Media verification is a modern, continuous way for advertisers to check that agencies, platforms, and partners are delivering what was promised, across quality, commercial terms, and outcomes, not just media price. It gives CMOs and procurement leaders objective evidence that their media investment is protected and aligned to growth.
If you are a CMO, Procurement Director, or Global Head of Media, you probably feel two competing truths at the same time: You broadly trust your agencies, yet you are less and less confident that you truly know where every dollar goes.
You are not alone. In our conversations with senior procurement and media leaders across global brands, the consistent theme is not distrust. In fact, most describe strong, collaborative partnerships with agencies. The real source of anxiety is the complexity of the marketplace and the speed at which the commercial model is changing.
In the episode, we summarize this reality in one neat idea: trust enables the partnership, verification protects the investment. Trust is the emotional foundation for a healthy agency relationship. Verification is the practical discipline that ensures your media, technology, and data investments are actually working as intended.
Traditional media auditing grew up in a much simpler world. Ten years ago, the brief was basically: check rebates, check disclosed fees, benchmark TV or print pricing, and tick the compliance box. That model has been stretched beyond breaking point by a new reality in which agencies no longer simply buy media; they also build and sell proprietary technology products, AI tools, curated inventory, outcome-based models, data platforms, and more.
In this environment, simply asking whether your CPM was cheap enough is the wrong question. A race to the bottom on price has already contributed to a host of problems: junk inventory, made-for-advertising sites, fraudulent impressions, and opaque supply chains. The better question is: are we buying the right things in the right way to drive real business outcomes, and can anyone objectively prove it?
Verification answers that question by looking across your entire ecosystem and tying performance back to what the business actually cares about: growth, margin, market share, and long-term customer value.
Media governance today means defining clear success criteria, then independently checking that agencies, platforms, and partners deliver against them across commercials, quality, execution, and relationship health. This turns 'trust but verify' into a practical operating system that protects media investment and unlocks competitive advantage.
In our classic #MediaSnack style, we frame the discussion around three simple questions: what is going on, what are the implications, and how should marketers be thinking.
We start by reframing verification as a constructive discipline, not a hostile audit. Verification, done well, is embraced by both marketer and agency. It is a job neither party can reliably do alone, which is why independent specialists exist. The outcome is not a 200-page report that lives in a drawer. It is confidence and peace of mind that the investment is working and that any leaks or lost value are identified as opportunities to improve, not sticks to beat people with.
Over a decade of ID Comms consulting work, four big risk areas consistently show up:
In practical terms, advertisers often make the same four mistakes:
We recommend to advertisers that verification should be continuous, pragmatic, and holistic. It has to look at quality of execution, commercial performance, accuracy against the plan, and the health of the relationship itself. A quarterly rhythm that feeds into business decisions is far more useful than a single, backward-looking annual audit.
The media ecosystem has outgrown traditional auditing. Agencies now sell complex combinations of media, tech, and data products, while advertisers still rely on legacy checks focused on historical prices and rebates, leaving most modern risks and opportunities unexamined.
Across the conversations we have in the episode, a clear pattern emerges. Senior procurement and media leaders in both large and smaller organizations say the same thing: they do not fundamentally distrust their agencies. Quite the opposite. We talk about strong, collaborative partnerships where trust is high.
Yet we have to acknowledge feeling outpaced by the market. Agencies are building proprietary adtech stacks, AI optimization tools, outcome-based trading products, and retail media solutions that are hard for internal teams to fully understand. Retailers, platforms, and intermediaries each introduce their own data, fees, and black boxes.
At the same time, the range of media disciplines a CMO is responsible for has exploded. AI, programmatic, retail media, influencer marketing, proprietary inventory, measurement tech, SSPs, DSPs, and more now sit in the mix. Each brings new ways to create value, but also new places where value can quietly leak away.
Most advertisers still rely on annual audits designed for the old world. Those audits usually focus on three things: TV and offline pricing benchmarks, rebate compliance, and invoice reconciliation. They provide a tick in the governance box but leave major questions unanswered about digital supply chains, data usage, AI decision-making, and modern commercial models.
