CMO: "Can Agencies Be Trusted" 

CMOs and marketing procurement leaders are hearing two conflicting stories. On one hand, agencies are reinventing themselves with AI, proprietary tech and bold outcome promises. On the other, complexity, opaque fees and constant reorgs keep raising the same old question: can you really trust your media agencies with competitive advantage.

In this #MediaSnack episode, David and Tom unpack why trust is still the defining issue, ten years after the ANA transparency report, and why the smartest advertisers are not abandoning agencies.

They are redesigning the partnership, tightening governance and using independent verification to turn risk into an advantage.

Can media agencies still be trusted in 2026?

The short answer is yes, but only when media agency trust is backed by strong governance, clear commercial design and continuous verification. Advertisers who treat media as a board level investment, not a black box cost, gain more value, more transparency and a more resilient competitive edge than their peers.

Trust has been under pressure for a decade. The ANA transparency work in 2016 exposed how opaque rebates and non disclosed deals undermined confidence. Fast forward ten years and the problem has not disappeared, it has evolved. The argument is no longer only about classic rebates. It is about a far more complex supply chain of proprietary tools, platform fees, data charges and AI powered services that are hard for non specialists to fully track.

At the same time, agencies are mutating from pure service businesses into sales businesses. Margin increasingly comes from selling technology, media inventory, data and, now, AI capacity. That shift can be healthy, but only if clients understand the incentives in the system. When marketers cannot see where their money flows, trust quickly erodes and media feels like an uncontrolled tax on growth.

Yet the market speaks clearly. Global pitch activity is as intense as it has been since the 2015 2016 Mediapalooza years. If CMOs had given up on agencies, we would see a dramatic swing to in housing. Instead, most large advertisers still want expert partners. They simply want to work with agencies inside a framework that protects their interests and aligns everyone to real business outcomes.

Specific example: several large multinational advertisers have recently reset media contracts to reframe agency tech fees as services that must be justified with clear outcomes, not just accepted as mysterious line items. Those who made that change often report improved performance visibility and fewer board level questions about waste.

The ID Comms Breakdown

Whats going on?

The agency landscape is in heavy flux. Holding groups like WPP are restructuring, laying off thousands while investing heavily in integrated operating systems and AI driven tools. Other groups in what Tom and David call the red ocean, such as Havas, Horizon, Stagwell and Dentsu, are circling for consolidation and scale.

This creates two overlapping worlds. In one, large networks push sophisticated, tech enabled models with unusual remuneration structures, often linked to proprietary platforms. In the other, challenger agencies lean into transparency and craft, positioning themselves as the antidote to opaque holding groups. For a CMO, both worlds can feel equally confusing.

From the advertiser side, the core experience has not changed enough. Money goes in, but it feels fractured across many vendors, fees and tools. The line between service fees and margin making activities is blurred. When marketers cannot confidently explain where a dollar went or what it delivered, they fear that hard won competitive advantage is leaking away.

A concrete illustration: in programmatic, an ANA study found that only a minority of spend often reaches working media once all fees are stripped out. Even when the numbers have improved, the memory of those findings keeps media leaders cautious and fuels scrutiny of new AI or data fees that look structurally similar.

What are the implications?

If trust keeps decaying, the implications are existential for agencies. Without credible agency partners, more brands will push media in house or go platform direct, fragmenting the market and losing the multiplier effect that great agencies can provide across channels and markets.

On the flip side, when trust is rebuilt on firmer foundations, the upside is enormous. Agencies remain uniquely placed to turn ideas, data and media investment into disproportionate growth. That requires clarity on roles, incentives and measurement. When marketers feel that the system is fair, they are willing to back bold ideas and long term brand building.

One implication that we highlight is cultural. As agencies shift from service to sales, many traditional client service people leave and more sales oriented profiles arrive. That is not automatically bad. But without transparent rules of engagement, CMOs may perceive every recommendation as a sell, not a counsel. That perception gap is corrosive if left unaddressed.

Another implication is governance load inside the advertiser. Boards are asking sharper questions about media transparency, particularly after high profile reports and renewed ANA findings that concerns remain acute even ten years on. Media leaders who cannot answer confidently risk their own credibility. This is why smarter brands now treat media governance as a strategic capability, not a back office task.

