But simple, monolithic solutions are rarely the best ones, and the answer to opacity is not as simple as flicking the switch on a viewing ability vendor alone.

"Transparency" is not a singular checkbox to tick. To a savvy marketer, it consists of several layers of visibility and control, which necessitates adoption of a more diverse definition and approach. There are four areas all marketers should really be talking about when they think about "transparency:"

1. Viewability

Few would argue against the idea that, for an ad to be valuable, it first must have the opportunity to be seen. So "transparency" as a synonym for "visibility" often leads marketers here as their first stop.

As the Media Rating Council (MRC) and Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) have issued a definition for viewable inventory, there is at least a common metric for measurement. As such, this industry viewability metric has become an important starting point for any buyer's transparency odyssey.  However, whether or not the metric is stringent enough, or able to be imposed consistently across different screens and formats, is a different story.

With many vendors' measurements differing, therefore making it difficult to center on a single source of truth, "viewability" is but one piece of the transparency puzzle. The important thing is for buyers to not let this fact deter them from using any metric at all. Starting with industry viewability, at least, provides a baseline against which to measure.

2. Fraud

The second piece of the transparency puzzle is ensuring that advertising both appears on legitimate sites and is engaged by an actual human. Imagine if, in the days of face-to-face ad buying, a rogue salesman could have impersonated a premium publisher by simply wearing a fake mustache. As far-fetched as that sounds, it's exactly what's happening in some corners of the internet today.

A central contributor to this is called domain spoofing, where falsified websites designed to look like top-tier publishers fool ad buyers into believing they are buying space on a legitimate site when they are in fact buying from a very different, dishonest imitator.  A close cousin also causing consternation for marketers are sites or articles created to lure in visitors with false headlines and content, further escalating concerns over placement quality and brand safety. Rounding out this nefarious fraud squad are designers of software meant to imitate actions of actual web browsers, simulating the viewing and clicking of ads, generating false "bot" — or non-human — traffic and clicks.

Fraud of this kind is very different from the viewability questions raised previously as technically one of these fraudulent ads could meet the industry standard of being viewable while still clearly not delivering a valuable ad interaction. What is clear is that much of this ad scourge can be eliminated by the vigilant shining of the bright lights of transparency and measurement onto performance which, when done at a granular level, provide the information and insights to help avoid these felonious players. 

Development of white- and blacklists to target ad placements to known urls, and block those know to be illegitimate, is one commonly used tactic, as is close monitoring or alerts settings around unusually high traffic or clicks, which may signal false players. Additionally, buyers should consider adoption of fraud detection and prevention services, which focus solely on exposing fraudulent actors and can act as a marketer's sentry in the field as well as demanding more granular level reporting and monitoring from their vendor partners to catch criminal actors in the act.

3. Spend

Do you know how your money was spent last month? One of the major drivers behind transparency concerns is that marketers have precious little visibility as to how partners actually spend the dollars being handed to them.

Both managed service providers and tech platforms have questions to answer. By the time a publisher has put inventory into an exchange, that may be further aggregated into a supply-side platform (SSP) and then a demand-side platform (DSP), with each taking a share of their earnings.  It's typical for up to 60% of actual media spend to get swallowed up by these intermediaries in what's called a "tech tax." Agencies and other service providers also have a variety of fees on top of that and, depending on how transparent those are, it can be difficult for a marketer to understand the true cost of the media bought on their behalf.

A further driving concern for advertisers regarding their vendor and agency fees is uncertainty around any potential conflict of interest around spend decisions which may be driven by discounts, rebates, internal fees and profits, or other incentives which may favor profitability versus performance.

To gain spending transparency from their partners, brands must demand visibility and performance, adopting contract terms that require ongoing reporting to ensure decision making meets the best interest of their business.

4. Actions

Most of the available tools tend to focus on the "what" of transparency, but what about the "why"?

If an agency moved all your video spending from one vendor to another, you would want to know when that happened, as well as the reason why. Are decisions being taken in your best interest or for the agency, and what was the rationale? If you control your company's marketing budget, you need to have knowledge and confidence around who is making these decisions and what's driving them to do so.

That's why marketers must seek out solutions or relations in which partners provide transparency to all campaign changes and actions, together with the motivation. That may be a data feed or software dashboard — but it could also mean writing better evidence into soft-copy reports or regular meetings.

This is not dissimilar from financial services, where fund managers are not allowed to invest large sums for clients on authority and blind trust; they must instead provide regular reporting on their investment activities, what comprises the fund and which ones are performing and which are not as evidence. Now, it's time advertisers were able to expect the same from their ad partners.

Transparency is one of the key challenges facing the ad industry today. But it's almost certainly not a single-point problem, and can't be solved by a single silver bullet.

Taken together, this new lexicon for addressing the challenges of transparency offers marketers and practitioners across the ad tech supply chain a way to create confidence and visibility together to drive the best business decisions and best performance for a marketer's ad spend.