In parallel, some brands continue to push aggressive price benchmarks. That pressure has helped create the race-to-the-bottom dynamics we now see in digital: made-for-advertising sites, fraudulent traffic, hidden arbitrage, and low-quality environments that might be cheap per impression but expensive in opportunity cost.
The result is a governance gap. Media spend is becoming more strategically important inside the business, yet the tools used to govern it are stuck in the past. Verification has emerged as the answer to the simple, board-level question David and I hear repeatedly: can we be confident that our media investment is delivering what the business needs?
Advertisers who fail to modernize media governance risk misaligned incentives, wasted spend, and missed growth, because outdated audits reward cheap impressions rather than verified quality, business outcomes, and healthy agency partnerships.
The first implication is strategic. If your KPIs for agencies focus only on media cost and channel-level metrics, you encourage behaviors that optimize for audit scores, not for growth. I share examples from the episode of scopes that ask agencies to 'be innovative' and 'deliver value'. These sound positive but are impossible to verify. If you cannot define success clearly, you cannot hold anyone to account.
Second, there is a financial implication. ID Comms often encourages advertisers to allocate less than 1% of their media budget to verification. That small investment helps protect the other 99% by identifying leaks, misalignments, and underperforming activity. Without it, CMOs are effectively flying blind in a multi-million-dollar cockpit.
Third, there is a relationship implication. Older, combative audit models damage trust. Agencies rightly feel beaten up on price and second-guessed on tactics without a balanced view of what was actually required to deliver outcomes. Modern verification flips that dynamic. It creates a shared, objective view of performance that both client and agency can use to improve.
Fourth, there is an organizational implication. Finance and procurement teams need more than anecdotes when they challenge media investment. I share the story of a media director who received a 200-page audit once a year, used it only as an insurance policy, and never extracted operational value. Verification instead should feed into quarterly business reviews, budget allocations, and optimization decisions.
Finally, there is a competitive implication. Brands that treat media purely as a cost will keep squeezing for cheaper CPMs. Brands that treat media as an investment, and verify rigorously, will find ways to reallocate spend toward the channels, partners, and formats that genuinely drive profitable growth. Over time, that becomes a source of structural competitive advantage.
Modern media leaders should define clear success criteria tied to business outcomes, then put independent, quarterly verification in place across the full media ecosystem, so they can make faster, better investment decisions and strengthen agency partnerships.
David and I outline four practical shifts every CMO, Procurement Director, and Global Head of Media should make.
First, define what success looks like. Move beyond vague expectations like 'deliver value' or 'be innovative'. Translate business goals into specific commercial, strategic, operational, and relationship KPIs. For example, link media performance to revenue growth in priority segments, improvement in profitable reach, or progress on sustainable customer value, not just channel metrics.
Second, verify independently. Independent verification does not signal distrust. It creates confidence. Agencies usually welcome the discipline when it is fair, transparent, and focused on improvement. The goal is not to catch people out; it is to give both sides a shared, data-backed view of what worked and what did not.
Third, verify continuously. The sweet spot for most global advertisers is a quarterly cadence. This allows verification insights to inform live optimizations and upcoming investment decisions. Annual, retrospective audits are simply too slow for modern media cycles.
Fourth, verify the whole ecosystem, not just price. That means:
Done well, this approach turns verification into a growth engine. It supplies the evidence you need to adjust strategy, reshape scopes, reallocate budget, and reward genuine performance.
For ID Comms clients, this is where the 'coach' mindset really matters. The best verification programs are structured feedback loops that help ambitious advertisers get good at media and turn governance into an everyday habit, not a once-a-year drama.
Q1. Does verification mean I do not trust my agency?
No. Verification is about protecting your investment, not questioning every decision. The most progressive marketers trust their agencies deeply and still use independent verification to give both sides confidence and a shared fact base.
Q2. How is verification different from a traditional media audit?
Traditional audits focus on historical prices and rebates, often once a year. Verification looks more broadly at quality, execution, commercials, and outcomes, on a more frequent cadence, so it can actually influence decisions.
Q3. How often should we verify our media investment?
Most large advertisers benefit from quarterly verification. That rhythm is frequent enough to shape in-flight optimization and upcoming budgets, without overwhelming teams with constant review.
Q4. Is verification only relevant for big-spending advertisers?
