March 2014<\/a> The Cog Blog made the point that GroupM had positioned Xaxis incorrectly by focussing on the trading aspects of what it does. We said that there was great potential in a technology business delivering benefits to the Group\u2019s planning agencies. We commented:<\/p>\n\u201cIt would be smart if those who run Xaxis quietly started a re-think on just what it\u2019s for. They need to appreciate that advertisers are increasingly and understandably demanding transparency and full disclosure (and yes I do appreciate the difference). Consequently there\u2019s a need to reorganise and reposition the organisation around the good bits. It\u2019s time to deliver a Whyaxix\u201d.<\/p>\n
Later in the same interview Lesser reverted back to the bad stuff.<\/p>\n
\u201cXaxis negotiates big trade deals with publishers, which Lesser says disables his company from exposing that pricing to clients.\u201d<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s just consider that. Xaxis is used by many WPP clients. They trust the organisation to spend their money wisely, and in their best interests \u2013 in exactly the same way that clients trust Mindshare or any other agency to do the same in offline media forms.<\/p>\n
Xaxis, exactly like GroupM negotiates deals based on their total volume. Some clients like that; some don\u2019t. Those that don\u2019t (including a number of the largest) vote with their feet and find other homes for their online budgets.<\/p>\n
But unlike GroupM\u2019s negotiations with, for example TV broadcasters Xaxis are saying they won\u2019t tell clients what prices have been negotiated with whom on their behalf.<\/p>\n
So \u2013 to summarise, clients trust Xaxis with their online budgets. Xaxis, being very large negotiates great deals no doubt covering more than space costs. But they won\u2019t tell their clients what those deals are.<\/p>\n
At the heart of this is the belief at Xaxis that clients buy audiences and as long as they deliver those audiences at a great price it doesn\u2019t matter where the ads appear, or what terms have been negotiated with those carrying those ads.<\/p>\n
And don\u2019t let\u2019s forget that Xaxis is also a media owner courtesy of what was 24\/7 \u2013 and so theoretically they could be buying from themselves.<\/p>\n
Or they could be favouring those that favour them \u2013 thus putting the buy ahead of the plan.<\/p>\n
The whole subject of online advertising is so fraught with problems, from fraudulent sites to bots to ads not being viewed that it is hardly surprising that clients are increasingly viewing the whole medium as problematic.<\/p>\n
What the medium doesn\u2019t need is further obliqueness from the very people charged with spending their clients\u2019 money effectively.<\/p>\n
Xaxis, and their counterparts are to be praised for their work in addressing some of the endemic issues faced by the medium. But why throw it all away by behaving so obliquely as traders?<\/p>\n
Even if they\u2019re not trading desks.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s been a little while since we last commented on Xaxis, GroupM\u2019s trading desk. In that time there have been many significant changes \u2013 not least Xaxis\u2019 statement that they are not a trading desk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":631,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions\/631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}