FirmDecisions in the press: Taking the sting out of digital advertisings Tech Tax

A view from Federica Bowman, Managing director, Digital, FirmDecisions on the digital trading ecosystem, and the urge for advertisers to be wary of the 'tech tax'” has been featured in Accountancy Age.

Transparency is a big issue in the digital space. The digital media trading ecosystem is much more complicated, with many more links in the transactional chain, than the simply advertiser – media agency – publisher system. As a result, according to the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), as much as 55 percent of advertising budgets invested in programmatic media buying – that’s 55p in every pound spent – is taken up by these intermediary third parties before any money is paid to publishers. This is known in the advertising industry as the ‘Tech Tax’. To ensure advertisers increase transparency and eliminate unnecessary costs whilst improving performance in the digital media supply chain, Federica suggests two steps:

1. Regularly review and update agency contracts.
2. Ensure that trading is transparent by auditing agency compliance with the contract. By understanding what different vendors contribute to overall performance, advertisers are now proactively reducing the risk of being stung by the Tech Tax.

To read the article in full on Accountancy Age’s website, please click here.

First featured: 23/10/2018