism. Every media buyer and marketer in Australia can learn by reading this article and more like it.
Well written Tim
Sadly programmatic was never ever thing more than a clever way of hyping the new digital age and that if you did not get on board, then you are a media dinosaur.
As was incorrectly reported, traditional media was dead.
5 years later traditional media is far from dead and retains a respected audience and research processes that allows advertisers to reach audiences effectively, with confidence.
Programmatic and digital media on the other hand are suspect and at best dodgy.
Funny how the media wheel goes round and round only to have an expensive wake up call when it’s too late.
The clever media cowboys have shot themselves yet again.
Forget the buzz words, slick media schemes and promises, get back to the basics of media ….
Reach, Frequency and effective impact.
Your website links through to a DNS error. Sorry about the digital buzz words.
It’s been flawed since the big agency groups became sellers.
“I was skirting the SMH’s wobbly paywall because I’d had my 30 free articles for the month.”
Cough up for a subscription, you could expense it against the business. Maybe then they would need a few less dodgy ads.
Hi “Supporting the industry…”
I did wonder if anyone would raise that point.
I am a full subscriber (both home delivery print and digital) to the AFR, Telegraph and The Australian.
And I was also a subscriber to the SMH. But the newsagent just couldn’t get their act together to deliver it, even while mostly getting it right with stablemate the AFR. Two or three days a week, it didn’t arrive. Which was frustrating.
So in the end, I reluctantly cancelled it and decided to buy the SMH in the shop instead. And while, the paywall is legally skipable, then I will indeed skip it.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
It might be legal to skip the postal, but what about the ethics, particularly of someone who works in the same industry? And particularly for someone who owns a company that depends on a healthy and vibrant media industry to survive?
I wonder how much Fairfax spend with Mumbrella on an annual basis (and no, I don’t work for them). Enough to make the $3.50 a week it costs to subscribe for online access seem like a bargain (particularly when you can write it off against tax)?
Hi “What about ethics”,
I’d refer you to my above point. As I say, I buy the print edition of the SMH on the newsstand (and yes, write it off against tax), and subscribe to other Fairfax products (the AFR).
For what it’s worth I’m against piracy, and choose not to consume pirated content. But in this case Fairfax has chosen to make the SMH freely available online to anyone who chooses to browse in incognito mode. In my view, there’s nothing unethical about making use of the options legally available.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Surely Fairfax get good traffic from the incognito visitors = impression $’s.
I actually believe it is a good strategy. They have a paywall and for savvy people they do not – win win for Fairfax and people in general.
(Lets face it, for every savvy person there is somebody who isn’t. Then you have the staunch customer base who are prepared to pay. I do believe the real passionate customer base is The Guardian’s; which feels like a leader for progression when it comes to news and views and serving the people. Equally The Australian’s subscription base is probably pretty loyal there also. Subs don’t lie though, it would be good to read some real, factual numbers on subs and opinion on where it is all going.) I would love to attend Publish but will be away 🙁
Great article – I agree totally with the pennies that publishers receive from programmatic are just not worth the effort and risk. Good call by Mumbrella.
Wouldn’t it be a twist if all this time the right wing muppets complaining about CNN being fake news, were being followed around the internet with Fake CNN ads.
You should write jet-lagged at 4:00am more often, great honesty.
To be honest I’m frankly amazed that it took so long for people to discover they were being sold snake oil. Five years is a long time to get away with a con like this.
And yep its probably permanently killed audience numbers for adds to. If this crap didn’t happen, ad-blocker and its superior but less well-known (for now) software counter-parts wouldn’t be a thing. The audience left and it won’t be coming back.
If you want to ‘smash’ a brand out there, good ole traditional scatter-gun approach, with a little big of targeting, or re-marketing here and there; programmatic away. (Depends also on your brand or of course offering / product. It can be successful, depends on what you are looking to achieve…)
Working and billing directly with the big boys and receiving their personal account management is a must (Google / Facebook). Obviously right?
