For aficionados of such things, a highly promising row is brewing between UK agencies and advertisers over so-called “inventory media” – media agencies buying media on their own account and flogging it on to clients (media broking in other words.)
MediaSense
All the big ad holding companies are upping their efforts here, in part because they’ve allowed advertisers to drive down media fees to such an extent that they’ve decided they need to make money elsewhere.
Advertiser trade association ISBA’s director of agency services Nick Louisson described the development as “systemic malpractice around inventory media” in its just-published Media Framework 2025.
Agency trade body the IPA (which is usually highly polite to advertisers, whatever it really thinks) has come out fighting with director of legal and public affairs Richard Lindsay (no less) accusing Louisson of “perpetuating the myth” that agencies’ use of inventory media is not in the interests of their clients and suggesting “all media agencies are duplicitous.”
The IPA is something of a hydra these days, comprised of creative and media agencies who often pull in different directions: creative agencies extolling the virtues of brand building, media agencies of performance marketing as they ride the digital wave. Most creative agencies (although not their holding company masters who own media agencies too) would, one suspects, regarded inventory media as daylight hucksterism.
Be interesting to see how IPA director general Paul Bainsfair rides this one out. Maybe they’ll kiss and make up…hopefully not.