How should marketers be thinking?

First, accept that blind trust is gone, and that is healthy. Modern trust is earned by behaving like a sophisticated investor. You believe in your partner, but you design controls that keep everyone honest. David and I often use the phrase trust but verify, inspired by Mark Pritchard at P&G.

Practically, that means being crystal clear on the role you want your agency to play in your growth agenda. Ambiguity from clients almost always leads to disappointment. Define outcomes, decision rights, ways of working and how technology should support your goals, not the other way round.

Second, design the partnership, do not just select an agency. Get the scope, remuneration and governance architecture right. That includes outcome linked incentives where feasible, alignment on business not just media KPIs, and the right to audit or independently verify performance and value flows.

Finally, stay human. Trust is ultimately built between people, not logos. Senior relationships on both sides need time together, shared problem solving and honest conversations about incentives and pressures. The smartest CMOs invest in that relational equity while keeping tough but fair commercial structures around it.

How to build a trust first agency partnership

To turn this thinking into an action plan, CMOs and procurement leaders can focus on four practical moves over the next 12 months.

First, run a structured media governance health check. Review contracts, scopes, data rights, audit clauses and KPIs against current best practice. Look for misaligned incentives, such as volume based bonuses that encourage spend inflation or non disclosed arbitrage on inventory or AI tokens. Even one or two changes here can unlock significant value.

Second, reconnect your agency scope to business value. Replace vanity metrics with a concise ladder of KPIs that link media activity to outcomes the CFO cares about, such as incremental revenue, margin or customer lifetime value. One global advertiser recently cut its KPI framework from more than 40 metrics to 8, which made it much easier to reward the agency for real contribution.

Third, insist on simplicity in agency storytelling. We see too many decks loaded with feature heavy credentials and light on client benefits. Ask for one page that explains, in plain language, how the agency will help you grow, what tools it will use, how it gets paid and where the risks are. If they cannot explain it simply, you should not be buying it.

Fourth, bring in independent support where it adds leverage. Objective advisors can benchmark contracts, test performance, audit complex supply chains and help both sides reset expectations without emotion. This is not about catching agencies out. It is about giving everyone a shared factual base so the relationship can move forward with confidence.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. Can I still trust large holding company agencies?
Yes, if you insist on transparency in contracts, understand their proprietary platforms and build audit rights that let you see how value is created and shared.

Q2. Is in housing media the answer to trust issues?
Not always. In housing shifts risk and capability needs onto your team. Most global advertisers are choosing hybrid models with strong external partners and tighter oversight.

Q3. What is the single biggest threat to agency trust today?
Unchecked complexity. When tech fees, data costs and AI services stack up without clear explanation, even well intentioned partnerships can feel untrustworthy.

Q4. How often should we review our media agency contract?
At least every three years, or sooner if you make major changes to data strategy, tech stack or markets. The commercial model must keep pace with how you actually buy media.

Q5. Do outcome based deals solve the trust problem?
Only if the outcomes are meaningful business metrics and the inputs are auditable. Poorly designed outcome models can create new incentives to game the system.

Q6. What role should procurement play in rebuilding trust?
Procurement should champion fair value and long term partnership, not just rate cuts. They are key in aligning payment to business results and enforcing governance.

Q7. How transparent should agencies be about their use of AI?
Very. You should know which tools touch your data, how models are trained, how fees are calculated and how AI changes staffing, outputs and risk.

Q8. Are smaller independent agencies automatically more transparent?
Not automatically. Many are very open, but you still need clear contracts, defined incentives and the right to verify performance and value flows.

Q9. What should my board know about media trust?
They should understand that media is a strategic investment, that you have a governance framework in place and that independent verification backs your assurances.

Q10. How can I start improving trust this quarter?
Pick one live issue, such as programmatic transparency, and tackle it with your agency. Use that quick win to build momentum for a broader governance upgrade.

