• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, November 29, 2015

In Australia -- because for the last four days everyone in America has been in a turkey coma and not doing anything newsworthy, at least in the advertising space -- the Media Federation of Australia, in partnership with the Australian Association of National Advertisers, has unveiled its Australia Transparency Framework. 

The Framework is a set of guidelines to help the industry tackle ongoing fraud and transparency issues in advertising, particularly in programmatic. An email to MFA members read: “One of the challenges our industry has faced this year, both globally and locally, is in the area of a perceived lack of transparency by media agencies in relation to value extraction and the resulting impact this has had on our industry’s reputation. The MFA Board, working with PwC, set out early in the year to better understand the issue and determine how the MFA can play a positive role on an area that sits squarely within the bounds of agency/client commercial in confidence dealings.” 

The Framework addresses and sets guidelines for media agency rebates, commissions, agency trading desks, ethics and proper steps for disclosure. 

Of the direction the MFA took, the email continued: “A number of different avenues have been explored, including compulsory and opt-in compliance processes and member codes. However, following extensive consultation, we believe advertisers' own compliance processes and sound agency/advertiser contracts are of much greater importance. As a result, the MFA Transparency Framework has been developed in conjunction with the AANA, to set expectations for agencies and advertisers in the key areas of advertisers' concern.”