The 2016 ANA report on media transparency was a welcome and long-overdue wake-up call for the global advertiser community. By highlighting the existence of nontransparent trading practices in the U.S. media market — by most measures the largest and most sophisticated in the world — the report focused many national and global advertisers' attention on the issue of transparency in media. It was the first stepping stone on the journey to more transparent media trading.
The world's biggest advertisers took the lead in addressing the issue of transparency, on both their own behalf and that of the industry,...