Episode Transcript

Hello, I'm Tom Denford in New York. And I'm David Indo from London. Welcome to Media Snack Live. It's our weekly roundup of all the important news, and stories, and trends you need to know about the global media and marketing industry. In every show we ask, what is going on? What are the implications for advertisers? And what should marketers be thinking about next? Thanks for joining us. Let's get into this week's show. Right, we're back. Uh, can agencies be trusted? That's the big question. We're gonna get straight into that. Um, welcome to Media Snack Live. If you haven't joined us before, this is a live. weekly show that David and I do every Friday, 11:00 AM. Um, apart from last week where we had to just cancel it' at a very short notice for a couple of reasons. Uh, we didn't get a chance to pre-record it, so we've, we postponed this one from last week to, to this week. I know that, uh, a bunch of you were kind of keen to hear. Um, should we... Let's just get straight into it because I think we can answer that question and then unpack it. Yeah. That's good with you? Yes, absolutely. Okay. Um, so as usual, if you're following along on? Media Snack each week, uh, David and I are founders of a company called ID Comms. We're independent consultants and we're experts of media and advertising, and we work with loads of different brands. Uh, we typically turn up to the show. with a hypothesis and we' don't always know what each other's gonna say, which is, I think, which is quite interesting for us 'cause we' learn from each other. And hopefully you kind of see different sides of the argument. So we, we, we sometimes agree, uh, you know, disagree agreeably, as they say. Um, so this is a kind of hot one. Can agencies be trusted? We like to be asked challenging questions like this. We always like these kind of, kind of questions. Sometimes we get them from viewers, from you guys, uh, which we, which we love. Uh, sometimes during the course of our consulting work, we get asked really interesting questions and we think we should just do an episode on that- Mm ... because we, that's something that. we can really unpack. And so last week or the week before, um, was from a marketer that had, I think, just come back from Cannes, as far as I'm aware, and was hearing lots of headlines about agencies, you know, changing and mutating, and we've been talking about that, um, in a meeting. Cut to the chase, we love that CMOs cut to the chase, and said, "Look, can agencies actually be trusted? What should I think, be thinking?" And so we said, "What we're gonna talk about today is basically how we answered it." Um, there's been lots of talk since Cannes and recently about the future of the agency. There's always a point in the year where everyone's kind of read, you know, the death of this and the birth of this and the new whatever, 'cause everyone's just getting excited and the hubris of the future. Um, but, but at the same time, agencies are sh- are highly challenged. Some agencies perhaps more than others. We spoke last week or the week before, about some of the challenges WPP are having, having at the moment. Um, you know, they've been winning some business, but they've lost some key accounts. Yeah. Um, and you know, again, this week just so happens that, you know, they've announced another 1,000 people, uh, being laid off sadly, uh, from WPP. So they're still kind of reorganizing. The pain is not over yet. Uh, but the, the agency landscape is highly competitive, amazingly entrepreneurial. Uh, it has real kind of survival instincts we always say. Um, and it's thriving, you know, but it's, it's mutating and having to reinvent, but it is thriving. Yeah. Uh, we've talked about this agency mutation, this is the way that we've described it, which is, uh, agencies really having to move from, or a lot of agencies deciding to move, let's say, from more time and materials or fee-based or commission-based, uh, ways of making money to more the selling of things, selling of technology, the arbitrage or the reselling of media inventory, the arbitrage and reselling of AI tokens or AI systems that they're buying and selling onto clients. Um, so there's, there a lot of agencies that's, that shift from being a very service-based business to being a sales-based business. Culturally, that's really disruptive for agencies- Mm ... because a lot of the service-based people are leaving, you know, and they're bringing in people that are maybe more sal- sales friendly. Um, not that's a bad thing. Um, and then we've got this, what we keep calling the red ocean of agencies, right? We've got these, like the, the ones that we put in the red ocean, which are the Havas, Horizon, Stagwell, Dentsu, and maybe a couple of others are, um, now kind of floating around in that red ocean, uh, where there's potential for massive consolidation. You know, big fish eating little fish, little fish eating big fish, whatever way around it goes. Loads of disruption. Um, whilst that business model is changing from the marketer's perspective, which is where we always have to come back to here, is that they hold the gold and that's the golden rule. They hold the