Proprietary media isn’t the problem. Undisclosed media is

Opinion

What kind of market do we want? One where opacity props up margins and accelerates short-termism, or one where transparent economics, auditable outcomes and open comparability reward what actually sustains quality media?

Proprietary media has been rebranded and rebundled: first as “inventory”, now, increasingly, as “outcomes”. Some of it is useful. Much of it remains opaque.

As a client, my test is simple: if it doesn’t drive the short- and long-term measures that move the business, it doesn’t get bought.

To know whether it does, I need daylight — transparency, verification and comparability — every time.

What’s genuinely on offer

There are honest reasons to consider it. Price certainty and speed when supply is tight. Risk that sits on the agency’s balance sheet rather than the client’s. Access to inventory or value-adds that are hard to secure piecemeal. Packaged data and tech that can reduce friction — provided the economics are disclosed.

Used selectively, with client permission, and proven against open-market alternatives, it can add value.

The question is how often that version is on the table. Of 13 senior media leaders I polled recently, 12 said proprietary media had been pitched to them as flagged, but with the economics undisclosed or hard to compare against the open market. One had seen it clearly flagged and fully disclosed. A straw poll, not a study — but a telling one.

The problems we can’t ignore

Structural conflict. When the advisor is also the seller, the pull can shift from the best outcome for the client to clearing agency-held stock. However well-intentioned the people, the incentives are misaligned.

Opaque economics. Undisclosed margins and limited access to placement and log-level data weaken governance and optimisation. If a client can’t see where its ads ran and at what net cost, it can’t manage quality or value.

Market distortion. Concentration risks a two-tier market: smaller brands and independent agencies are squeezed out, and independent media owners are pressured into unsustainable terms. That erodes the quality environments advertising needs.

Outcomes last. Too often, the “outcomes” in these offers are vendor-defined, short-term proxies: last-click CPA, view completions, unauditable “lift”. Tying opaque inventory to convenient numbers accelerates the drift into the lower funnel and crowds out the brand building that compounds over time.

What counts as an outcome and what doesn’t

An outcome is not a platform conversion, a guaranteed CPA, or a blended “efficiency” score nobody can inspect. An outcome is a verifiable, incremental movement in a metric the business actually cares about: profitable sales, revenue quality, durable customer value.

It should be measured independently — market mix modelling triangulated with experiments, geo-splits and brand lift — not by the seller marking its own homework.

Two non-negotiables follow. Like-for-like comparison against transparent routes. And log-level clarity on where ads ran and what they cost. If proprietary inventory can beat the open market on that yardstick, it earns its place on the plan. If it can’t be verified, it shouldn’t be bought.

The view from the other side

One senior industry insider, with years on the buying side of these deals, told me the idea that proprietary media is flogged top-down to hit a quarter is a misconception.

Agencies aren’t built like sales operations, and most client leaders — the people facing clients day in, day out — still start by doing the best possible work. Proprietary media, done properly, can be part of that.

I take that at face value. But note what even the fairest defence concedes. Asked what would break if every proprietary deal required raw log files and independent measurement tomorrow, his answer: the data should already be available — all of it, except the price the agency paid. And the one opaque practice he’d stop tomorrow to rebuild trust? Hiding which lines of the plan are proprietary.

That is the whole argument in miniature. The people are largely honest. The structure is not.

The short-termism trap

Our industry is already dangerously short-term. “Guaranteed outcomes” bundled with inventory make this worse: they privilege what is easiest to claim over what is truest to measure.

The risk is a brittle growth engine: short-term wins masking eroding demand, weaker pricing power and fewer premium environments.

This is not anti-performance; it is pro-evidence. If an inventory-led package genuinely delivers incremental profit today without cannibalising tomorrow, prove it independently, and I’ll scale it. If not, advertisers are subsidising someone else’s margin with their own future growth.

Has the industry course-corrected? Not enough

Progress exists on paper. ISBA’s guidance, published in February, gives advertisers a clear playbook: define proprietary media in contracts, approve it line by line, label it separately on plans, demand proof of delivery and placement data, evaluate it continuously against alternatives — and consider capping the share of spend it can take.

And transparency demonstrably improves value. The ISBA/PwC programmatic studies cut the “unknown delta” of unattributable spend from a restated 17% in 2020 to 3% in the follow-up — achieved, it should be said, at the premium end of the market, with log-level data and serious audit effort. That caveat is not a weakness in the argument; it is the argument: sunlight works precisely where it is let in.

Yet too many proprietary pitches remain sealed units: bundled data and inventory with limited comparability, “outcomes” defined by the seller, and audit rights that evaporate in the small print. That’s not a course correction. It’s a rebrand.

The stance I’d urge every client to take

• Permission, not presumption. Proprietary media is opt-in, line by line. No default bundling.
• Daylight on delivery. Separate plan lines, disclosed economics, placement and log-level data, and audit rights as standard.
• Prove it wins. Independent measurement — MMM plus experiments — showing net incremental value versus transparent routes before scaling.
• Keep competition alive. Always benchmark against non-proprietary options; avoid exclusivity that blocks comparison.
• Balance horizons. Hold proprietary buys to both short-term efficiency and long-term effects on base sales and brand.

A challenge to the industry

As an industry, we need to decide what kind of market we want: one where opacity props up margins and accelerates short-termism, or one where transparent economics, auditable outcomes and open comparability reward what actually grows businesses and sustains quality media.

Proprietary media isn’t inherently bad; undisclosed media is. If agencies want to act like media owners, they should embrace owner-grade disclosure and independent verification. If platforms want to claim outcomes, they should accept third-party measurement.

I’d urge holding companies and platforms to work with ISBA and advertisers to develop enforceable standards for permissioning, data access, and verification.

Advertisers will reward the partners who step into the light. Everyone else will be left explaining neat numbers that don’t move the business.

Ryan Gardiner is the head of media and social at Just Eat