Facebook's hot new app won't launch in Europe because of regulatory fears (FB) | ||
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Europeans shouldn't expect to get their hands on Facebook's new "Moments" app any time in the immediate future: The Register is reporting that the social networking giant is holding off on launching it on the continent because it could fall foul of regulators. Launched earlier in June, Moments automatically scans a user's camera roll on their smartphone for photos of their friends using Facebook's sophisticated facial recognition software. It then lets you send over the photos to the friends identified in them. It's a clever idea, making it much easier to share big batches of photos — and gives Facebook more valuable data about its users in the process. But right now, the app isn't available in Europe, and it sounds like it won't be any time soon. It's all down to Facebook's facial recognition technology. While the social network has become extremely good at recognising faces over the last several years, Europeans might not realise it. The Californian company removed the functionality in Europe following pressure from regulators. Europe tends to take a much harder line on data protection and privacy issues than the US, and the Irish Data Protection Authority took issue with how the software uses users' data. So while Americans will see intelligent suggestions for people to tag in photos they upload on the social network, Europeans will only get automatic suggestions of people they've recently interacted with, which don't take into account any facial data. And without this facial recognition tech, Moments has no real reason to exist. Sure enough, Moments is not currently available in European countries, and The Register says it "understands" there is "no immediate strategy to roll out the app within the 28-member state bloc." Here's the message Europeans see when they try to install Moments on an Android smartphone:
Business Insider has reached out to Facebook for comment and will update this story when it responds. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: We finally got to find out if Facebook’s virtual reality headset is worth the crazy hype  | ||
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The advertising industry admits it has a major transparency problem and it's about to find out just how big an issue it is | ||
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The Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the US advertising trade body, has put out a call for a research agency to conduct an industry-wide media transparency study. In its RFP (request for proposal), the ANA says it hopes to: "demystify the landscape;" understand the practices and processes of holding companies, suppliers, vendors, and media companies; assess marketers' processes; and develop practical industry solutions in order to elevate trust and confident across the entire media-buying supply chain. Earlier this year Business Insider took a deep dive into the media transparency issue. Despite the fact that has been a huge talking point amongst the industry this year, none of the big advertising agency holding groups have wanted to admit there is a problem. And that's even after Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser downgraded all the advertising agency holding groups he covers, citing "emerging concerns among marketers" around "misleading" payments and different forms of volume rebates in the United States. While almost everyone in the industry knows practices such as kickbacks and rebates have been going on for years, the transparency issue was thrust into the spotlight at the ANA's 2015 Media Leadership Conference in March this year. There, former MediaCom CEO Jon Mandel said media agency kickbacks were so widespread in the US, it was what forced him to leave the business. Most people usually thought the practice was something that only still happened overseas, and that it didn't really affect the US any more. At the heart of the issue is also how clients and agencies view contracts differently. An agency may say its contracts contain complete disclosure over its practices (including whether it receives rebates, or bonuses), but a client may believe that disclosure doesn't go deep enough. Contracts can contain ambiguous wording, and clients may be unclear exactly what it is they are paying for. Just the other day, AdAge unearthed a contract between Havas Media US and two ad tech vendors. The vendors say the contract they were asked to sign required them to pay fees to a Havas entity in Spain. But the vendors didn't know what the entity in Spain actually did for the fees (the contract just said "planning services.") Havas Media Group global managing director Dominique Delport told AdAge the contact "has nothing to do with rebates" and that the Spanish entity only charges for appropriate services. The ANA hopes to receive applications from research agencies looking to study the transparency issue by July 24. The trade body says it has "elevated media transparency to one of its top priorities" and it has already set up a task-force of senior marketing and agency executives focused on developing industry codes of conduct and improved media contracts. Last year the ANA ran a survey of members, conducted by research agency Forrester, to poll marketers on how concerned they were about several areas of media transparency. The results showed there were growing concerns around transparency across a wide array of business practices within the media buying industry, as the chart below shows.
SEE ALSO: $25 billion in media money just went up for grabs — and nobody can agree on why Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Two models in Russia just posed with a 1,400-pound bear  | ||
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The advertising industry is not only admitting it has a problem with transparency over agency practices, such as receiving rebates from media companies and not disclosing them or passing those back to clients, but it is now looking to outside help to try to solve the perception issue.