I think we all know the system is broken, but it would be great to hear some opinions on how to fix it…
Blaming programmatic for the current issues is much like blaming cars themselves for crashing. Surely it’s the careless drivers who ought to be the sole target of your derision and criticisms. Get some better drivers, give them road rules and better training. Tougher penalties for deviant behaviour and this will have a positive effect.
The tech is sound and the premise is utterly convincing for all the right reasons. Jet engines can be used to deliver WMD or passengers safely to their destination. Use programmatic the right way, with the right operators and the ROI will prove it out.
As a publisher earning pennies from it, I totally get your position Tim. However, advertisers would do well to isolate the real issues and not throw out the baby, (just maybe birth it at home).
We run advertising campaigns on digital media channels that deliver leads to our clients, real leads, humans who register for courses or turn up to events. It’s the most measurable and effective media channel available for this client, we do this every and have done for 5 years, it works and you can see real outcomes. If you are not seeing tangible measurable results to your business from your digital spend, do something else, but I dare say you’re not doing it right. Another thing, unless you’re running these campaigns day in and day out , seeing the results to business first hand (good or bad) you really you are just a passenger talking about something you don’t really understand and guessing based on some information you have pulled together from various sources, most likely with agendas (i.e the TV lobby). Your headline is a disgrace and not helpful, let’s be honest you don’t really know what you are talking about and creating hysteria for a headline. I think it’s irresponsible.
And of course you’re de-duping your display media, affiliates, SEM, SEO, DM, tv, radio, print, letter box drops and everything else to ensure the lead you achieved through digital is truly driven by digital.
I didn’t think so.
Double, triple and quadruple counting of leads is all too common and the clients pay.
Yes I believe digital is an important channel/opportunity but I think it is over-credited for what it actually delivers.
They sign up to register online, its black & white. The de-duping process and ambiguity is only seen in the other media channels you mention. Pretty simple. You just made yourself look silly.
@Anonymous
Duplication much?’s point was questioning how much gets accredited to digital, when the influencing happened on other channels. You see this with candidate management software that isn’t automatically tracked. (it’s approx 80% incorrect when set to manual.) (When applying to a job there is often a drop down – ‘where did you hear about this job’ then you are given choices: Seek, Newspaper, Google, Our careers site, etc). It is amazing once you append a tracking token for each source, what a difference it makes in terms of actually knowing where the lead came from. (Well for digital channels that is….. You obviously still cannot attest to old school, untrackables and that is the point, I believe that is being made here.
Now if the course had solely and only been advertised online – different story.
Do Mumbrella’s conferences get advertised anywhere else other than digital?
Hi Erm, no,
To answer your question at the end of your comment. Most of our channels for promoting Mumbrella events are digital – announcements on Mumbrella, ads on Mumbrella, Facebook, retargeting and a little prospecting. Plus we make extensive use of our email database (do you count that as digital?) In the past we’ve experimented with newspapers (it didn’t go very well, after weeks of planning they failed to run the ad in the crucial edition); talk radio (I watched our real time analytics as the live read was broadcast – not a blip); and direct marketing (moderately successful).
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Programmatic can work really well for an advertiser if they have substantial 1st party data that is being deployed correctly, but you are kidding yourself if you think that the current state of the open market is sustainable. The way things are set up, an advertisers dollar is all but guaranteed to have a non-zero portion of its open market spend essentially stolen (splashy headline below). Moreover, publisher CPM yield has been in a race to the bottom because too many bad actors flood the market with fraudulent inventory to the point that legitimate local long-tail publishers are in a real squeeze to find an ad supported business model to create content consumers care about.
“In the first three months of 2017, 81 percent of the programmatic impressions traded in Japan were fraudulent”
https://digiday.com/marketing/global-state-ad-fraud-4-charts/
Having worked previously for an ad network, a media owner, a tech vendor and now a media owner again, it’s an interesting position you put “programmatic” in.
Many of the issues simply stem from agency greed. For example, you all constantly undercut each other to win business. Then you can’t afford to hire decent staff for your trading desks. When they leave, you don’t effectively train the new staff properly so create a perpetual downward spiral of dumbness within your organisations. This all at the same time as negotiating down media owners on rates in deals that none of you ever stick to.
