Iotec continues transparency momentum with new tool
Iotec, in partnership with adtech company Ad/Fin, had launched a new transparency tool to verify every campaign by a third party. Called iotec Sight, the new service will allow clients to run an independent assessment of media cost, performance and spend efficiency, across all the campaigns they run – giving advertisers an added level of oversight and introducing a new level of trust to the digital media supply chain.
Speaking about the tool at The Drum and The Sun Arms pub last week, Iotec chief executive, Paul Wright said: “We’ve positioned ourselves as an ethical adtech company and transparency is at the heart of what we do. This is an exciting move in an industry which needs more transparency.”
This initiative follows the launch of Iotec’s ethical adtech report and manifesto, in partnership with The Drum, a blueprint for the adtech industry for how the digital supply chain needs to overhauled to rebalance the ecosystem and respect all the parties within the chain.
The issue of transparency has never been more in the limelight as major tech companies find themselves under heat for failing to protect user data. Facebook came under fire as Cambridge Analytica recently revealed it was able to gain access to the data of 50 million Facebook users.
Wright described the Facebook story as a “watershed moment” in adtech, saying it only demonstrates that everyone in the industry needs to do a better job of working together.
“The industry needs to find better ways of engaging with consumers and creating trust in terms of what they’re getting. Everyone loves all these products that they get for free, but they need to understand what is happening in the background and I think it’s a big moment. The question will be how quickly the industry takes it on board and adjusts,” he said.
Siemens global senior online marketing manager, Pauliina Jamsa, agreed but added that the industry needs to focus less on technology and more on changing mind-sets to enforce real change.
“People give us their data because they trust us but as it’s not ours we use it recklessly and take advantage of it,” she said. “Instead of marketers blaming each other, they should work together because we need to change the way people actually use the data.”