A new survey completed by global marketers and conducted by NewBase has revealed some major concerns from advertisers around transparency, brand safety and trust in media.

The follow-up of the Marketing Priorities research these new survey results from NewBase reveal that most marketers have seen little or no change in the past year.

Over a year ago P&G marketing boss Marc Pritchard was giving one of 2017’s most important speeches for the ad world. His rallying call for a clean-up of the digital supply chain addressed the importance of transparency, trust and accuracy. Since then over 6,000 articles have been written praising these concepts and his words were used as a conversation starter for most of 2017.

In mid-2017, the NewBase Marketing Priorities report showed that the majority of marketing and advertising professionals were united in identifying the key issues of a too complex digital ecosystem, while 96% of the industry wanted greater collaboration and transparency between agencies, brands publishers and ad tech, 90% of them highlighted the urgency of having standard digital audience verification measurements.

Mike Jeanes, head of insights at NewBase said: “Despite more than a year of the world’s biggest advertisers pulling back digital ad spend the industry is still very far from looking like a transparent sector.”

Have things actually improved, changed at all or gotten worse?

When asked again this year the main observation was that a lot remains to be done to improve things with 64% of marketers and advertisers believing there has been no change, or that the situation has worsened when it comes to increased transparency in the procurement process. In terms of viewability standards the perceptions fare little better with 60% reporting things are worse or haven’t changed. Finally control over brand safety is not in better shape either according to 59% of marketers and advertisers.

Even though these findings depict a not so bright picture of the advertising sector much can be implemented to clean up the supply chain and create a healthier and more responsible industry. Media buying suppliers for instance have already developed the technology to provide brands and marketers real-time performance data on programmatic campaigns and can now offer independent trading desks by working with multiple DSPs (Demand Side Platforms).

Simon Taylor, Regional Managing Director EMEA at Newbase added: “There are no more excuses for anything but 100% transparency and topics like this distract from the amazing developments in utilising technology and data in supporting brands in their journey innovation. The structures required to enable this are new and replace legacy trading desks that are still tracking media and not business KPIs.”

For more more information on the NewBase Marketing Priorities click here.