Trust or Bust: Breaking Down Industry Transparency in 2025
At Advertising Week 2025, our Managing Director David Lucy led a thought-provoking panel to tackle one of the media industry's most pressing challenges: transparency between agencies and advertisers.
The session, aptly titled "Trust or Bust," brought together industry leaders to explore how to bridge the gap between transparency and effective business practices.
Setting the Stage
The panel featured Louise DiIulio (Chief Client Officer at Advertising Week), Omar Oakes (journalist and consultant), and Nicholas Louisson (Director of Agency Services at ISBA), alongside our own David Lucy.
DiIulio kicked things off by highlighting December19's founding principle: "do the right thing." She noted how this simple ethos has guided our approach for 15 years, resulting in numerous awards and B Corporation status.
December19's Transparency Ethos
David reinforced our agency's commitment to improving the media industry. "We are champions of trying to make the industry a better place and work better for clients and advertisers and for staff," he explained, emphasising our focus on performance and effectiveness.
When asked how much time December19 spends considering transparency, David offered a refreshing perspective: "When preparing for campaigns, not a huge amount, and I think that's the importance of it being cultural rather than conscious."
This statement cuts to the heart of December19's approach – transparency shouldn't be an afterthought but embedded in an agency's DNA. As David put it, "If you have to ask yourself too much, are we doing this right? You're probably not doing it right. It should just be your natural way of behaving."
Practical Application of Transparency
David shared concrete examples of how December19 puts transparency into practice:
Rebate Handling: When offered rebates that could increase agency profits, December19 takes a different approach. "We'll take that, but we'll give the value back to clients as value," David explained.
Programmatic Focus: David highlighted how December19 has invested significant time this year focusing on programmatic digital trading. "We started thinking about how can we do this better and what can we bring to the industry to have a solution that is transparent and compliant," he noted.
Industry Challenges in 2025
The panel identified several key transparency issues facing the industry:
Nicholas Louisson emphasised measurement challenges, noting that ISBA is launching Origin – a cross-media measurement system to deduplicate reach and frequency. He also mentioned retail media transparency and updates to the Media Services Framework contract.
Omar Oakes provided historical context, describing how the industry has evolved from its "maverick" roots toward professionalisation and sophistication – bringing increased complexity. He raised concerns about agencies increasingly investing in "inventory media" and "proprietary media solutions," questioning whether this creates potential conflicts of interest: "Are agencies acting in the best interests of their advertiser clients, or is it to service deals that they've done with media owners?"
Progress and Ongoing Work
Louisson shared some positive developments from ISBA's contract template update, noting improved access to data around media placement. However, he identified three areas needing additional work:
Proprietary Media: Despite some improvements, advertisers still struggle to understand "all the manifestations of proprietary media" – especially when bundled with technology, data, and even production.
Compliance Gaps: Discovering agencies aren't performing as expected after agreements are in place.
Generative AI: New terms are needed to address emerging risks and establish frameworks for mitigating those risks.
The Path Forward
The panel's consensus was clear: transparency must be built into agency-client relationships from the ground up rather than retrofitted. December19's approach of making transparency cultural rather than transactional offers a model for the industry.
As media continues to fragment and grow more complex, agencies that prioritise transparent practices will build stronger, more trusting client relationships and deliver more effective results.
At December19, we remain committed to our founding principle of "doing the right thing" – not because it's mandated, but because it's who we are.