Digital media’s ‘Figjam’ syndrome
For years, many in the digital media industry could not accept that, despite all the super-whizzo tech, there was a huge problem with the eco-system in which they operated. This smugness has bitten some, but there are signs collective action is now taking hold. Dominic Mills is (almost) enthused.
If you’re not aware of the term Figjam, let me explain.
Kevin Pietersen, for example, is one of several people who suffer from Figjam. Symptoms include over-confidence, smugness, solipsism and repetitive self-promotion. To some people, Jeremy Clarkson shows distressing signs of Figjam. You may work with someone who has Figjam, or for an organisation with it.
If you haven’t worked it out, Figjam is an acronym for ‘Fu*k, I’m good. Just ask me’.
I sometimes think the digital industry has Figjam. Signs are all around: every solution is ‘world-class’; every piece of tech is ‘leading-edge’; every platform is ‘proprietary’; and they are always ‘powering’ stuff. Nothing ever just ‘runs’ or ‘operates’ on a platform.
It’s just that, because the current digital media landscape is so ‘now’, so ‘of the moment’, it is only the likes of the inestimable Bob Hoffmann and a few others are brave enough to challenge the orthodoxy.
Anyway, this headline and standfirst from the FT caught my eye last week. ‘Matomy Media issues profit warning…blames decrease in amount of content [media] available to buy’.
Well, bugger me, I thought. Who knew that there was less media around to buy?
The world was turning upside down. Like most people, I believed there was an almost infinite amount of media to buy. And it was only going to get more, well, infinite.
But now Matomy was challenging one of my core assumptions, like flat-earthers felt when Magellan first said the world was round.
It turns out that Matomy is a London-listed ‘performance’ agency, 24.9 per cent owned by Publicis, that buys display, search, mobile and e-mail ads on behalf of clients like Amex, HSBC, Zynga and Experian. Most, but not all of the ads it buys, are PPC.
But it has an issue. This is how it describes it in the press release accompanying the profit warning, blaming “comprehensively stricter internal regulations imposed by various prominent media trading platforms, including a recent implementation by one of the leading media trading platforms of a new media verification and screening tool that resulted in an immediate decrease in the amount of digital media available for purchase (my emphasis).”
In plain English this means: the platforms run by the likes of Google, Facebook, AppNexus etc are tightening up on publisher inventory – i.e. less crap, less possibility for fraud, and greater likelihood of viewability – with the result that there’s more quality, less quantity.
The obvious conclusion is that Matomy has been buying tons of crap media – long-tail, distressed inventory, perhaps even fraudulent media. It therefore presents this as a problem.
But the truth is the reverse.
Media verification and screening tools are obviously working. Hooray. Hand those platforms a medal. About time too.
For years, however – and this is Figjam syndrome writ large – the digital media industry could not accept that, despite all their lovely tech and trademarked super-whizzo systems, there was a huge problem with the eco-system in which they operated.
Last year I wrote a column describing it as a ‘toxic cesspit‘. Now, at last, the industry has begun to clean it up.
Nearly everyone benefits: it’s good for advertisers because there’s less waste; it’s good for proper publishers because supply is restricted and quality thresholds will be raised; and it’s good for the digital media industry because, by acknowledging its weaknesses, it can begin to play to its strengths.
Of course, it’s probably not such a good thing for consumers because the advertising crap will be spread more thickly…but that’s a different story.
Meanwhile, I wonder how Matomy’s clients are reacting. They must be thinking: “Hang on, Matomy has been placing all our ads for years on crap or fraudulent locations, and they never told us there was a problem…?”
Even if most of the ads are placed on a PPC basis, and therefore – excluding fees – don’t cost the advertiser too much, it’s still a lot of wasted time and effort on their part, not to mention opportunity cost.
Where Matomy has been, so too must have other ‘performance’ agencies. Client trust is further degraded.
But putting two and two together, it seems to me that the certification programmes like that launched by AppNexus last year are finally beginning to bite.
As I understand it, Appnexus and its peers – Pubmatic, Rubicon, Google et al – have collectively agreed definitions of fraud, from which basis they can then audit and certificate inventory.
But we have a long way to go. How much of the inventory has been certified? By some estimates, it’s not much more than 30-40 per cent. And of course, it’s a task that requires eternal vigilance.
Meanwhile, levels of fraud remain high, according to Integral Ad Science (IAS), whose anti-fraud lab has just released this report into media quality.
It’s a fascinating read, but would be better if there were comparatives, and we could tell whether things are getting better or worse.
If there’s a single scary stat from the report, it’s that exchanges and networks experience four times the level of fraud compared to publishers.
Still, you have to start somewhere. The good news is that the problem is acknowledged, defined, and collective action is underway.