No. Any advertiser with meaningful media investment can benefit. The principle is the same whether you spend millions or tens of millions: allocate a small fraction of budget to protect the rest.
Q5. What parts of the media ecosystem should we verify?
You should verify agency performance, technology and data use, programmatic and retail media supply chains, proprietary inventory, commercial terms, and the health of the agency relationship and service levels.
Q6. Will independent verification damage our agency relationship?
Handled well, it usually strengthens the relationship. Agencies appreciate clear expectations and objective evidence that helps them improve. The key is to position verification as a shared improvement tool, not a witch-hunt.
Q7. How do we link verification to business outcomes, not just media metrics?
Start by defining success in business terms, such as growth, profit, or market share, then map how media should contribute. Design KPIs and verification checks that track this contribution, rather than only CPMs or CTRs.
Q8. What does verification typically cost?
As Tom and David explain, it should be a tiny fraction of your total media budget. Many advertisers allocate less than 1% of spend, which is usually enough to protect the remaining 99% and uncover meaningful optimisation opportunities.
Q9. Can we rely on agency dashboards instead of independent verification?
Agency dashboards are useful, but they still represent the agency marking its own homework. Independent verification provides objectivity, checks for errors, and helps interpret the data in the context of your commercial priorities.
Q10. How do we get started if we have never audited or verified before?
Begin by defining what success looks like for media in your organization, identify the highest-risk or highest-value areas of spend, and run a focused verification pilot there. Use the insights to build a broader, continuous program over time.
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 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. Trust but verify. Yes. Um, welcome to Media Snack Live. Uh, if you're new here, this is our weekly live. stream every, same time every Friday, 11:00 AM Eastern, 4:00 PM UK and around the world. Today, we're, we're doing a follow-on from our episode from last week, David, where we, we kind of shared with the, with, with you all this prompt that we'd got from a CMO saying- Yeah ... can you actually trust agent- any agencies these days? We're like, yes. So if you wanna watch last week's episode, we'll link to it. Today, we're following up, um, because some of our advice from last week was really grounded in this idea of trust but verify, which has been around a little while, hasn't it, that idea? Thanks to Marc Pritchard, like eight, nine years ago, where he said that that's Procter & Gamble's view of working with agencies and the media supply chain was trust, assume trust, but then verify. Yeah. Um, so the inevitable kind of popular question when we talk about trust with advertisers and their trust in agencies is, okay, trust but verify, right? But what does that, what does verify mean? How do we do that? So that's what we're gonna do today. Yeah. So stick with us because we'll go through this and we're gonna kind of unpack in a, in a couple of different ways. We're gonna talk about what the biggest risks are, just to kind of understand where the verification is required. Yeah. We're gonna look at what marketers, what we see in our consulting practice, what we see marketers are doing, some good things and some maybe not so good things. And then we're gonna come to talk about the things that we, in our view, really should be doing if we were the advertiser. And, and as many of you know, we are, uh, close, we work as close counsel and advisor to many CMOs and marketing teams and procurement teams around the world. Okay. Uh, the first thing to say is that verification isn't, uh, isn't suspicion. No. If you wanna verify... And we preferred using, t- thinking, talking about verifying than just auditing, for example. Um, auditing sounds, like, quite hostile- Mm-hmm ... and as if there's suspicion that needs to be kind of got to the bottom of. Verification, if it's done well, is embraced by both the marketer and the agency. Um, it's a role which neither of them independently, in our experience, can do. Um, and why a lot of companies come to companies like us that can provide that independent verification. So you're right to be thinking we have a horse in the race here. Okay? But we set our business up to be able to provide the service to verify for advertisers and to reassure them of the strength of their relationship with their agency. So in our experience over 10 years doing this, um, we find it's actually very constructive and very productive for both sides. Um, our job through verification or any marketer doing verification, is to get more confidence in their media investment, in their technology, in their agency relationships. And just to be able to rest easy, honestly, it's peace of mind is what you're buying. That everything that you've set up as the, as the advertiser is working as you've intended it' to work. Uh, and that any risks or particularly leaks or