In May 2020, the digital advertising industry was rocked by a comprehensive two-year research project initiated by the ISBA and AOP in the UK. The research, which was executed by PwC carried out an extensive investigation that mapped the digital supply chain. The report found that an average of 49% of advertiser ad spend never reached the publishers, with 15% falling into an “unknown delta”.

This illustrated a long-standing critique of the complex and fragmented programmatic industry, where a lack of standards creates significant business impacts for advertisers and publishers alike. As a continued part of Adform’s focus on transparency and commitment to delivering industry leading solutions, the company’s senior leadership requested the same PwC team to carry out an extensive testing of Adform’s recently released Adform FLOW platform.

The PwC team evaluated key efficiency and transparency measurements.  Their stringent review and hands-on testing, performed on a sample basis, found that the new Adform FLOW platform is 100% transparent in tech fees, data fees and media cost within the Adform tech stack. They also confirmed a 100% audience match rate between the Adform DSP and DMP as well as 100% accurate reporting and zero discrepancies throughout the platform between the Adform technologies. Finally, the report found significant efficiency gains of between 24 and 60% across specific core daily workflows when using Adform FLOW.

Adform has been able to deliver this level of transparency and efficiency by building a fully integrated advertising platform, in contrast to existing fragmented point solution setups.

“Our team at PwC is absolutely committed to a trusted, transparent marketing ecosystem, which is what underpinned the programmatic study that we published earlier this year with ISBA and the AOP. In that context, we are excited to see Adform take this step, i.e. to demonstrate its commitment to transparency by subjecting its tech stack to independent testing." Sam Tomlinson, partner, PwC

Adform FLOW was conceptualised three years ago as a solution to the growing fragmentation and lack of transparency in the market. It required a re-imagining of what an ad tech platform’s role is in facilitating advertiser, agency and publisher business.

“Adform has a long history of taking a different approach than the rest of the industry,” said Troels Jensen, CEO of Adform. “As an independent fully integrated marketing platform, Adform offers transparency, privacy, and ownership of data. Our clients can count on us for results, and we welcome future opportunities to illustrate the full potential of Adform FLOW and the ROI we’re able to deliver to our clients.”