Facebook's hot new app won't launch in Europe because of regulatory fears (FB) | ||
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Europeans shouldn't expect to get their hands on Facebook's new "Moments" app any time in the immediate future: The Register is reporting that the social networking giant is holding off on launching it on the continent because it could fall foul of regulators. Launched earlier in June, Moments automatically scans a user's camera roll on their smartphone for photos of their friends using Facebook's sophisticated facial recognition software. It then lets you send over the photos to the friends identified in them. It's a clever idea, making it much easier to share big batches of photos — and gives Facebook more valuable data about its users in the process. But right now, the app isn't available in Europe, and it sounds like it won't be any time soon. It's all down to Facebook's facial recognition technology. While the social network has become extremely good at recognising faces over the last several years, Europeans might not realise it. The Californian company removed the functionality in Europe following pressure from regulators. Europe tends to take a much harder line on data protection and privacy issues than the US, and the Irish Data Protection Authority took issue with how the software uses users' data. So while Americans will see intelligent suggestions for people to tag in photos they upload on the social network, Europeans will only get automatic suggestions of people they've recently interacted with, which don't take into account any facial data. And without this facial recognition tech, Moments has no real reason to exist. Sure enough, Moments is not currently available in European countries, and The Register says it "understands" there is "no immediate strategy to roll out the app within the 28-member state bloc." Here's the message Europeans see when they try to install Moments on an Android smartphone:
Business Insider has reached out to Facebook for comment and will update this story when it responds. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: We finally got to find out if Facebook’s virtual reality headset is worth the crazy hype  | ||
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Chad warplanes bomb Boko Haram after attacks | ||
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N'Djamena (AFP) - Chad said Thursday its warplanes bombed Boko Haram positions in neighbouring Nigeria to avenge twin suicide bombings in the capital this week blamed on the jihadists. The government also Wednesday announced it was banning the burqa nationwide in a security clampdown following Monday's attacks in N'Djamena that left 33 people dead and more than 100 wounded. Chad's military vowed it would continue its "merciless" pursuit of the Islamist insurgents "so that no drop of spilt Chadian blood goes unpunished". "In response to the cowardly and barbaric acts perpetrated by Boko Haram terrorists... the armed forces carried out reprisal air strikes on the terrorists' positions in Nigerian territory on Wednesday," the military said in a statement. Six Boko Haram bases were destroyed in the air raids, which caused "considerable human and material losses", it said, without giving further details. Monday's attacks on the police headquarters and a police academy in N'Djamena were the first in the capital of the central African country, which has taken a lead role in a regional offensive against the Nigeria-based Boko Haram. No group has claimed responsibility but Chad and its allies immediately blamed the insurgents, who have carried out a series of bloody attacks in border areas of countries that share a frontier with northeastern Nigeria. - 'Seize and burn burqas' - Chad also Wednesday banned the full-face Muslim veil and ordered security forces to seize burqas from markets and burn them. "Wearing the burqa must stop immediately from today, not only in public places and schools but throughout the whole of the country," Prime Minister Kalzeube Pahimi Deubet told religious leaders the day before the start of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. Any type of clothing that leaves only the eyes visible is a form of "camouflage" and is now banned, he added, asking religious leaders to spread the message in mosques, churches and other holy places. Deubet said security forces in the Muslim majority country had been instructed to "go into the markets and to seize all the burqas on sale and burn them". Anyone found wearing a burqa will be "arrested, tried and sentenced in summary proceedings", he added. Boko Haram has used female suicide bombers to launch attacks in the past by hiding explosive devices under their clothes. Chad's government on Tuesday declared three days of national mourning for victims of the blasts. President Idriss Deby said he was "not surprised" Chad has been targeted because of the leading role it is playing in the regional effort to crush Boko Haram fighters. - 'Don't drop your guard' - "I have continually told the government to not drop its guard," he said, urging the international community to back Chad and its neighbours in their campaign. Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Benin and Cameroon agreed last week to set up a regional task force of 8,700 soldiers, police officers and civilians, based in N'Djamena. Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau has threatened several times to attack Chad and other countries fighting the militants, whose bloody six-year insurgency is increasingly spilling across Nigeria's borders. Security was stepped up in N'Djamena after the bombings, with scores of police and soldiers patrolling the streets and stopping cars for security checks. Vehicles with tinted windows have been barred from the streets, and the area around the presidential palace and the police headquarters sealed off. The burqa ban was ordered by a crisis committee set up on Tuesday after the president returned from an African Union summit in South Africa. Prosecutors also arrested several people on the same day. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Pope pleas to world to stop climate change destruction | ||
