Steve Stup

With principle-based buying returning to the forefront, Brian Chap's recipe for agency accountability takes me back to Jon Mandel's explosive rebate disclosures back in March 2015. Jon's kimono-opening moment was undoubtedly the catalyst that woke us all up to the billions leaking from media budgets by way of non-transparent kickbacks and fees. The can of worms has yet to be closed. That's why principle-based buying doesn't sit well with me. It feels like we're rewinding the tape after making so much progress over the last decade. BUT ... if you're a client-side media buyer that chooses to engage with a principle-based agency, there are three of Brian's "BENCH" framework activities that I think should be prioritized to the top. These three are relatively simple to do and can dramatically increase transparency and accountability. 1 - Secure platform access to your ad server, your DSP and the major SSPs through whom you are buying. Ensure you know how to compare media costs at each step in the supply-chain. 2 - Conduct audits. Whether as Brian recommends or simply by contacting a handful of publishers where you buy media, you should be able to reconcile your cost input to your media value output. And while you're at it, you'll be strengthening your direct publisher relationships, which has many longer-term benefits both in terms of media cost and priority. 3 - Most definitely hold your agency accountable. This applies also to every adtech vendor in your media supply-chain. I am not a fan of principle-based media buying. But if you're going to try it out, you need to remember that this is far from a set-it-and-forget-it approach to advertising. https://lnkd.in/eDw-Z3w8

6

3 Comments

CMOs demand guaranteed delivery, lowest CPMs, strategic flexibility, and outcome-based pricing. Physics says you can't have all four simultaneously. Principal media delivers three of them. The question is which three matter most. Forrester's new principal media report from the inimitable Jay Pattisall is very much worth a read, and it's going to trigger the predictable debate. Critics will argue agencies are creating conflicts. Evangelists will tout cost savings. Both will miss the strategic reality: CMOs facing compression don't have the luxury of perfect markets. I've watched boards push CMOs for guaranteed outcomes while slashing budgets. In that environment, academic arguments about strategic flexibility mean nothing. The anti-principal media argument assumes unlimited client patience, perfect information, and rational markets. Reality looks different. Reality is: your board wants cost certainty so they can model P&L without media volatility. Reality is: your CFO wants guaranteed delivery so you're not scrambling for Super Bowl inventory in scatter markets. Reality is: your CEO wants outcome-based pricing that ties media spend to business results. Principal media trades strategic flexibility for the three things boards actually care about: cost certainty, delivery guarantee, and outcome alignment. The Forrester report shows 80% of marketers are interested in principal media advantages. That's not because CMOs are naive about conflicts of interest. It's because they're making rational trade-offs under real constraints. The criticism of principal media comes from people who've never faced the impossible triangle. They can afford to optimize for strategic flexibility because they're not accountable for the P&L impact when media costs spike or inventory disappears. Yes, principal media requires transparency. Yes, it needs contractual controls and performance accountability. Yes, clients should cap how much spend flows through principal arrangements. But the mechanism itself? It's agencies finally building inventory positions that enable the outcome-based pricing we've demanded for years. I'm a big supporter as, for two decades, I've watched CMOs demand that agencies move from billing hours to pricing on outcomes. "Put skin in the game," they said. "Share the risk." Now agencies are doing exactly that with principal media, and the industry is calling it a conflict of interest. We can't have it both ways. Forrester predicts principal media will grow to one-third of billings by 2026. Read their report, then decide which three variables matter most for your business. https://lnkd.in/eKHg5qmk #PrincipalMedia #MediaBuying #CMO #MarketingLeadership #MarketingStrategy

8

1 Comment

Proud to release out first annual look at the state of B2B media technology. Astute observers will recognize this as heavily inspired by the similar report we've done with Silverchair for a number of years in the scholarly publishing space. But #B2B is very different from scholarly publishing, so we worked with some gracious and forward-thinking thought leaders in B2B to create this dedicated survey. I hope you find it useful. Please let us know what you think!