gold, th- they make the rules. Um, they're starting to get nervous. They're excited with the hubris of what's possible and what might be coming down the road. But at the same time, they're nervous because it feels a bit like it's getting more complicated than it was, and it was already a bit too complicated, um, particularly on the media side. That actually transparency is not getting better. If anything, it's the complexity is creating a loss of transparency. And when we talk about transparency, we're talking about a marketer putting money into a system, re- really understanding what it does and feeling like they get the full value and benefit of that investment. Yeah. When it feels like it's being fractured across many, many, many different places and you can't track it and you're not quite sure what you get out the end of it, that's what makes marketers very un- nervous because it's competitive advantage. They're spending a huge amount of money to try to win or, you know, do something and they just don't know whether it's working. Yeah. And that's what it feels like right now. So they're going- Mm ... can, can they be trusted? Okay. That pro- that's the proposition that we're talking about. Yeah. Before we get into breaking it down, what's the answer to that? Can agencies be trusted? What do we think? Yes, they can, but you just need to- Provide governance structures over that relationship, over that partnership to make sure that the commitments, the promises, the commercial models are as transparent and are being operated, uh, in a way that benefits you as the client. So, absolutely. And, and I think the market is, uh, screaming a resounding yes to that, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so shall I just kind of give you my perspective on kind of where, where we're at? Yeah. I think, um, I just wanna do one other bit of setup here- Yeah ... before we go into, like, what, you know, let's just kind of what, what's going on specifically, is that... And some of you that know us may be watching this and maybe you're shouting at the screen and going, "Well, you would say that." Okay. It's like trust agencies, but it needs kind of oversight and governance and verification, all these kind of things, because you guys, IDCOM, our firm, is one of the leading firms that provides those services to advertisers. So, that's what we do. We talk to advertisers every day- Mm ... about how, yes, you trust agencies, but you need to verify, monitor, track performance, unpack, see where all the money goes, what it's doing. All of that, you know, which we might collectively call just good governance- Mm ... of that, of those big investment. That's our business. That's what we do. So, of course we're gonna say that. However, that's why we're in business. We're in business because we believe in the sanctity of the relationship between an advertiser and, and their agencies, and the amazing work they do, because we've worked at agencies. We love agencies. Yeah. Um, but we want to provide that objective and independent verification that helps both sides, uh, achieve a better quality relationship. So, just to kind of get that, yes, we have a vested interest in this, but that's why we spend time every week talking about this stuff, because we think it's important. Yeah. Um, okay. So, uh, let's go into this. So, let's just think what's going on. And as usual, you're gonna unpack for us, then we're gonna think about what some of the implications are. Yeah. And then we're gonna come back to some actual recommendations of what marketers should be doing if they have this question swimming around in their head right now. Yeah. Well, I mean, the first thing is that this question about trust has been going on kind of forever, certainly in the last 10 years. Mm. You know, it's, it's been 10 years since that landmark ANA transparency report came through. Yeah. And, you know, the question mark over agency trust still exists. Um, it's, but it's just evolved. So, you know, it's now no longer really about rebates, which was what the transparency report was, was kind of unearthing. Yeah. Now it's about the complexity of the, the media kind of ecosystem and the supply chain. Now it's about, you know, uh, proprietary media, uh, tech fees, uh, uh, you know, whether the systems in play within organizations are in line commercially with the needs of clients or, or actually in the needs and the demands of the agencies themselves. Yeah. So, the, the, the conversation has just become more complicated and confusing for marketeers. And I'm not surprised that they're still questioning this, this trust validity. And at the end of this kind of episode, we're gonna talk a little bit about kind of what we think clients can do to kind of mitigate against that. Yeah. But then you've got the kind of the division within the holding companies and the big agencies. We've talked about the kind of the red ocean. You've got the big holding companies that have invested huge amounts of money on sophisticated tech-enabled operating systems with peculiar and often very progressive and unusual remuneration models that- Yeah ... they are somewhat imposing on their clients. Now, that