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Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis on Thursday issued a global plea for action to prevent "extraordinary" climate change from destroying the planet and said wealthy countries must bear primary responsibility for creating the problem and for solving it. In a radically worded letter addressed to every person on the planet, the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics blames human greed and self-destructive enthralment to new technologies and progress for the critical situation "Our Sister, mother Earth" now finds itself in. "This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her," he writes in one of the opening passages of his long-anticipated Encyclical on the environment. Green activists have hailed the charismatic Argentinian pontiff's widely-trailed intervention as a potential game-changer in the debate over what causes global warming and what can be done to reverse it. They hope it will significantly increase the pressure for far-reaching measures to be agreed when more than 200 countries gather in Paris for a December summit aimed at clinching a global accord on carbon emissions. But even before the official publication, climate change sceptics had dismissed the document's arguments that the phenomenon is primarily man-made and that fossil fuels must be phased out. "I don't get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinal or my pope," US presidential candidate Jeb Bush said on the eve of the release in comments that underlined the depth of opposition in the United States to a binding global agreement to curb greenhouse gases. The Encyclical references the arguments of the sceptics by acknowledging that volcanic activity, variation in the earth's movements and the solar cycle are factors in climate change. But it maintains that "most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases released mainly as a result of human activity". And it leaves no doubt that Francis believes the world is on a fast-track to disaster. "If present trends continue, this century may well witness extraordinary climate change and an unprecedented destruction of ecosystems, with serious consequences for all of us," he writes.
- Conflict and war -
Those consequences, he argues, will include a rise in sea levels that will directly threaten the quarter of the world's population that lives near or on coastlines, and will be felt most acutely by developing countries. Highlighting warnings that acute water shortages could arise within decades, he writes that, "the control of water by large multinational business may become a major source of conflict in this century". He adds: "It is foreseeable that, once certain resources have been depleted, the scene will be set for new wars." One of the recurring themes in the encyclical is that rich countries must accept responsibility for having caused climate change and should "help pay this debt" by cutting their carbon emissions and helping the developing world adopt sustainable forms of energy generation. "The land of the southern poor is rich and mostly unpolluted, yet access to ownership of goods and resources for meeting vital needs is inhibited by a system of commercial relations and ownership which is structurally perverse," the pope writes in perhaps the most radical passage of the document. He said the world had to stop burning fossil fuels. "We know that technology based on the use of highly polluting fossil fuels –- especially coal, but also oil and, to a lesser degree, gas -– needs to be progressively replaced without delay," he writes. Developing countries will need financial help to do this "but to do so they require the help of countries which have experienced great growth at the cost of the ongoing pollution of the planet". This pact, Francis says, needs to be incorporated into binding accords. "Enforceable international agreements are urgently needed, since local authorities are not always capable of effective intervention." Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Even millionaires have to borrow money sometimes — some do it more than others | ||
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Even wealthy people have to borrow money sometimes. The annual Capgemini and RBC Wealth Management World Wealth Report asked high-net-worth individuals, or HNWIs – people with investable assets of $1 million or more, excluding primary residence, collectibles, consumables, and consumer durables – what percentage of their personal assets is financed by borrowed money or credit. Latin America had the highest amount of HNWI credit, at 28.6%, followed by the Asia-Pacific region, excluding Japan, at 25.5% and the Middle East and Africa at 25.4%. On average, 17.8% of HNWIs use credit, across the map. Here are the totals:
The report also found that HNWIs who are younger, wealthier, and female tend to use the most credit. Check it out:
Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: KRUGMAN: It's Not Just About Hard Work — Dumb Rich Kids Get All The Breaks  | ||
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Greenpeace says boycotting Nutella is wrong – it's NOT destroying the planet | ||
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Greenpeace says French ecology minister Segolene Royal is wrong – Nutella is not destroying the planet and a ban wouldn't solve the world's environmental problems. A couple of day ago Royal went on French television network Canal+ and said that people should stop eating the popular hazelnut spread because harvesting one of its key ingredients, palm oil, leads to deforestation. But environmental activist group Greenpeace has now told news website Quartz that “a blanket boycott of this agricultural crop will not solve problems in its production.” It also told the site that Ferrero, Nutella's maker, is actually a supporter of the Palm Oil Innovation Group, which includes Greenpeace, other non-governmental organisations, and some palm oil producers. "[Ferrero has] an ambitious policy to improve its palm oil supply," says Greenpeace in its statement to Quartz. “We therefore consider Ferrero to be one of the more progressive consumer-facing companies with regards to palm oil sourcing." In 2013, Ferrero launched the Ferrero Palm Oil Charter, saying on its website that it had "a significant role to play in leading the sustainable transformation of the palm oil sector" and was committed to using palm oil in a responsible way. France has a love/hate relationship with Nutella. The country consumes 26% of all Nutella produced globally by Italian maker Ferrero. But in 2011 French ministers tried to push through a 300% tax on palm oil because of its deforestation effect and its role in contributing to obesity. In 2012, however, the draft law — dubbed the "Nutella Law" — was quashed after the French senate rejected the amendment by 186 votes to 155. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: This 1998 supercar could auction for $15 million  | ||