loss of value, which we don't go around pointing fingers, we just point at where the opportunity is to improve. Um, that's really what the marketer gets from, from kind of verification service. Yeah. So, uh, let's go through that. So we're gonna start with, like, what are the biggest risks? Then we're gonna think about what's, what's, what do we see marketers do that perhaps is not working so well? And then, then we're gonna look at what they should be doing in our view, uh, and experience. If you're new here, uh, David and I are founders of a consulting business called IDCOMs. You can see the logo somewhere up here. Um, it is a independent and objective advisor and analytics firm, and we work with brands. Um, so our view is really from the marketer perspective. I often... I've worked primarily in agencies prior to this, but we've been doing this 10 years. And then David, you came largely from the brand side at Nike and Coca-Cola. So David's really the voice of the client often on, on? these, uh, all these kind of unpacking videos we do as an unboxing of, of verification. Uh, right. Okay. So where, where are the biggest risks now? Are they, and are they getting, m- growing or are they getting managed? Well, before I get into the, the risk, I just wanna kind of just share a little observation that I- Yeah ... kind of had. Um, over the last two weeks, I've had the great pleasure and privilege of speaking to about 10 very senior procurement and kind of media leaders- Mm-hmm ... um, uh, operating in big organizations and fairly kind of small ones. Uh, the one consistency is that I think they're fairly progressive in their thinking, and they look after media. Yeah. So that's, that's a, that was a critical, uh, you know, factor. Yeah. And, and I spoke to them because we're doing a piece of work, and I wanted to get their kind of insights. And, uh, the first thing I wanna share is, without exception, uh, none of these procurement or media leaders appeared distrustful of their agencies. That was the first thing. Yeah. That narrative came out really, really, really clearly. Yeah. Quite the opposite. Uh, most described kind of really strong, collaborative- Partnerships. Um, and so the need for accountability isn't based on suspicion. Mm. What came through from them, it was driven by the complexity of the marketplace. Yeah. And so, uh, th- the role of accountability is changing. It's changing from needing to police agencies- Mm ... to providing kind of confidence, uh, in- Yeah ... in their, in the way that they invest clients' money. And the, and I'm gonna ... There's one quote that I loved, by the way. I can't, I can't attribute it to any of them because then you'd know which brands we're working with. But- Yeah ... one media leader said to me, "Trust enables the partnership." Yeah. "Verification protects the investment." Yeah. And, and I th- I, I kind of love that, and I love that kind of broad, open-minded kind of thinking. So if I see an- See, that sums up, that really sums up really well the sentiment that we get from the advertiser. Yeah. Yeah. Because I mean, clients aren't asking for a better audit. What they're asking for- Yeah ... is a better way of governing media- Yeah ... or governing their investment, and so that's kind of really important. So let's- Mm. I just wanted to kind of just set the scene before I get into, um, uh, into the kind of the risks. But I, I kind of see, uh, a kind of four or five risks at the moment. The, the first is that the commercial model is changing. You know- Mm ... 10 years ago, you know, you'd audit a, a business because you'd want it to look at the rebates, the media fees, which were fairly, you know, obvious, and maybe some kind of media pricing, and make sure that you had your contract in place. But the commercial model has changed so much now within the agency partnerships. They're no longer just simply buying media. They're creating products, whether that be- Yeah ... proprietary technology products, whether it be proprietary media, whether it be AI platforms or data platforms, uh, outcomes that are guaranteed based on kind of media inputs. They are selling, uh, a whole host of different products that are different, add value, but they are different to anything we've ever seen before. Okay? Yeah. So the commercial model is changing, and the verification needs to focus on the ability of agencies to show. where they are adding value across all of these things- Yeah ... and where they are making money. That's the first thing. The second thing is information asymmetry. Uh, the market is so complex that- Yeah ... the media agencies, the tech partners, the retail media partners, they are so far more advanced in their understanding and capabilities of those disciplines, that marketeers can never compete. So again, verifying where the value is coming from is absolutely critical when you' are at a disadvantage in terms of your knowledge base. Yeah. Um, the next one is, is around complexity. So, you know, marketeers nowadays are navigating AI. They're programmatic, retail media, influencer marketing, uh, proprietary inventory media. It is SSPs, DSPs. Everything is so complex and confusing that none of them individually create a problem. But you need to know