creates a degree of, of confusion, and some may say mistrust. And then you've got the other agencies that operate within the ecosystem, which don't have the funds to compete with the big holding companies, that have to rely on a different proposition, and they start banging the drum about being more transparent than the holding companies. Mm. Again, that can kind of create a degree of contextual kind of confusion. Yeah. And they focus on craft and talent and all those sorts of things. But the market is as bullish as it has ever been. If you look at the pitch market, so if you look at those advertisers that are trying to find a different solution within the agency ecosystem, this is as busy as I think it's been since 2015. Yeah. Okay? Since Mediapalooza in 2015, 2016. Um, there is more billings in play at the moment than we've seen for 10 years. Yeah. There is likely to be more billings in play next year, uh, beating probably this year's kind of bullish marketplace. 27 is gonna be the big, massive pitch year. It's gonna be huge, right? Yeah. So, the market- Mm ... so if, if there was a, a, a, a significant shift of mistrust from agencies with more and more brands taking greater responsibilities of media, planning, governance, and delivery in-house- Yeah ... which isn't the case, by the way, uh, they're smarter thinking, but they are still relying on their agency partners- Mm ... then I, I don't buy this kind of whole shift towards mistrust. What I do think that clever advertisers need to do is they need to, uh, understand how they build those partnerships with foundations that allow them to feel reassured with the decisions and the commercial activation of their money- Yeah ... uh, on behalf of their, their, their agency partners. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's good. Um, and without... Just to unpack that a little bit further, without obviously spilling beans on any advertisers that we- Yes ... work with or talk to, um, how, how deep is this kind of sentiment of like, "Okay, I'm ready to trust. How much should I trust? How do I trust?" You know, um, with these kind of questions that th- this one particular TMO gave us the other day, you know- But should I just trust my agency or not? You know, like, because it's quite a blunt thing. Yeah. How, how, how common is that sentiment, do you feel, at the moment? I think that it is, it is not about blind trust any longer. Mm. You know, uh, in... The, the challenge that many advertisers found a number of years ago is that they, they delegated complete accountability and responsibility of, of their media management processes entirely to their agency partners, and that was, that was a flawed strategy. Uh, I think that there are question marks over some of the, uh, operational, um, strategies that some agencies are putting in place. Um, but as long as advertisers are very clear as to what those demands are, and as advertisers are, uh, making sure that they are asking the right questions and ensuring the right levels of verification from their agency partners, then I don't think trust is an issue at all. I think it's healthy, frankly, to go into any kind of a, a commercial relationship, given the scale of the money involved, to be somewhat cynical and to be somewhat, uh, cautious. Yep. But I don't think trust is an issue. I think going in, I think the complexity is the source of the problem, and the, the greater that the agencies have the ability to, uh, untangle and demystify that complexity, and illustrate the value that they add as part of that process- Yeah ... then I think the whole trust thing goes out the window. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's very good. Um, and for those of you that don't know, whilst I'm from... I mean, we've been running ID Comms for over 10 years now, but previous to that, David, was, you were, you were in that seat, right? You were media director at Nike, Coca-Cola. Um, y- I know that you talked to me and you talked to our clients and our team about the importance of just having a really, uh, uh, kind of intuitively trusting a- relationship with the agency, but the importance of measuring. Um- Yeah ... let's think about what the implications are for that, um, and then we'll come on to just quickly talk about- Yep ... I mean, I'll go through the implications quickly, and then we, let's get into the really good stuff- Sure ... which is what should marketers be thinking and doing. The implications, I j- I mean, I thought it was interesting just to think about what the implications are if marketers don't trust agencies versus if they do trust agencies. What does the world look like? You know, and if we're veering to a point where g- where increased complexity is causing a, a nervousness or a mistrust, that actually is a bad path, I think, for agencies. Because i- if marketers do not trust agencies, frankly, that's kind of gonna be the end of agencies. Yeah. You have to fight for trust, as we've been talking about, for 10 years, since, you know, some of the reporting that was done 10 years ago, and it's happened every single year. So it's not something that happened 10 years ago and we're just still feeling the