Marketing Procurement

Latest Ebiquity and WFA report: Tackling Responsible Media

Download the report here

Ebiquity and the WFA’s latest report, Tackling Responsible Media, delves into the changing market expectations, challenges in responsible media, an introduction to Responsible Media Investment, key findings and takeaways of RMI for advertisers, what has been achieved so far and the next steps for Responsible Media Investment. 

The report begins by exploring ESG performance, explaining that it is at the top of corporates’ agenda due to market’s expectations. 

As mentioned in the report, consumers’ expectations have changed. Increasing numbers of marketers are using data to identify and act on poor practices from partners, platforms and publishers. 

In fact, studies show that this has been one of the top reasons for advertisers to move spend elsewhere. 84% of consumers would be more likely to buy from a company that practices sustainability, the report explains. 

Moreover, 39% of marketers said they cut spending with a major platform in 2021. 54% cite factors like misinformation and hate speech, with 51% cite campaign performance.

Consequently, leading advertisers are taking action to try and address these new expectations through more responsible media investments – meaning that marketers need to hold their partners to account to deliver on their ESG responsibilities. 

Changes in industry priorities raises some key questions for global advertisers. In particular the report highlights;

1. Who are the key partners in our media supply chain, and how do they align with our ESG strategy? 
2. How can we optimise the channel mix and inform conversations about responsible media?
3. How can we quantify the media contribution to the business ESG strategy and results? 
4. How can we establish a baseline, set future goals?

However, this is a complex market and as such makes it challenging for advertisers to answer these four key questions.

Taking the UK market as an example, the report gives averages per advertiser which showcase the complexity of advertisers’ digital supply chains:

• Over 200,000 unique properties (domains/apps)
• Bought through more than 200 ad exchanges
• With over 3,000 unique corporations owning these properties 

Combining this complex supply chain with the variety of the responsible media issues to be aware of, this makes it difficult for advertisers to take action. 

To help advertisers grasp responsible digital media practices, Ebiquity introduced the Responsible Media Investment solution – helping advertisers solve industry wide challenges.

At WFA’s Global Marketer Week 2021, Ebiquity announced their commitment to responsible media investment and in one year has instated a dedicated responsible media team, finance and operate numerous data partnerships with leading expert firms. As well as this, Ebiquity say they have analysed $1 billion in programmatic ad spend against an array of valuable responsibility parameters.

To enable principle-driven digital investments, advertisers have to create visibility on the responsible practices implemented by partners across their media supply chain – it is key to match your media investment data to ESG sources

The responsible media solution was focused on four key areas:

1. Diversity & Inclusion 
2. Disinformation 
3. Privacy & Data protection 
4. Made for Advertising

Data insights are used to establish baselines to measure improvement and set future goals, to gain insights into partners’ responsible practices to optimise the channel mix, to minimise the risk of reputational and financial damage caused by malpractices and to quantify media contribution to ESG strategy and results. 

Investments were uncovered which were funding disinformation, which, if avoided, helps society and protects reputations. Furthermore, defunding aggressive monetisation strategies incentivise qualitative content and user experience. 

A large proportion of spend was identified as made for advertising (MFA) content and while performance appears high, the report advises marketers to steer away from such low quality content. As well as this, a significant amount of 3rd party marketing cookies were found to be loaded before user’s consent.

Building a diverse media supply chain that represents your audience offers a multitude of positives. It can help address systemic racism, build more authentic connections by reflecting consumer bases, create opportunities to better understand audiences, contribute to the company’s overall D&I strategy and protect brands from reputational damage.

So what steps should advertisers take to deliver responsible media investments?

• Create a clear overview of your supply partners and the entities where your investments end up at 
• Map out the responsible practices that align with your business values and should be reflected in your media supply chain 
• Measure and quantify the ESG performance of your supply partners to inform decision making 
• Create responsible media baselines that enable you to set goals and track improvement 
• Reallocate spend to the partners that align with your values and stimulate responsible practices 
• Monitor ESG performance of your supply partners over time and hold them to account where needed