How Media Buyers Can Help Ad Agencies Rebuild Trust with Advertisers

There’s no denying it; a severe trust issue exists between advertisers and agencies.

Last year, only 10% of advertisers rated levels of trust with their agen

cy partners as high or very high, according to a study by ID Comms. Compare that to 40% who rated their trust as low, and you’ve got a pretty clear problem.

Ten years ago, advertisers had an absolute and unconditional trust with their media agencies because the supply chain was so much simpler. With constant changes in the tech landscape and a rapidly increasing number of ad platforms within every new media channel, media buyers continue to undergo an enormous shift. The same practices that were used in media buying operations back then simply don’t translate to the complex AdTech space of today.

As a media buyer, you are faced with multiple choices and hold great power within budget allocation and the decision-making process. This is an excellent opportunity to rebuild trust between brands and agencies. In order to do this, it’s essential to create a transparent and accountable relationship with vendors, which is why we highlighted the following considerations.​

Transparency: The Key Driver of Trust

The more transparent your relationship with a vendor, the more data and quantifiable information you can collect. This can then be used to identify opportunities on how to improve current processes and have an open and honest dialogue with advertisers.

To begin building a more transparent relationship with vendors, it’s essential to dig a little deeper. Find out more about their integrations with traffic verification, brand safety tools, attribution providers and viewability measurement partners. Ensuring that impressions are genuine, and the campaign is running in a brand-safe environment is vital, but gaining more granular data will provide you with key learnings and allow successful campaign optimizations.

Data-Driven Vetting & Vendor Agnostic Approach

A crucial factor in entering a new age of adtech is practicing a vendor agnostic approach to run a variety of different campaigns successfully. Today, media buyers can rely on historical data from vendors and get actionable insights in order to produce tactics that have a proven track record.

Sticking to the same list of vendors can result in missing out on beneficial collaborations for more diverse campaigns with specific goals.

Be open to new partnerships, keep evolving, stay curious, and never stop seeking solutions. ​

Asking vendors what’s on their roadmap for future campaign capabilities will provide insight into what they may be able to offer you down the line. This will allow you to leverage these insights and craft new strategies for your client’s future campaigns.

Standardized RFPs & Streamlined Evaluations

If you want to create a transparent culture, it’s important that vendors know what they need to do in order to fulfill campaign requirements. Once all the expectations are clear, the vetting and RFP process can begin.

Break down the evaluation process based on your advertiser’s needs, and organize them into sections for simplified vendor comparison. Streamlining this process simplifies justifying your final vendor choice for any client campaign. When analyzing the media plans in the proposals, ensure that every budget allocation proposed by the vendor is justified based on current benchmarks and past performance.

Some vendors will provide value-added services, which come at no extra cost and can boost your campaign’s success. Listing which unique values you’d prefer will help clarify the type of partner you need for a particular campaign.

When it comes to vendors with whom you chose not to work, be sure to provide some constructive feedback, so they know how to improve future proposals.