outfall of that. It's happened every single year. There's some trigger that it cr- you know, creates, uh, hesitation for marketers, and rightly, because it's an, they're getting to see parts of the industry that may be not working in their interest. We then all go in and we try and improve those things, and then we move on. But without trust, if trust decays beyond a certain point, and it's got pretty close sometimes, but I think we're not there right yet- Yeah ... uh, that's the biggest threat probably existentially to agencies. And it's, if anything, it's hampered those businesses. I think agencies, you know, if we think what agencies were doing prior to 2016, they were flying, right? Mm. And, and their performance since then has not been great. So, so questions of trust, I think, hamper success of agencies. Yeah. Um, and they're right at a point now where they need to transform. They wanna rebuild and redefine what they do, and reinvent their services, as we've been talking about. Yeah. Mutating into kind of new things, and those have to be built on relationships of trust. Um, and that's really hard to do if the commercial model that they're operating is leading maybe to less transparency, it makes custom- clients nervous and, uh, therefore trust, trust decays. So an element of transparency, they've got to be, uh, frank and clear how they're operating, what the commercial models are, where the incentives lie, where money's going, as much as they can. Yeah. And/or the marketer's got to feel reassured that they have a, a reasonable sense of that they know, because they're responsible for that money, where it's going. On the flip side is if markets... So, you know, if, if marketers don't trust agency, there are no agencies. And that will probably lead to much more in-housing and, uh, different kinds of services, maybe going to platform direct, vendor direct, publisher direct. Okay? Uh, so agencies have got to fight for their role now. If they can get the trust of marketers, if marketers do trust agencies, they, we have seen again and again, it's a mechanical multiplier effect. Agencies can take ideas and money and time, uh, and m- use mechanical advantage to, to create huge value for brands. Okay? We've seen that for the last 50, 60 years, that brand advertising dr- creates value. Yeah. And agencies are a really important gateway to creating amazing brand, uh, advertising communications. It's a trillion-dollar industry we're now sitting in. I was gonna say on top of. We're, I don't think we're sitting on top of the agency, uh, on top of the industry, but we're kind of in, we're in the middle of that ocean. Yeah. Trillion dollars. But if you look at brand growth over those, over the last decade or so, it's been pretty poor. Mm. A lot of money. Brands are rightly saying, w- having, this is almost like a tax of doing business now. If you're a brand owner, there's so many hurdles to success- Yeah ... to account for the premium that we're paying, because that trillion dollars has got to come from somewhere. It's coming from customers, and so they, are they gonna pay for brands? Are they gonna pay a premium for brands? So the need for brand businesses to be really good at accounting for that premium, that brand premium, um, is gonna come from- Who's working with the best agencies. Yeah. It really is gonna come down to a lot to that. It's not gonna come down to who's got the best technology, who's harnessed AI in the best possible way, because if anything, that just becomes very reductive, and everyone's got access to the same thing. It's really gonna people, creativity, and ideas, and historically we know that's come from agencies. So that's why that's super important, that client plus agency relationship, plus maybe a bit of independent verification. Excuse me. Um, that's probably the good recipe, um, to success. So the other implication that's going on here when it comes to trust is there's a lot of debate that we hear. We talk to agency leaders all the time. There's a lot of debate kind of in private, I think, between how much is a story technology and how much is the story a human story. And I think for the last two years it's been very much a technology story. I can see smart agencies now pivoting much to a human story. As much as that sounds incongruous when you've got agencies laying off a thousand people this week- Yeah ... um, because that's something else. That's about actually volumes of- volume of humans is not the business model anymore. But actually the human interaction, the people that you wanna work with, the people that have amazing ideas, who are skilled and capable in using all of this technology, um, that's probably gonna be the differentiator. So that's quite exciting, I think. So I know you always encourage... I know. I'm typically c- a bit more cynical, and you encourage me to kind of, you know, see the opportunity. Yeah. The opportunity here, which I think you're gonna unpack for us, is client, advertiser with big vision, who's brave and has a whole team of people around them that they trust and they're excited about- Yeah ... with a great brand. Amazing agencies fueled by technology, but some particularly