You then all moan about brand safety but still continue to work with Google/DBM/YouTube because they discount everything and take you all for nice parties (this is not a serious comment btw, I know they do some things well). You all seem to be completely unaware that Google tech often doesn’t work well with many other tech vendors and they are excruciatingly unhelpful when anything breaks on their end.
Stop screwing each other over and stop blaming programmatic. It’s still not 100% perfect but it’s more often than not the low paid traders buying the media who are to blame. Pay peanuts……
PS Greg – read up on digital pal, you sound completely out of touch and old school.
As my name suggests, I agree that there are problems in the chain, but your headline demonstrates that you, yet again, are clueless. It stinks of sour grapes in fact.
Digital advertising is 23 years old, and programmatic is, at a stretch, 10 years old. To think that we would be able to fine tune something that is so dynamic and early stage is deluded. I agree with the people above who say that quite often there are inexperienced and poorly paid people at the helm when buying, but this will improve with time. I know publishers who are have a robust business which is predominantly driven by programmatic revenue. They have seen efficiencies through workflow automation and they have made good use of their data. They have also structured their teams well and upskilled sales people. Yes there are issues with ads appearing where they shouldn’t, but that still happens in print (500 years on!) and TV as well.
Tim – I suspect you’ve been seeing fake news ads because that’s what you peddle yourself. Clickbait crap in an effort to up your numbers and pretend that you’re relevant. So I guess whoever the buyer is has their targeting spot on. Now go get some sleep and when you wake up try to write some balanced stories, or else get into writing fiction. You’d be great at that.
Sour grapes over what?
Tim – Mumbrella
This is the sort of ridiculous shaming that goes on whenever anyone dares question digital – it’s implied the person is out of touch, ‘doesn’t get it’ and a dinosaur. It’s lazy and offensive.
I say that as someone who does feel the benefits of programmatic outweigh the conflicts too btw.
I can go on the record and say that a top 5 holding company trading desk sold their clients access to our inventory programmatically in the past.
The problem with this was it wasn’t available programmatically. To any exchange or network. It is only available direct.
This advertiser no longer works with said holding company.
“The digital chain is broken. I’m not sure it can be fixed”.
Hmm. Mumbrella doesn’t have a print edition. Whilst it no doubt procures a lot of its revenue from events, one assumes it derives an income stream from online ads?
Hi Ms Haversham,
Indeed. We sell all our ads directly, against rate card, not programatically.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
“And that’s not even the grubby end of programmatic. This is Google’s ad network” To categorically define the Google Display Network as premium shows that Tim has no idea what he is writing about. Yes, these publishers are selling their remnant overseas inventory without a filter. So what? Don’t write a sensationalist article bashing automation. Is there going to be a whole article on how Ebay is destroying commerce because people are digitally hawking used clothing? We have all heard this – only the luddites and terribly out of touch are believing this now.
Further, trying to link Martin Cass’s statements about lack of trust in agencies to Tim seeing fake news ads while jet lagged is too much of a reach to make any sense.
Hi “This guy has no idea”
I didn’t “categorically define the Google Display Network as premium”. You did.
I suggested they weren’t at the grubby end. I stand by that.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Hi Tim,
GDN are absolutely at the “grubby end”. Anyone with a credit card can advertise with Google. Other option being Facebook, which is being investigated by the FBI for Russian funding of fake news.
Until you figure out what the ecosystem consists of, please stop pretending like you know how to fix it. We are getting tired of you yelling fire in a crowded theater in order to sell more tickets at your regurgitated industry events.
Hi TGHNI,
By “stop pretending you know how to fix it”, you may have slightly misunderstood my words “unfortunately there’s not an easy answer”. Do let me know if you’d like me to explain them more clearly… although I thought the additional words “I don’t really know what is,” might have made it reasonably clear that I wasn’t offering answers.
And I’m not quite sure what you mean by suggesting I’ve written writing this “in order to sell more tickets”. I can’t actually think of an event in Australia we’re currently promoting that covers this topic, but do correct me if I’m wrong.
Usually it works the other way round – through our editorial coverage, we identify emerging topics, and if it feels like there may be an appetite for the industry to hear more, we might organise something. I understand that responding to demand is quite common in the business world.