how each of them are adding to your investment productivity. Yeah. That's kind of really critical. And then the, I think the, the f- the fourth thing is that in many cases we're, measuring the, wrong things. Mm. So we're, we're measuring CPMs, CR- CTRs, CPAs, uh, some form of outcome, but that's not what marketeers are measuring themselves against. They're measuring themselves against growth- Mm ... against profitability, against market share, against sustainable customer long-term value. Yeah. And yet the media metrics, the, that is often, uh, imposed on media agencies don't reflect the market and marketing conditions that these marketeers operate in. Yeah. So those are kind of the, the, the risks, because we're having to convert really quickly to a modern way of managing media, yet the infrastructure by which we, um, evaluate and, uh, and verify, if you like, agency performance hasn't evolved at the same kind of pace. Yeah. So we're evaluating them based on the wrong old metrics in a marketplace that is way too complicated without, uh, the right protocols in place to get the reassurance that the agencies are doing the right thing. So- Yeah ... this is about protecting your investment and verifying that it's going in the right direction. Yeah. Very good. Good. Okay. So those are the, those are the, the main four risks, and I know that we've discussed a whole bunch of other risks. Um, uh, and we' do discuss a bunch of other risks. We're trying to condense that down into kind of a usable, usable, uh, number for the purposes of, you know, a live stream. Just worth reminding you, if you're not familiar, once we' do this live stream, we do write it. up, um, our advice, in a more structured way. It will appear on our blog if you go to idcoms.com. Um, so if the, if you wanna, you know ... Obviously on a live stream we' can't put these things up, on screen, 'cause we're just kind of talking through our, our approaches to these things and sharing insights about how we talk with and support marketers. Um, uh, but the website will have a, a kind of structured response. Let's just think about then what's actually happening. I mean, typically in the show we talk about what are the implications. Yeah. I think for this what, what, the question is, you know, what are marketeers currently doing in that world- Yeah ... in that world of those four big risks? And- Then you're gonna come and tell us about, you know, maybe what they should be- Yeah ... thinking about because these are questions that we get frequently. Yeah. And as we do on Media Snack, we just share that with everybody, you know? So, uh, you know, but th- this is like real, real, real-world advice. Yeah. Um, a few, a few kind of observations and implications because of those risks. The first thing, let's call it a mistake, okay? Let's just say that the- these are maybe mistakes that marketers are, are making or marketing- Yeah ... procurement are making. The first k- mistake is that, uh, they're confusing benchmarking with verification. Yeah. Okay? And let me just clarify what we mean by that. Benchmarking will tell you... Is a really, a, a kind of forensic look at media buying specifically, as you said. You know, it's, you're looking through one very, um, you know, one of rather narrow part of the mix. It's a lot of money, but that just tells you whether your media buying was competitive. It doesn't really tell you whether you're buying the right thing. Yeah. And it creates, as we've talked about over the years, it can create a race to the bottom on cost, where agency performance is seen as being very good if they were to buy something far cheaper than another agency. And what that's done is it created these agencies that have scaled out and they just wanna try and buy as cheap media as possible. And if you're following the, the story in the marketplace and you wanna know wider kind of context and implications to that, a lot of the transparency issues that we deal with, made for advertising sites, you know, fraudulent impressions, ad fraud, all stem from this race to the bottom, is to try and provide you with cheaper and cheaper media impressions. So that's one mistake. It really is a mistake, is to focus f- far too much on trying to benchmark price and not thinking about verifying performance. Okay? Verification, alternatively, actually tells you whether your agency, if you're using an agency to buy, fulfilled its contractual and commercial obligations to you, 'cause that's really what this is about. Okay? You've hired an agency with a scope of work. You tell them what to do. You have a contract which determines exactly what they, they should be doing. And what you do is you let them go off and buy, and then you ask... All you do is you ask them how much they paid. What you really wanna know is, did they deliver against that scope? Uh, do they, have they been buying media within the guidelines that we've s- laid out right at the beginning of the relationship? Yeah. Are they hitting certain quality parameters and not just buying the cheapest shit that they can get away with buying and serving you in, you know, spreadsheets that are impenetrable and you... or dashboards that you can't actually figure out what was any good or what was