excellent people- Mm ... who can collaborate and work together, uh, and inspire each other. Um, and then some guardrails and some c- structure that helps you feel reassured that money's not being wasted- Yeah ... money's not being lost, value being created, and they kind of account for that, um, outcome. Feels like quite an exciting reinvention, and maybe I'm starting to drink the agency Kool-Aid here, which is like this is a new opportunity for us all. Yeah. But advertisers are going to go through a process over the next year or two, I think, with lots of pitches, lots of reorg, lots of redefining scope- Yeah ... where they reset for the next 10 years, and this could be a, a real, a exciting reinvention. I didn't think I'd be using these kind of words on Media Snack ever, but I'm quite exci- I think you've got me quite excited. Yeah. Um, okay. So if that's the opportunity, what should marketers be thinking if they, you know, we wanna keep them positive and optimistic. Yeah. We'll talk, we'll talk a little bit about kind of trust but verify in a second, but the first thing I do want to say, and, and I'm glad that you've kind of, you've aligned with my train of thinking- I'm there with you ... is that a- agencies, without question, are invaluable strategic partners to brands. They always have been, but that role that they play in helping address very complicated business marketing communication challenges has never been more acute and accurate now. Mm. But you need to do certain things right. The first thing I think a client needs to do is to be really, really clear what role they want their agency partner to play. So understanding the role that they play in enabling whatever growth agenda that you have, and the clarity with which you can communicate to your agency partner the absolute better. Ambiguity from clients, uh, generally leads to disappointment, I've found. So be super, super clear what you're looking for from an agency partner. Then design a partnership, not just choose an agency partner. So what I mean by design the partnership is make sure that you're pairing, paying fairly, make sure that you've got the right scope of work so that the agency is able to engineer itself around your particular needs. Make sure that you've got the right governance protocols to make sure that everybody behaves themselves and operates in the right kind of ways. Okay? Yeah. That's just, that's just good business practice. In an age of kind of AI and tech-enabled, you know, showboating, don't be seduced by AI. Do not be seduced by the technological sophistication of these organizations and the operating systems that they, uh, that they spent fortunes, frankly, working up. Make sure that anything that touches your business, whether that be a, agentic thinking, uh, technological advancements, um, progressive modeling, or just simple talent, is designed to drive a better outcome for you as a business. Mm-hmm. Everything has to justify that. They are simply enablers of good business practice. That would be then the next thing. Mm-hmm. And then finally, finally, and we've talked a lot about outcome-based, you know, remuneration and bits and pieces, but focus on business value, not just media metrics. And I think, you know, uh, the WFA have done a lot of work around procurement KPIs, but focus on business value, align agencies on your business needs, your commercial outcomes, your growth objectives. And if you can get them to do that, and then, in theory, begin to remunerate them for driving that business growth, then that's where the partnership really begins. Yeah. Okay. Very good. Uh, good, perfect timing because we, we always get... We love when we, when you send us comments, like, during the show. This is live, right? We, we go live, uh, in case you can't tell. This is not edited at all. Um- But, uh, we love it. You know, if you're watching, we stream live on LinkedIn, YouTube, and some other places. Um, this is a, I think, come through on LinkedIn me- we got a few messages. I'm gonna pull this one up because this is great. Uh, this is, um, so Matt Kassendorf is one of the executives at a organization called the 4As, which is the largest trade association, trade body representing agencies in the US. Okay? Um, and we do, we do some good work with the 4As, and they partner closely with the ANA, which is the Advertisers Trade Association. So Matt, thank you for the, for the nice comment. Um, but 4As and the ANA have worked together to l- look a lot at this, the relationships. He's saying that the work that they did together indicated that trust between key individuals at the client and agency is key to avoiding agency reviews and building long-term client-agency relationships. And that's certainly true. And when we say it's gonna be a busy year for pitches, probably not necessarily, not all highly competitive pitches. A lot of that's going to be things that we can do in the background, like renegotiating scopes of work, terms of business, really defining future roles, bringing often new things into contracts like, you know, creative relationships or- Mm ... you know, um, uh, you know, principle-based buying and things. Those kind of