Whether the advertiser can see what its money bought, at what price, and what its agency and vendors earned along the way. The ANA's 2016 K2 Intelligence report documented widespread undisclosed rebates and markups in US agency media buying and reshaped contracts; its 2023 programmatic study found that only about 36 cents of each programmatic dollar entering a DSP effectively reached consumers. Audit rights, log-level data access, and disclosed fees are the practical remedies.
Cite this entry:
Agency Echelon. "Media Transparency." Agency Echelon Reference, reviewed October 2026. https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/media-transparency/