Corruption And Fraud Starting To Hurt

A couple of weeks ago we posted a two-part piece that asked Will Advertising Corruption Scandal Explode?

The nub of the potential scandal is that the gullible clowns in big marketing corporations are being screwed blind by the sharpies in the global agency holding companies who are...

1. Buying online media at one price and selling it to them at another.

2. Taking kickbacks...oops, I mean "volume-based incentives"...from media vendors.

3. Buying media that is in the agency's best interests, not the client's.

My point of view was that clueless advertisers have been getting so badly date-raped by every variety of con man, digi-hustler, techno-crook, and cyber-scammer for so long that they probably wouldn't even notice a few billion gone missing to agency scoundrels.

However, it could be that I'm wrong. In the last few days a couple of influential ad industry analysts have been downgrading the big agency holding companies based on the belief that their somnambulant clients might finally be regaining consciousness and realizing what's been going on.

Brian Wieser, an influential analyst at Pivotal Research Group, had this to say...

“The volume and specificity of allegations by aggrieved media owners, former agency executives and marketers are difficult to ignore. Rightly or wrongly, there is a growing perception among marketers that agencies have been misleading, transferring value associated with media volumes without clients’ full understanding or support.”

He went on to say...

“As...more specific allegations come to light, a drumbeat of negativity will build around the sector over the course of this year....Given this risk, we’d recommend that investors move to the sidelines or exit the sector altogether while it all plays out.”

So who knows, maybe these creeps will finally get what's coming to them.

I know how hard and how diligently most people in the agency business
work on behalf of their clients. I've seen the blood and I've felt the suffering.

The online media industry is rotten to the core and a terrible discredit to our business.

And as we have documented here over the past few years, the agency component of online media fraud and corruption is only a small part of this sleazy circus.