not any good. Okay? Um, so verification... Have to put an adult rating on this now, I've sworn. But it's really important. Uh, were the plans delivered? Were the outcomes met? Okay? Benchmarking is a very different discipline to verification. What we like to do as verification is really looking about, more holistically, what was the impact of that overall investment. Okay? Mistake number two that we see a lot is advertisers relying too much on the agency to mark their own homework. And the reason that that is a ch- a mistake is not because agencies cannot be trusted. It's just that, A, you're asking somebody who's looking after millions and millions of dollars of your money to grade themselves in their performance of that. Okay? So inevitably, we would all be the same. Inevitably, you're not always gonna get the f- the honest, blunt truth. The other reality is that, and we know this, having worked in agencies and we work very closely with agencies, is that agencies are buying trillions of media impressions on behalf of hundreds of advertisers spending billions of dollars, and mistakes happen. Mm. Okay? Uh, plans are not executed properly, wrong demographic is bought, you know, things are not recorded. We overspend, underspend. You know, these are all things that just have to be independently ve- verified. Okay? Uh, the, it's not normally within the agency's scope of work to actually go back and check lots of things, and they just typically just don't do that. They're so- Mm ... busy operationalizing their giant media machine and onto the next thing, uh, that they don't, and they're not scoped to pause, analyze, reflect, and show verification. That's why agencies typically value the work that we do because often we're saying, "Hey, this is, these are some of the things that, that we found." Agencies then go implement that in future workflow. So we help them improve and optimize. Um, so from the advertiser perspective, you can't just rely on the agency to mark their own homework. They, you know, agencies, all agencies these days have all kinds of dashboards, and they hand that dashboard to the advertiser and they, as if to say, "Look, you check it." And the advertiser, A, doesn't necessarily have the time or the capability or the, uh, capacity or the skill to know what they're necessarily looking at, and that's what we provide to the advertiser. Yeah. Um, that oversight is super, super helpful. The next mistake, let's say, is reviewing too much history instead of looking at recent performance. So traditionally, the kind of media audit which we provide, as well as these kind of long-term, you know, audit for, for direct media, what we might call the more traditional media, TV, print, radio, outdoor, all that stuff. Um, particularly TV has massive lag time in actually getting the information. And so by the time you really get the insight, it's too late to actually do anything about it, but you do have a verification of what you bought, what you paid, and whether it met those quality guidelines. So it's really important to do that, and we're working across the industry to try to reduce those, those time lags as much as possible because advertisers want information as soon as possible. Um, but real modern governance around media needs to be helping marketers make those better decisions- Either whilst campaigns are actually still active, which is what agencies want to be doing, is optimizing in, in real time, and we can provide a verification service that allows them to, uh, make corrections and improvements in campaign or very s- quickly afterwards- Yeah ... to affect the next level of capital allocation. Um, verification compared to an audit is faster, better, and probably cheaper. And the final thing is, and this is a big one that w- that we've been talking about for 10 years or more, is that with inside the advertiser, media is still seen as a commodity and it's valued on its cost. But for more than... If you've been following Media Snack, we've been doing Media Snack for 10 years, and we've been in business over 10 years, and we've said right from the very outset, media is an investment in growth. The opportunity to get it right is really compelling, and that if you see it as an investment, then you're more likely to really focus on things that drive an outcome for the business. If you see media as a cost, and you're trying to just reduce that cost every time, you see it as a commodity, and you're not u- really using it to optimize a particular business outcome. Media impl- implemented really well gives brands competitive advantage. We see it every single day. Marketers and procurement leaders that really wanna get their hands and head around media and how to make it a competitive advantage for their brands, how to make every dollar work harder. Yeah. Every impact to be more, more powerful, to minimize waste. Um, that's what all of this verification can help you do because it's gonna highlight where things are not working very well. Um, so those are probably four things that, again, there, there's other mistakes that we find, but, you know, focusing on b- verification more important than trying to benchmark cost. Don't rely on agencies just to mark homework because it's not in their core