But if your business works differently, do tell me more. By the sounds of it, you work in the digital advertising supply chain. Do feel free to explain to me how things work in your business – I’m all ears…
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Hi Tim,
I suppose the answer you were offering is, since programmatic is “so broken” your site had to make the decision to turn off selling inventory via ad exchanges. Perhaps I read between the lines but the solution being offered is to opt out from RTB completely. Correct me if I am wrong.
Regarding my instance that the articles are written to sell more tickets to your events: this was assumptive but would love to be proven wrong. The vast majority of ad slots are for house ads for your own events so fill rates must not be too high. If there was enough fill, it would not matter much as traffic figures tend to max out at 600K visits a month for the domain. So my conclusion is that barring the odd site sponsorship deal, events are where the revenue comes from. Next event is on the 19th and agenda topic I see is a keynote on “How To Be a Profitable Publisher Without Running Display Ads”. The topic is exactly in line with your opinion piece.
Is it a stretch to link articles that are written on a site to be traffic drivers for your events? I am simply following the money here.
There is a lot of interest in certain topics that crop up within the digital ecosystem and I would hope that interest is drummed up by well researched opinions. It is a complicated space but worth understanding and eventually embracing.
Hi TGHNI,
Thanks for the invitation to correct you if you’re wrong; you’re wrong.
The decision we made since the beginning was to not auction inventory via ad exchanges in the first place. We haven’t had to turn it off, because we never turned it on.
My view has always been: When we generally achieve between $70 and $100cpm via direct advertising, why on earth would we be crazy enough to chase programatic inventory at the $1 to $5 mark? Nothing that happened since to change my mind about that.
of course, we’re in the fortunate position that we have not only a niche audience, but one that advertisers are prepared to pay a premium to reach. Not every publisher is lucky enough to be in that situation.
And you seem to be discounting the value to us of those “house ads”. We find that ads on Mumbrella (including for our own events) are highly effective. They’re a terrific means of selling tickets to our events. And yes, with some exceptions at certain times of the year, we don’t run our inventory at 100% paid-for. Which suits us fine in marketing our own growing stable of events. As I’ve often talked about in the past, ours is a multi revenue stream business model and had been almost from the beginning, with events an important part.
As you correctly say, Roshni Mahtani from Tickled Media is due to give a presentation at our Publish conference on October 19 on how to be profitable without using display ads. You can see the program (and buy tickets) here: https://staging.mumbrella.com.au/publish . But as it happens, that’s not our business model. Out display sales remain an important (and still growing) revenue stream.
There are often times when we might publish an article to promote a specific event. For it to actually be effective in selling tickets, I’d suggest it would need to be a tad more overt.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Hi Tim,
For a niche events company to have a high paying enterprise client base is very fortunate – congratulations. Glad you do not have to deal with monetising your site’s (ranked AU #6000) remnant inventory either – it seems like the house/event ads are working better for you.
Perhaps it was pure coincidence that your opinion piece is in line with the upcoming event. However, this was brought up only to clarify on your point “I can’t actually think of an event in Australia we’re currently promoting that covers this topic, but do correct me if I’m wrong.”
I have proven you wrong, and I did not have to venture far.
Back to the original point and let’s be honest – your claim that the programmatic chain is broken is baseless. I would challenge you to do some more qualified research before having opinions about this.
Hi TGHNI,
I think even you may know that it’s a stretch to claim that because you’ve found a single session at a single forthcoming event in which somebody talks about their business model (and makes no mention whatsoever of programatic either way) that my opinion piece is “in line with the upcoming event” and motivated to subliminally advertise it. Particularly when I explained in a fair bit of detail in the article exactly how I came to not only form my line of thinking, but the timing of the piece.
That’s one helluva conspiracy theory… I would challenge you to do some more qualified research before having opinions about this.
Cheers,
Tim – MUmbrella
Hi Tim,
Perhaps you forgot the issue you brought up in your article – a bad display ad. A display ad is a display ad, no matter the way it is being served or bought. No conspiracies here, Tim. I literally went to the first upcoming event and copied the first agenda point.
