As the initial phase of this year’s Ad Trader conference closes, it appears the message is loud and clear, but as we all know; the problem still persists.

This year's Ad Trader Conference, hosted in Berlin, is entering its second half, where the leading luminaries of the digital media industry in Germany gather to discuss accelerating the nascent programmatic media trading sector here. And the message from the stage was clear: ‘Clean up your act!’

For weeks this publication has been probing sources from the industry on possible growth opportunities in the German market, and this morning the message from the stage was clear, as both large-scale publishers and media-buyers alike told attendees they wanted more transparency over pricing, viewability, as well as unified metrics before trusting more in ad tech.

This morning saw speakers from German publisher BVDW, LiveRail and media-buying giant Vivaki spell this issue out, and share their thoughts on why the programmatic advertising industry here has largely been restricted to private marketplaces, and thus far, not as developed as elsewhere in Europe.

Herzlich Willkommen, BVDW president, used his keynote to tell attendees that online advertising was no place for ‘in-transparent models’, where self-interested arbitrage is commonplace, nor do publishers in Germany want to engage with companies that prioritise self-profit, over providing value.

‘Chaos in the supply chain, lack of transparency are causing advertisers to be cautious towards programmatic,’ he told attendees (via a translator). ‘Take these concerns of advertisers seriously and address them.’

Separately, Yoav Arnstein, LiveRail, general manager, Europe, echoed these concerns during his keynote address, adding that further clarity on issues such as viewability metrics was needed for advertisers to have more faith in programmatic; particularly as mobile usage becomes more commonplace.

“The fact is that the measurement tools you’ve been using on mobile are different [from desktop], so you have to give some advertisers the tools they need so they can understand the ROI they get on mobile,” he said.

Such standardisation, can help create certainty for advertisers, and increase their willingness to work with programmatic players. One of conference’s panelists; Ulrich Kramer, of the Pilot Group, said more standardised measurement metrics (for reach, etc) will help draw some of the lucrative brand budgets away from TV (which accounts for nearly half of all media spend here).

‘If I place an ad on TV, within two weeks, I know that my product will be well known, because of the scale and the reach, but with online that’s just not possible yet [due to fragmentation],’ he told attendees.

So in the meantime, advertisers here are working with only a select number of programmatic players in order to minimise risk in what has turned out to be a slow, and prolonged ‘test and learn’ phase. Fellow panelist Lothar Prison, Vivaki chief digital officer, explained some of his thoughts on the matter.

Talking about transparency of ad placement, he said: “A URL doesn’t tell you much about the content and what content an ad will appear against… We can handle media placement better in a private exchange, in that place you can get your audience in a brand safe environment at the push of a button.’

As a result, Vivaki here is doing its best to vet inventory, to exclude impressions that have come from public exchanges, he added.

Ad Trader conference continues, and will finish today (April 8). A full schedule of this afternoon's Ad Trader agenda can be seen here.

Those interested in sharing in ideas and thoughts of attendants can join in on the discussion on Twitter using the hashtag #adtrad14.