Speaking Out
09 February 2026
A couple of weeks ago the Cog Blog published ‘Thought Leaders; Thought Followers’ highlighting how rarely our largest media agency leaders participate in open discussion. Several commentators duly discovered the American author (and failed politician) Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”.
The fact is our largest agencies, the very organisations who should be leading the industry, are conflicted. Who at the end of the day is their client?
I’ve always thought that everything starts and ends with the advertiser. Build a great relationship based on trust; make sure your advice is objective and in the best interests of the client; be honest over fees; rinse and repeat.
This may be hard, although there are plenty of independent agencies from the7stars down who seem to manage, but that’s no reason to trash transparency and objectivity.
Those that put cash from media or adtech vendors ahead of open-ness find themselves conflicted when it comes to speaking up.
Last week The Advertising Association were kind enough to invite me to their LEAD 26 Summit, on the theme of leadership through trust.
I fully understand the need for the AA to find LEAD sponsors, including this year META, and Google both of whom appeared on stage (Google twice, once as YouTube). But sponsorship shouldn’t equal a free pass.
META and YT have been in the news recently – YouTube has been busy sending ‘cease and desist’ letters to BARB; META has been accused of profiting from scam ads that remain on the platform.
Alison Lomax, YouTube’s UK MD stressed the need to play by the rules, and the importance of measurement, without the inconvenience of being asked to explain how this fits with the BARB row.
META’s Security Policy Manager, Rita Amin said that the extent of revenues from scam ads had been exaggerated, without being pushed to explain what they were planning on doing with the $4bn or so admitted to (it seems unlikely any will be going to the vulnerable suffering from the worst excesses on their platforms).
Talking of which, and as a contrast, I was also last week invited to a preview screening of a film called Molly Vs the Machines followed by a discussion featuring some of those involved.
The film tells the true story of Molly Russell, the 14-year old who took her own life in 2017 in part as a result of what she was exposed to via algorithms on Instagram. I wrote a Cog Blog post on this dreadful case when the Coroner’s verdict emerged five years later in 2022.
The film will be shown in UK cinemas for a couple of days in early March and will then air on Channel4 on March 3rd. It is powerful, emotional, inspirational and horrific all at once. Do watch it.
It’s the advertising industry that largely funds the sites that are implicated in this and other tragedies.
We should be asking the platforms, and their representatives at the IAB (also on stage at LEAD) questions around content and regulations whenever we get the chance, and especially at our industry’s top events.
Not to do so is to avoid responsibility; to be complicit.
There are many good people working for our largest agencies, and our biggest clients whose potential influence to drive change is considerable and far greater than the odd blogger. They should be encouraged to speak out.
By stopping them from doing so the organisations they work for are, by denial, delaying any solution to these problems.