To respond to confusion around the world of programmatic advertising, the Interactive Bureau of Advertising has released a tool aimed at creating more transparency around media spend using the technology.

A screen capture of the results page of the IAB’s new tool.

The tool has been released by the U.S. headquarters but can be adapted to Canadian markets as well. Sonia Carreno, president, IAB Canada, says the Canadian arm of the industry body is working with the Ad Tech Council and its programmatic and ad operations committees to test the calculator for Canadian media buys. Feedback from those efforts is expected to be known in several weeks.

The IAB Fee Transparency Calculator allows advertisers and publishers to break down the costs of using programmatic channels. Specifically, the tool allows users to see service and inventory costs as a percentage of their effective cost-per-thousand investment. The tool is able to break down cost by other associated fees as well, including media fees, flat fees and CPM-based fees.

Carreno says the tool is useful at a time when media buying in programmatic is projected to represent over half of all online display buying in 2016.

“With the tremendous growth of the automated marketplace, advertisers are demanding more transparency across the media supply chain,” she says. “The Programmatic Fee Transparency Calculator tool is a great step towards empowering buyers to understand where their media dollars are landing.”

The tool is the result of the efforts of a fee transparency-focused working group, which includes an assortment of publishers (Daily Mail, Gawker, Hulu), trading desks and exchanges and includes GroupM’s programmatic platform, Xaxis and the Exchange Lab. 

The group’s effort also includes a report demystifying the programmatic supply chain. Titlted, The Programmatic Supply Chain: Deconstructing the Anatomy of a Programmatic CPM. For instance, based on the group’s findings, publisher versus ad tech co’s revenues on average are in the ratio of 55:45.