Bill Duggan penned a piece in MediaVillage.com last week continuing the ANA's attack on ad agencies -- this time over production transparency, which is the code name for unethical and possibly illegal bid-rigging activities conducted by some agencies to secure production contracts at favorable rates. A previous transparency issue, media transparency, was investigated by ANA in 2016, and it confirmed instances of media agencies enriching themselves at client expense through rebates, kickbacks and other "non-transparent" practices, many of them not forbidden by existing contracts. Duggan summarized ANA's view about these two transparency issues: "The advertising industry continues to suffer from a transparency crisis, which has broken down trust between advertisers and agencies ... the ad agency community now needs to acknowledge and address these issues rather than continuing to issue denials …"
Who's Guilty and Who's Innocent in the Industry's Transparency Wars?