6

In case you missed it ... Scribewise published findings from a generative engine optimization (GEO) readiness survey yesterday. We surveyed professional services marketers and executives to see how they're thinking about AI search and what they're doing to prepare for this marketing sea change. Two interesting stats: - 67% of marketers surveyed are planning to optimize their website content to appeal to LLMs/AI search. - 58% are planning to amp up their PR efforts. If you're not thinking about this heading into 2026, you're falling behind. Download the (ungated) report here: https://lnkd.in/g-PTHdUb

3

CMO’s and agencies are so enamored with bottom-funnel targeting tactics that they totally lost the ability to move people effectively—their judgement is out of balance with real needs today. The targeting down funnel ‘disease’ gives marketers a feeling that they aren’t being wasteful but so much is showing they aren’t being effective either. “This ….reveals …a fundamental mismatch. Respondents are applying bottom-of-funnel tactics to what they've identified as top-of-funnel brand building objectives.”

15

1 Comment

Excited to share that Aperiam has invested in Bedrock Platform. Obvious statement of the century: programmatic advertising has a complexity problem. The infrastructure that was built to give media buyers control has, over time, done the opposite. Burying teams under layers of operational overhead, legacy tooling, and opaque supply chains. Bedrock is built on a simple but powerful thesis: what if you stripped away the bloat and rebuilt the stack around what actually matters... precision, transparency, and speed to execution. Their platform combines AI-driven campaign automation with curated, premium inventory across video, CTV, DOOH, and audio, and aims to be flexible and get smarter over time. Plus, the team (Shane, Austin, Ryan, James) has deep roots in the infrastructure layer of ad tech and understands the plumbing better than almost anyone. We believe the next generation of programmatic will be leaner, faster and AI-first. Bedrock is building that.

108

14 Comments

$ONAR ONAR Labs' first initiative is Cortex, an AI-powered marketing intelligence platform that has been powering the ONAR network and serving as the engine for its agencies to optimize and deliver for clients. #WednesdayWisdom @BuiltwithOnar @SCStocks https://www.onar.com/labs

1

✅🖥️ Mike Shields / Substack (3/3): “How does this jibe with what everyone was telling me last week, about how 50, 60, or 70% of their deals are now ‘programmatic?” Well, it sort of comes down to hair-splitting ad tech definitions (as it often does) - or what counts as programmatic or not. The more you push buyers and sellers, the more you realize that the CTV ad market is far from open and dynamic (like say the display or social worlds). Most TV business is still through direct deals (with many negotiated during - yes - the upfronts). These deals may be booked using ad technology, and may employ tactics such as private marketplaces or programmatic guaranteed - but they are ‘programmatic’ with lots of guardrails. And they are still only available to the high-paying few. “Unlike other media, say display, the concentration of supply in CTV is phenomenal,” said Tatari’s CEO. “90 percent of all of our streaming impressions placed for brands or agencies come from the same top 10 publishers. It is what you and I watch. There is no long tail. It’s a big head with even a very small torso.” It may explain why connected TV ad growth has been somewhat stagnant, despite all the recent hype. By Tatari’s estimation, the CTV market in the US is $30B per year (it should be noted, he is not counting YouTube - which is highly debatable). He’s not far off from eMarketer’s latest forecast. “About half of that today is direct transactions,” the CEO said. “The other half is through programmatic biddable, $15B. And probably half of it is fraud or low-quality inventory. It’s really only $7B or $8B of premium inventory. This is kind of, again, what we talk about in the press every day…it’s where we see a lot of other companies truly hanging their hat on. But they’re ignoring the other $15B.” Why are there so many ad tech middlemen chasing after whatever percentage is available? Well, that’s because they can’t get access to the top stuff, but they still want the high CPMs and premium associations that TV offers - at least that’s Tatari’s take.” ⬇️ #ctv #ott #shoppable #programmatic #avod #vmvpd https://lnkd.in/e7GeNb_d

13

2 Comments

Large enterprise CMOs are facing a critical challenge: Drive AI transformation while doing right by the teams that built your organization. The C-suite wants AI transformation yesterday. Their teams—many with decades of institutional knowledge—are skeptical, exhausted, or both. Here's what I keep hearing: "I know we need to move fast. But I can't just blow up my team in the process." These leaders aren't stuck because they don't understand AI. They're stuck because they understand people. They need a plan for that first and foremost when the org gets to a certain size. They know that legacy expertise is still valuable and long-tenured employees deserve honesty about what's coming, not false promises. Transformation that breaks trust isn't really transformation—it's just chaos with better tech. This is the real leadership challenge of AI transformation - navigating the human complexity of change in organizations where relationships, tenure, and culture run deep.

18

2 Comments