competence particularly, and also it's not objective, of course. Um, don't look too far back. Try to keep it as contemporary and as quick, quick as possible. Um, and we've got to look beyond, uh, just cost. And what that really means is looking at quality, so we do a quality evaluation. We look at the, the methods of execution, accuracy, um, compliance to, uh, planning guidelines or quality parameters that are set in place for, for media campaigns. The agency's got to be buying the right stuff. Doesn't matter how cheap it is. Buy the right things. Um, the commercial performance, so if there were particular commercial targets to be hit. And then the other thing that's really important, right, that we spend a lot of time thinking about, is the, the, the health of the relationship between- Yeah ... the advertiser and the agency- It's a huge one ... which, again, we quantify on a normally a quarterly or half-yearly basis, um, in reviews with that agency to make sure that the service levels of the scope of work that you've got in place are correct. That's verifying that the agency is really set up to do its job, uh, really well. Okay. S- Mis- some mistakes are made. What are we advising advertisers to actually do when they say, "How do we verify?" Okay. Let's start. Well, the, the first thing that I would recommend marketeers do is define what success looks like. Yeah. Um, do you know what the worst KPI that I've ever seen delivered to an agency is? Mm-hmm. It's, uh, in inverted commas, uh, "deliver value." I mean, what, what on earth does that mean? How do you- And that we do, we do see these weird things- Yeah ... creep up in kind of scopes of work, right? You know. Yeah. Be, be creative. Be creative- That's what, like, well ... or be innovative. Like, just- Yeah ... be innovative and, and, and deliver value. So- Yeah. So it might, it might sound appropriate, but it's, it's, frankly, it's hopeless. Uh, because y- you can't, you can't, uh, verify, it, and you can't track it. Yeah. Um, so, so the, the clearer you can be in terms of what success looks like both commercially, strategically, operationally, uh, from a, from a, a, a relationship perspective, from an innovation perspective. What does success look like? Yeah. The better you can define that as a marketeer, the easier it is to verify. So it begins- Yeah ... with defining what success looks like. That's the first thing. Mm-hmm. The second thing is, and you mentioned it as one of the, the, the mistakes perhaps, is- Yeah ... verify independently. You know, um, independent verification creates confidence. Uh, it's not, doesn't create conflict, and actually agencies we know embrace it because- Yeah ... uh, you know, modern auditing isn't about being combative with the agencies. It isn't about, you know, the billet rack and making sure that your prices are against them, and if you, if you've gone below the billet rack or above it, you get a beating from the audit. There's none of that. This is a collaborative process with two parties, the, the, the independent consultant and the agencies, uh, in unison trying to deliver good work and deliver growth for that, for that client. So that- Yeah ... that's really kind of important. So do- Yeah ... verify independently. Yeah. Verify continuously. And what I mean continuously, I don't mean every day. But at the very least, verify quarterly. Uh, these annual epic audit reports that bore people to death and that- ... nobody remembers anything of- Yeah ... are, are prehistoric. Nobody wants those any longer. Make sure that the verification insights that you generate are driving more informed, considered decision-making with your media investments, again, to drive incrementality and to drive business growth. Mm, yeah. And then finally- So on, so on that last one- Yeah ... I've just done an, an anecdote I've shared with you, but I, I don't think I've ever shared with viewers is, um- You know, w- we ask, we ask advertisers about their relationships with auditing in, in, in the past and, you know, we, we've been on a mission to try and kind of modernize that, and that's what we offer right now. But, you know, I remember a very high-profile media director that we did some work with who, uh, worked with one of the more traditional auditors and would- and s- literally said, like, "Once a year, they deliver me a 200-page document," okay? Which we'd kind of fall asleep in the presentation. It's interesting. The last five minutes are maybe interesting, 'cause they told us, like, the overall. He goes, "Then I take the ... They give me a hard, copy and I stick it in a drawer. And then if my FD or, you know, my CFO knocks and says, 'Hey," you know, like, 'How was the- how was your media audit?' I just whip it out and I go, 'It's all great.' And I flip through and I show them, and it's basically like an insurance policy." Yeah. That's right. "It just keeps finance kind of off my, you know, bat them away like flies." Um, and that's the purpose that it served, and that was costing him $100,000 a year or something- Yeah. ... you know, just to kind of get a big stack of paper. We can just do so much better than that. And I know that, that? particular media director is now off doing wonderful things and- Yeah. ... you