#mediasnack

On this week’s #MediaSnack we bring you rather sad news that the media transparency concerns are not going away anytime soon. Stories have been emerging this week from Japan where Dentsu, the dominant advertising services group has admitted that its digital media buying operation has overcharged some clients, they suggest there could be over 600 cases of over-charging across the last 5 years. It is believed that the victim on this occasion was long-standing Dentsu client Toyota, one of Japan’s biggest corporations and famous for the 60+ year longevity its Dentsu relationship in an era of increasingly short-lived client and agency tenures. The story has made big news around the world and unsurprisingly spilt into the finance pages beyond the marketing trade press. The Financial Times, Bloomberg and others have been reporting the details and the impact of the news has brought Dentsu stock down 5% at the time of writing.What does it mean for the industry? This is a very big deal. It calls into question a few thi