Written by Brook Schaaf

As a parody dialogue, it would go something like this:

Person 1 (reluctantly): It looks like Bob has been caught stealing.

Person 2 (dismissively): They said ten years ago that Bob steals. 

Person 1 (downcast): Bob never stopped, and it just came out that he got more than ever.

Person 2 (anguished): Why are we still talking about Bob?!

“Bob” here represents traditional agencies, in particular the big holding companies better known as holdcos. “Steal,” which hardly needs to be in quotation marks, represents something called “principal media buying.” “They” is the Association of National Advertisers, which literally covered this issue over ten years ago. The people in question are online advertising trades reporters, as best exemplified by Digiday’s podcasters.

On a for-and-against episode, it is as though actors received direction to pretend they could not see blatant corruption right in front of their faces by squinting, hand-waving, and sighing just enough. Seriously. I don’t recall having ever heard a more half-hearted or lame defense of the indefensible, not even from a politician. 

Principal media/buying/trading/inventory refers to an agent (as in the agency) that acts as the principal (as in owner, broker, or reseller) of ad inventory. While the financial mechanics can vary from discounts/bonuses/rebates/kickbacks to something else, the conflicts of interest are obvious. Even with transparency, which appears to be lacking most of the time, the agency, which purportedly works on behalf of the advertising client’s interests, profits from ad buys that might not otherwise happen. Put another way, the agency can’t sit on both sides of the table. Well, I guess this shows it can, but it still shouldn’t. 

The issue has come back into the spotlight because of a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by a former GroupM (part of holdco WPP) executive turned whistleblower. Digiday itself published eye-popping numbers, in particular, an alleged $1.5 to $2 billion in improperly retained revenue over a multi-year period. AdExchanger estimated that holdco Omnicom may have made $2 billion on principal media in 2025 alone.

In a beyond-parody moment, one of the hosts actually did ask, “Why are we still talking about all of this in the year 2026 when it was the year 2016 that the Association of National Advertisers issued its transparency report?” I guess if a problem isn’t resolved, you don’t have to talk about it anymore? The correct question should be “How is this still going on?”

He went on to describe it as a “super nuanced topic” (Narrator Voice: it’s not a super nuanced topic). The main argument offered in favor of this admittedly “hidden… opaque as possible” practice from which “almost none of the clients did [benefit]” is that it maybe kind of could have been a good thing if it had been disclosed, but it’s kinda understandable that it wasn’t because the holdcos are struggling to keep up their revenue numbers and who can’t sympathize with that? (Narrator Voice: no one not in on the action can sympathize with this.)

Thus, we self-flagellating affiliate marketers can observe yet another multi-billion dollar scandal more or less getting shrugged off by insiders, the lawsuit notwithstanding. This kind of thing does not happen in affiliate marketing. I’m not saying we don’t have conflicts of interest or that inventory can’t be sold at the wrong price. I’m saying it’s counter to our practices and to the culture of the space. Affiliate management agencies simply do not do this as a matter of course. 

Why is this important? Because for every dollar that comes under scrutiny in affiliate marketing, there are ten more that ought to come under scrutiny in another channel, which brings us to one part of the podcast where the co-host regained his composure and finally nailed it: 

“[W]e haven’t talked about the ultimate version of principal media in my mind, which is Google’s Performance Max and Meta’s Advantage Plus. Like, ultimately, those are principal media products. In both cases, it’s Google and Meta saying to an advertiser, look, just tell us your budget. Tell us what outcome you’re looking for. We’ll figure out everything else. Don’t worry about it.”

But this, my friends, is a topic for another day. 

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