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No loo-sers as Japan holds toilet design contest | ||
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Tokyo (AFP) - Japan is holding its first ever toilet design contest, with organisers looking for "most comfortable", "cheapest for the developing world" and "safest for women". In a bid to find the nation's loveliest lavatories, a government panel is seeking applications that prove designers are thinking big about the littlest room. The initiative comes as Tokyo appears to have grasped the soft-power potential of the country's high-tech toilets, whose seat warmers and pinpoint bidet jets amaze foreign visitors. "I hope efforts to make the world's best restrooms in Japan will spread broadly," Haruko Arimura, minister in charge of women's empowerment -- who is overseeing the project -- said in a recent press conference. "It is part of our efforts with hospitality for the (2020 Tokyo) Olympic and Paralympic Games," Arimura said. A 145-page report on improving quality of life says the drive towards better toilets will "empower women" because by "improving comfort, cleanliness and safety, the quality of work and leisure can improve dramatically". The report said restrooms are places where women want to feel secure enough to get changed, brush their teeth, do their make-up, and change their baby's diapers. It also noted that toilets are not universally available in some developing nations, and that poorly designed facilities in some places can put users -- particularly women -- at risk of violence or kidnapping. As well as looking for ideas on how to make environmentally friendly toilets for use in natural disasters, the competition is asking for ideas on how to make toilets easier for "foreigners and physically disabled people". A leaflet produced by organisers suggests, for example, that including easy-to-understand pictograms might help non-Japanese people with exactly how to use a toilet. The flier does not specify which part of using a toilet foreigners might have trouble with. The competition will be judged by a panel of seven, including architects and an official from the Japan Toilet Association, using five criteria -- cleanliness, safety, comfort, novelty/creativity, and sustainability. Applicants have until the end of the month to submit their designs. Minister Arimura will announce the winners in September. Toilets in Japan have been raised to something of an art. Nearly every household and most public restrooms are equipped with a seat that is plugged into the mains electricity. The bog-standard version simply warms the seat -- an under-appreciated luxury among the uninitiated -- while top-of-the-range models offer an array of options, including warm water jets, blow-dryers, deoderisers and masking sounds. Young foreign visitors rave about them, filling social media with pictures of the loos they find in Japan, while a bidet seat to take home is among the first items on Chinese tourists' shopping lists. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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New-look US Open course challenges golf's best | ||
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Tacoma (United States) (AFP) - The 115th US Open was set to tee off early Thursday on an untested Chambers Bay layout that has left the world's top golfers scratching their heads over how best to play it. World number one Rory McIlroy is seeking a fifth major title, Masters champion Jordan Spieth aims to make it halfway to the fabled calender-year Grand Slam and crowd favourite Phil Mickelson is desperate to finally win a US Open, after six runner-up finishes, and in so doing complete his career Grand Slam. Three-time champion Tiger Woods, meanwhile, needs to prove he can still compete with the best after a horrendous year which will end with his 40th birthday. But they all have a common enemy in Chambers Bay, some 50 kilometres (31 miles) south of Seattle, hosting the first US Open to be held in the US Pacific Northwest. Playing at between 7,300 and 7,700 yards, depending on the conditions, the course is more of a British Open seaside type course than a traditional US Open venue, with its dunes and bunkers, bouncy, undulating fairways, blind shots and large, rolling greens. But unlike the classic British Open venues, it has a 500-foot elevation from the lowest to the highest point of the course, opening and closing holes which can either be par-4 or par-5 and oddly sloping tee zones. The record dry sunny weather that has marked the last few weeks in the area also means that the fairways are firm and fast and the greens devilish to read. Scoured out of a disused sand and gravel quarry overlooking the scenic Puget Sound, Chambers Bay opened just eight years ago and most of the top players have seen it for the first time this week. McIlroy was among those learning as they go along this week and his reaction to what he saw was typical. "It's really like playing an Open Championship in the United States," the 26-year-old Northern Irishman said. "That's what it's going to be like this week, apart from the fact that it's about 20 degrees warmer." Tour Players are not usually keen in being pulled out of their comfort zone and many at Chambers Bay this week were putting a brave face on it. Mickelson for one says that it has similarities to the fabled Old Course at St Andrews in that first impressions can be deceptive. "When you play St. Andrews, you don't know exactly where to hit it. And certain hillsides will take it one way or the other. "Knowing how to play it, knowing where to go is critical. But after playing a while it feels like it's not as difficult a course." Fitness will also be a factor with players needing to complete several treks up and down a huge man-made hill that straddles the course. "I think there is a big fitness element this week," said 2013 US Open winner Justin Rose. "There are a lot of us who have been here and probably preparing harder for this championship than many others. Because of that there's an even bigger physical demand." The 156-strong players in the field come from 26 different countries and the total of 16 amateurs is the highest for 34 years. Total prize money for the year's second major is up to $10 million. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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China's economy is hitting a wall — and it's going to affect everyone | ||
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For years, Chinese growth rates have been a byword for extremely fast economic development, and the phrase is still used that way. Unfortunately for China, the country doesn't actually have "Chinese growth rates" any more. And pretty much nobody is expecting them to return. China grew 7.4% last year, missing its own 7.5% target, and notching its slowest expansion since 1990. Some analysts believe that's a massive overestimation. This isn't some bump in the round — the slowdown is the new normal for the world's second-biggest economy. Within the next decade, China is very likely to be recording growth rates less than half of what it did in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Now, that may not seem like such a bad thing — after all, the growth rates that are projected for China are still stronger than pretty much anywhere in the western world is expecting. But there are some compelling reasons to worry about a Chinese slowdown — both from the country's own perspective, and for the world in general. $6.9 trillion in wasted investmentsWhy does China matter?
China has headed up the emerging market credit splurge since the 2008 financial crisis — while the recessions in advanced economies threw some cold water over borrowing in the developed world, emerging markets have been racking up debt at quite a speed, with China first among them. The combination of low inflation and lower growth is a poisonous cocktail as far as paying off debt is concerned. If you borrow on the presumption of, say, 5% inflation and 10% GDP growth, you've got a lot of wiggle room — within five years, your economy (and hopefully your business) will be a lot larger, making your debts look proportionally small. The inflation chips away at the value of the money you owe, too — a $100 loan principal is worth less after five years of compounded inflation than it was at the time you took it out. It's worthwhile for developing countries to use public debt when they're industrialising rapidly — but that doesn't mean those bets can't turn sour if the economy doesn't develop as rapidly as expecting. Chunks of that debt went to poor investments made by profligate local governments: Chinese research indicates as much as $6.9 trillion (£4.39 trillion) was invested wastefully from 2009 to 2014.
The middle-income trapA pessimistic take suggests that China may be drifting into a scenario that has haunted countries around the world during the last 50 years — a middle-income trap. A joint IMF-Chinese report published in 2013 notes that very few countries actually escape the middle-income trap. For many countries, making the transition between genuinely impoverished and middle-income seems relatively easy in comparison to catching up with the rich world. The chart on the right shows how this has worked out for a bunch of middle-income countries: Most of those that have made it out have, like China, been located in East Asia. But that's not a guarantee of success. China has made huge efforts to pursue its own path of development, and is perhaps uniquely reticent about following the models preferred by international institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. As a result, the country is part-capitalist, but with a huge amount of state control. It wants its currency to be of global importance in finance and trade, but frets about whether to allow it to float freely on international markets. We still don't know how this new system copes with shocks exactly, or what the future role of the state would be in Chinese markets. Up until recently, implicit backing from the government seemed to be there to prevent Chinese companies from defaulting. But this year there have been major examples of defaults, and the government hasn't stepped in. The Chinese stock bubble
China is moving massively away from huge investment in property towards huge investment in equities. As a result, Chinese stocks have exploded in the last year, with the main indices more than doubling in value. That's been driven by an explosion in ordinary retail investors opening accounts. Such investors are unsophisticated and tend to follow market trends in a herd-like manner. People are talking about when, not if, the China stock bubble will collapse. How Beijing reacts to any collapse in stocks is a big question — but given the relative financial development of China's economy, for now, it's a local question. The risk of contagionIn 2011, an IMF report named China as the biggest source of real economic spillovers in the world — the trade links between China and the world's other major exporters are now larger than they are for any other region in the world — Beijing leapfrogged Brussels and Washington between 2000 and 2008. There are still other countries that can still shock global economy more — a US banking crash would (and did, in 2008) have a bigger effect, but a Chinese slowdown is no longer some emerging market crisis that the advanced world can read about in the media and generally shrug off — the impact would be felt around the world.