The current hot button is programmatic and I am sure the uninformed will believe that it is broken. The headline for the article is eye catching and to the uninformed it will do its job. To an uninformed marketer or a publisher this will throw up red flags. Whether they end up at your event, I am not sure. I do like the link that you provided in your earlier comment as if you were not blatant enough.
My research is all qualified although I have never worked for an events company.
Hi TGHNI,
If you were to ask the casual reader what the main point of the article was, I don’t think they’d tell you it was an article about bad display ads. I don’t think you think that either.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Hi Tim,
The first half of the article is a summary with links out to other people’s take on the programmatic problem. The other half is your take on seeing a display ad for a fake news site, or “a bad display ad”. The tagline starts with “Dodgy ads”.
Besides the background perception issue, the biggest issue that I have is the following, Tim. You took what you wanted from the panel at Adweek with Martin Cass. They had some really good arguments about the digital ecosystem and lack of transparency, with suggestions on how to move forward. You took that as a means to keep shouting on about how programmatic is dead. After another Ritson reference, the random screen grab of a fake news ad was your closing argument. It is all just poorly researched and borders on fear mongering.
Hi TGHNI,
By “poorly researched” do you mean the bit where I bought myself a return flight to the USA, paid for a week of accommodation in New York, sat through multiple sessions on the digital advertising ecosystem throughout the Advertising Week conference, from some of the world’s best-qualified practitioners, asked questions at the sessions, took notes, then wrote this article based on what I had absorbed? Please forgive me for that slapdash approach.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Hi Tim,
Sorry that you spent a week in New York and one of your findings was “the promise of programmatic advertising is dead”. Sounds like a depressing trip. There are a lot of exciting things going on in the digital ecosystem so glad you took the time to seek out the seminars.
The truth is, there is a lot more to learn than just conferences. If you can afford the time I encourage you to seek out insights from people in the space – digital marketers/ad technologists/digital agency folks. Get beyond the shiny presentations and dig a little deeper to understand industry issues before you come to the conclusion that it is broken.
Hi TGHNI,
You didn’t answer my question.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Hi Tim,
Sorry, I thought I was clear but here it is: Spending a week at a conference is not enough research to understand an industry, whether you took notes or asked some questions.
Oh yes, perhaps I failed to be clear too.
I was referring to the research for that particular article. The understanding of the industry came from working in the media for 28 years, writing full time about the media industry for 15 years in four different countries, and co-owning and managing a profitable digital publishing company in Australia and Asia for the last nine years. But do let me know what more you feel I need to do to reach your standards.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
At this point I want to know “This Guy Has No Idea”‘s credentials
I’m assuming it’s an occasional gin drinker.
Everyone (including pretty much all the commenters on this story) acknowledges that ad fraud issues are inherent with digital and particularly with progromatic trading. The fact that it continues, and is arguably getting worse, says either that there is no solution to this, or there is no interest/motivation to fix. Either way, not acceptable. If I were a brand /marketer, I would be insisting that my agency show me proof that every click or impression I’m paying for is real.
I have worked with clients and agency people who put a great deal of focus into programmatic; from data, audience segmentation, tech, measurement and creative optimisation – and see great successes. The problem is, they’re all too busy making it work to write opinion pieces on the matter or jet around mouthing off about it.
I think a lot of the issues that we see DO stem from under-experienced and unmotivated ‘practitioners’ from all parties. Programmatic isn’t just an easy ‘set and forget’ solution to ensuring a brand is present across ‘digital’. Although programmatic affords some automation, automation shouldn’t be how programmatic is framed – it’s only part of the picture. It takes understanding, attention and optimisation – with client, agency, trading desk and media owner all participating in its evolution and measurement. I think all too often the connection with automation, means short-cutting to ‘ease’ and therefore breeding laziness or lack of curiosity around the practice of programmatic (unless the curiosity is – “are we being ripped off?!”). Herein lies the issue – but it’s not the whole story, it’s case by case.
