By: Bill Duggan
ANA applauds the recent announcement from two agency groups that they have eliminated network integration fees for some of their clients. That’s great progress. Thank you ABC, CBS, NBC!
ANA members have been complaining about network integration fees for years as they appear to be a legacy charge that is no longer justified in today’s digital environment. Some advertisers pay over $1 million a year on integration fees and the estimated annual cost to the industry is $125 million.
In today’s environment, marketers—as well as their CFO and procurement counterparts—are demanding accountability from their media investments and transparency in their relationships with media partners. As a result, the questioning of network integration fees has recently risen to a higher level. Besides the cost, integration fees have been call an “irritant” and a “nuisance.” As the industry has a more collective desire to improve processes, network integration fees result in extra steps in purchase authorization, auditing, billing, and payment. They are a burden for agencies to administer, and the extra staffing required doing so invariably costs advertisers more in labor fees.
Again, we’ve made progress. But the recent announcement covered “two” agency groups and “some” of their clients. So there is still work to be done. ANA encourages all advertisers to sit down with their agencies and then the networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) to discuss how this recent development impacts them.
P.S. – there’s more in the joint perspective we penned with the AAAA earlier in the year called, “Are Network Integration Fees Legitimate?”
In the Web 2.0 world we inhabit today, all of the paradigms are shifting. Advertisers are becoming content providers. Agency models are in flux. Media is the new creative. There are hundreds of television channels, and microsites, webinars, social networking and podcasts are supplementing the traditional media channels I grew up with in my marketing career. 