That's not to say that the rest of the world would be thrown into a slump by Chinese growth — but the global growth figure has in recent years been contributed to by quite a lot of Chinese growth, so the rate at which the global economy is growing would be brought down. Eminent China-watcher Michael Pettis explains what the real problem is for a Chinese growth slowdown: This means that to assume slower growth in China will reduce growth abroad is wrong. As the growth rate of China’s economy drops, the fact that its share of global GDP growth will drop does not presage anything bad for the global economy. What matters is what happens to China’s current account surplus. As long as the world suffers from weak global demand, if China’s current account surplus declines relative to global GDP, China is adding net demand to a world that needs it. This is positive for global growth. If on the other hand China’s current account surplus rises, China will be adding more savings to a world already unable to absorb total savings productively, and the world will be worse off. The current account is China's financial balance with the rest of the world — how much it exports both in goods, services and income, against the amount it imports. A strong surplus, as Pettis says, would mean China is not a major contributor to global demand, or at least is not a net contributor. China's failure to break out of the middle-income trap wouldn't affect someone living in the UK or US tomorrow — even most pessimists on China aren't expecting a severe recession. If the Chinese economy takes a bad path, it won't cause ripples as large as the 2008 crisis. But it will mean an economy of nearly 1.5 billion people is left permanently smaller than it otherwise would have been — probably a much weaker market for western goods, and a less prosperous world in general. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: This 1998 supercar could auction for $15 million  | ||
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In a word: debt. 
The advertising industry admits it has a major transparency problem and it's about to find out just how big an issue it is | ||
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The Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the US advertising trade body, has put out a call for a research agency to conduct an industry-wide media transparency study. In its RFP (request for proposal), the ANA says it hopes to: "demystify the landscape;" understand the practices and processes of holding companies, suppliers, vendors, and media companies; assess marketers' processes; and develop practical industry solutions in order to elevate trust and confident across the entire media-buying supply chain. Earlier this year Business Insider took a deep dive into the media transparency issue. Despite the fact that has been a huge talking point amongst the industry this year, none of the big advertising agency holding groups have wanted to admit there is a problem. And that's even after Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser downgraded all the advertising agency holding groups he covers, citing "emerging concerns among marketers" around "misleading" payments and different forms of volume rebates in the United States. While almost everyone in the industry knows practices such as kickbacks and rebates have been going on for years, the transparency issue was thrust into the spotlight at the ANA's 2015 Media Leadership Conference in March this year. There, former MediaCom CEO Jon Mandel said media agency kickbacks were so widespread in the US, it was what forced him to leave the business. Most people usually thought the practice was something that only still happened overseas, and that it didn't really affect the US any more. At the heart of the issue is also how clients and agencies view contracts differently. An agency may say its contracts contain complete disclosure over its practices (including whether it receives rebates, or bonuses), but a client may believe that disclosure doesn't go deep enough. Contracts can contain ambiguous wording, and clients may be unclear exactly what it is they are paying for. Just the other day, AdAge unearthed a contract between Havas Media US and two ad tech vendors. The vendors say the contract they were asked to sign required them to pay fees to a Havas entity in Spain. But the vendors didn't know what the entity in Spain actually did for the fees (the contract just said "planning services.") Havas Media Group global managing director Dominique Delport told AdAge the contact "has nothing to do with rebates" and that the Spanish entity only charges for appropriate services. The ANA hopes to receive applications from research agencies looking to study the transparency issue by July 24. The trade body says it has "elevated media transparency to one of its top priorities" and it has already set up a task-force of senior marketing and agency executives focused on developing industry codes of conduct and improved media contracts. Last year the ANA ran a survey of members, conducted by research agency Forrester, to poll marketers on how concerned they were about several areas of media transparency. The results showed there were growing concerns around transparency across a wide array of business practices within the media buying industry, as the chart below shows.
SEE ALSO: $25 billion in media money just went up for grabs — and nobody can agree on why Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Two models in Russia just posed with a 1,400-pound bear  | ||
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