Programmatic bad – 19
Programmatic good – 16
Adjusted for Tim defending position
Bad 13
Good 13
Or there abouts
Scoring algorithm courtesy my 3 legged Labrador (and google)
Programmatic is about automisation. Any publisher can filter their advertisers and set a floorprice and any advertiser can filter and choose their preferred publishers. All major advertisers buy programmatically and budgets are increasing steadily.
This article proofs that the industry really needs to mature and there is a huge lack of knowledge.
Tim, denying the future of programmatic or automisation is like not trusting „the internet“ and sending out your newsletter via stagecoaches.
The article reminds me of the early days of internet where people believed that this ( the internet) is just a trend which will fade away anytime soon.
I would take any bet that mumbrella will die in the next 2 years if you don‘t open up for automisation.
Good luck! Tim
Hi RIP,
“I would take any bet that mumbrella will die in the next 2 years if you don‘t open up for automisation.”
How much are you willing to wager – because I’ll gladly take your money off you, and I’ve no affiliation to Mumbrella before you ask.
Slightly off topic, but you honestly think this website would crumble because it takes a stand on one form of advertising? There’s more than one way to turn a dollar mate..
Tim,
Do you see any fault at all on part of the advertisers..? who over the years have continually driven down fees of agencies to levels that the agencies needed to look for other ways to earn money. This doesnt defend illegal or unethical behaviour, but we must keep in mind that in the days when agencies were remunerated well, the trust was much higher and i would say the great ads of our time were made then. Trust is a two way street, and a common denominator is respect.. advertisers who treat their agencies like commodities that are to be procured for the lowest possible price do not show their agencies respect.. and that’s not only the root cause but the only way out of this mess.
Advertisers:
– pay your agencies fairly
– stop using cunsultants promising to save you money by running reverse auction pitch processes
In return, Agencies will
– guarantee transparency and full value
– deliver you the best possible team
– work their asses off for you
I work on Agency side, and many ‘old world’ contracts have been rewritten to an equitable outcome (without the use of the industry’s consultants I may add), where Agencies are properly compensated and do there is no need to ‘find other ways’ to make money. Respect and Trust begins, and guess what – we love the clients for it and bend over backwards.
The hidden margins in programmatic are still made on clients that dont remunerate us for even our staffing resources.
As one CEO once said ” clients get the agencies they deserve”
Hi HJT,
I do share your view. Marketers (and procurement teams) have in many cases contributed to a creating a market where agencies have been incentivised to work to a charging structure where it would be potentially impossible to make a profit on the fees for doing the work alone.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Exactly.
Good article Tim, but only scratching the surface…the issue is, and always will be, the dichotomy between agencies’ revenue line, and what the client sees as ‘fair value’ for their services.
Media agencies gouging clients in back-handed deals with media has been happening for 80+ years, the difference with programmatic is that by using their own trading desk, agencies have been able to drive much higher margins, and ultimately take up to 60 cents in the dollar in margin vs the old-school ‘rebates’ that TV and radio stations used to provide to agencies (usually 10-20% on top of the old 10% media commission).
The early stages of programmatic were a lot more Wild West than they are now, and there are a bunch of media agency senior staff who made some serious $$s personally and for their agencies going back 3 and 4 years. Many of them are now working for the same major digital businesses that made all of this possible…
You then have the issue of clients not being prepared to pay agencies for strategy, planning, Account Management, and expecting that 10% ‘agency discount’ of a shrinking pie should be enough to cover an agency’s costs…
There is a lack of transparency across the board that needs to be resolved, but the more industry peeps like you bring it up the more informed everyone will be…hopefully!
@HJT – it’s baffling you justify making money unethically due to clients not remunerating you for your staffing resources
How about having the balls to confront the clients about it – or refusing the business? Someone at your company signed the contract that made that part of the rules of engagement.
The justification of doing things that are unethical is part of the issue here.
@ BenS – think you need to reread my post mate! Not justifying or defending unethical behaviour at all. And if you had read it you would see an example of where we have confronted the issue sensibly with a client for mutual satisfaction. It can be done.
Great piece Tim.
The fact that you use the word “shenanigans” in almost the first paragraph sums it up. We’re somehow suddenly living in a world where clients don’t know what they’re getting for their money and in too many cases apparently the agencies don’t know either. It was never going to end well.