know, and just really appreciating kind of the values of proper verification. Yeah. But that is really common, isn't it? Stick it in a drawer as an insurance policy once a year. If anyone bothers me, I can say, "Look, w- independent audited, independent whatever-" Yeah "... it's fine. You don't have to worry about it." And way to go- Because it's a, it's a, it's a compliance role, right? I mean- Yeah ... you know, with, for advertisers that spend huge amounts of money, part of their, uh, procurement governance is to have it audited. Nobody actually kind of looks at the data. Uh, and, you know, of that 200-page, uh, book, can you imagine how impenetrable the slides were, right? Yeah. The amount of numbers and information that nobody kind of really picked up on. So- Yeah. So, but it has to be useful. It has to be useful. If you see media as a, as an investment in growth, you have to be analyzing and understanding where you can drive incremental improvements. You have to make sure that your media is more effective tomorrow than it was today or yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and then the, the f- the fourth thing that I would say to marketers is, is verify the whole ecosystem. I know that it's complicated- Yeah ... and it's, and it's, and it's challenging, but verifying media pricing and fees and a little bit of transparency is, is, is not enough. I mean, it's, it's okay, but it's not enough. Yeah. You know, you wanna be verifying, um, supply chain, technology, AI usage- Mm-hmm ... proprietary media, uh, campaign execution, the, the relationship. Make sure that you are, identifying, having defined what success looks like, first off, in all of those, in all of those elements. Yeah. Once you've defined those, make sure that you are verifying all of the components that will deliver that. Yeah. And then, and, and then you'll deliver competitive advantage without any question. Very good. Sounds easy. Um, uh, who needs to do verification? Well, I think, I think- Who, who's watching that should be saying, "Shit, I need to just do ... I need to get on with this and do this"? Well, I think, I think, I think all advertisers should be looking at evolving their current auditing, uh, approach to make it more, uh, verified. Okay? Mm-hmm. Auditing is one thing and, but we' say that many ad- many advertisers don't do that at all, right? They, they, they have absolutely no oversight on where that money is. So- Yeah ... uh, if you're, if you're in that bracket, then jump over the, the traditional auditing piece- ... and get into verification. Yeah. If you are, at least have some sort of governance protocols, uh, around auditing, then I think you need to elevate that. You know- Yeah ... this is not about, this is not about catch, trying to catch out your agencies. It's just the, it ... the media market has- Yeah ... has moved way beyond that. This is about answering one simple question. Can I be confident that my media investment is delivering exactly what my business needs it to do? Yeah. And that's what verification will allow, will allow you to, to do. Very good. Like that. Um, good. As I mentioned earlier, uh, we will, if you're watching this either live or on a kind of replay, um, either on LinkedIn or YouTube or somewhere else, you should be able to find a link back to a write-up of this. So w- so if you want to find out more, you can just go to idcoms.com. You can probably see it scrolling on the screen. Um, and we have tons of resources around this and many, many other things that we've shared with you over the years. Uh, just in terms of a, a wrap-up, it is a s- tiny investment as well. That's the other thing. It's like, what does this cost? It's a tiny investment, okay? We'd say to advertisers all the time, if you think about 100% of your media budget- Yeah ... okay, at least 95 of that needs to be working media. Yeah. Okay? Um, probably 4% of that might go in f- costs and fees. It's gonna vary. Yeah. Less than 1% needs to go on verification, and that verification is making sure the other 99-point-something is working as effectively as possible. It feels like a no-brainer. Yeah. Um, we see advertisers start to allocate, you know, ring-fence some budget to do some verification. We always say, "Just start counting. Just start-" Yeah ... "doing something." It will pay dividends always. Um, okay. W- we're at time. I just wanna wrap up. Just, I think the, the ... I love that quote that we got, um, this week. "Trust enables the partnership. Verification protects the investment." Um, I wrote that down 'cause I really like that. Uh, that's the thing to keep in mind, okay? So trust your agency. Incredibly important partner, particularly at the moment. Um, things are getting very complicated and agencies are train- changing. The way you go to market, the way you reach customers is changing. You're gonna need them as strategic partners, but get verification in place to make sure that every dollar is working as hard as it possibly can. Well said. Um, okay. On to the next. Uh, catch us next week. Catch this on the blog with all of our advice. Um, but thank you for watching, and 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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