things- Yeah ... have to be covered up. Uh, covered on contract, not covered up. Uh, people trust each other. Companies as such don't trust other companies. I think that's probably a very important reminder actually, is that we've gotta come back to the, the people- Yeah, yeah ... that we, that we're serving. And Matt's absolutely right. You know, this still remains a people business. Whilst technology and, and, uh, you know, modeling techniques seem to sort of, uh, override all of the kind of conversations that we have, ultimately, ultimately it's about people. It's about- Yeah ... people that are intervening and enabling smarter, better thinking using the technologies that they have at their disposable. But ultimately it's about people. Yeah. Thank you Matt, for that. Um, good point. Um, two things I wanna leave, leave you with. One is that, um, or was it three things? One is that you've said it a few times on today's show, and we thought about trying to kind of organize it into this time, but we, we, there's not time. We're gonna do it next Friday. You'll ... If you join us next Friday, we're gonna do an episode which is called Trust But Verify, because that's the headline that you've seen a lot. Mm. Okay? Mark Pritchard stood on stage in 2017 and said that that was Proctor and Gamble's view of the agencies and the supply chain, what he called the murky media supply chain. It was getting overwhelming a bit for a lot of marketers. He stood up and gave us a kind of shining light and said, "Trust but verify." And that's been their, really their watch word, their mantra, um, for all these years, which is still good. So we still hear that. And so, and I've had a few people come this week say, "Oh, I saw you talking about can you trust agencies?" Trust but verify. You know, Pritchard says- Mm ... trust but verify. Yeah, 100%. We're gonna follow that. Next week let's unpack that, because then everyone says, "Well, what does verify mean?" Yeah. That's what, that's what advertisers say to us. Yeah, we wanna do trust but verify. Um, what does verify mean? Okay. So let, what that will unpack for you next week. Okay? We're gonna give you a little game plan of what we tell advertisers, what, what does verify mean. Um, because that's important to understand what you can do as part of that, as David said. Uh, responsibility on the marketer to do the right thing as well. It's not just, the onus is not on the agency just to do the right thing. Yeah. Um, that's the first thing. Secondly, um, I just wanted to wrap up by saying, you know, you talk about what a, what ma- what marketers should be thinking, what marketers should be doing. I'd like to just add for 60 seconds what agencies should be doing in our view. Yeah. Okay? We see agencies, um, present to advertisers every week, okay, at a very high level. Uh, we have very privileged access into agency leadership, and we talk to them candidly about their business and we see what they're developing, and they wanna come to us and tell us what they're doing, uh, which is really good. Um, the one thing that would really help in all of this, in our view, is to try and simplify your credentials again, because we're, I think agencies safe place has always been in this kind of space race. We're bigger, we're better, we're faster, we're whatever, right? It's like, and which we, you know, aren't we big, aren't we clever, aren't we, you know, the best? You know, all that kind of stuff. Um, which is really just selling on features. And advertisers, if they're gonna have trust, they need to be sold on the benefits of working with the agency. And so all agency communication, please, I still see 80% of agency comms is all really features-led. Um, it's always the headline, it's always the statistics, but it's s- it doesn't remind the marketer the value of working or the benefit of working- Mm ... with an agency. So it's all talk about outcomes based pricing, but I think that's missing a big meat in the middle. Those are to me, like two parts of the sandwich. You've got the bread at the top, which is the credentials of the agency, and then you've got the outcome. Okay, pay us by outcomes. It doesn't really talk about what the benefit is, the customer experience, how it's gonna be good for them personally in their careers, how it's gonna benefit the company, what the agency actually does to create, generate value. All that really good stuff is often missing. And so I would just ask agencies that are watching, please spend a bit more time describing the value that you generate. Okay? Not just the outcomes that happen when they work with you, uh, because that will build trust. Yeah. And that helps us, helps us make progress. Uh, any final closing words? No, well said. Okay. Couldn't agree more. Uh, good. Well, so can we trust agencies? Yes, we can. Trust. Next week, find out how to verify so that you can trust more. Okay, we'll see you next time. Bye for now. Thanks for watching Media Snack Live. If you found it helpful and want to learn more, head to idcoms.com to get more tips, tools, and resources to help you get good at media. We'll see you next week.

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