By Ronan Shields • March 6, 2025 •
Ivy Liu
This article is a WTF explainer, in which we break down media and marketing’s most confusing terms. More from the series →
During the halcyon days of the 2010s, business growth rates in the online ad industry were buoyant, as advertisers clamored for ‘media-firsts,’ and VC-backed tech firms competed at a breakneck pace in an industry land grab.
However, during the subsequent decade, a more somber atmosphere prevailed as the industry matured, despite the overall industry registering double-digit growth, with the sector surpassing $309 billion (15% growth) for the first time.
While these numbers appear healthy, eMarketer researchers also note how the industry’s annual growth rates consistently averaged more than 20% in the decade prior. Hence, a plateau is starting to emerge, and the sector is taking a Darwinistic hue. It is in this climate that ‘Joint Business Plans,’ a.k.a. ‘joint business partnerships’ or JBPs, are an increasingly common tactic to remain on clients’ media plans.
JBPs are a common but less spoken-of tactic straight out of Big Tech’s playbook and were at the center of The Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green’s damage limitation exercise after his company’s recent earnings miss — including “brand-direct” ones. Hence, it’s worth asking: WTF are JBPs?
What is a Joint Business Plan? Can you provide some examples?
Joint business plans and partnerships are quite common in the media and advertising industry. On paper, at least, these collaborations allow companies to leverage each other’s strengths, expand their reach, and develop advertising solutions.
In a fast-moving sector like digital media, they’re arguably more common than in other industry verticals, given the technical expertise required to push the envelope.
For example, Big Tech players frequently collaborate with advertising agencies through structured partnerships and JBPs to enhance advertising strategies and outcomes. In its own parlance, Google’s partnership program “[Will let] your company get access to a wider range of benefits, including the ability to showcase the Google Partners badge on your website and marketing materials.”
However, according to Digiday sources — all of them former agency sources who requested anonymity given the sensitive nature of the disclosures — JBPs can also contain less spoken-of arrangements.
Why are they necessary, can you explain more?
In short, they bring reliability in a dynamic marketplace and help with forecasting. Perhaps The Trade Desk’s Green illustrated it best when he explained how JBPs “grow 50% faster than the rest of our business” and spoke of how it will expand its brand-direct relationships in the year to come as part of its plan to regain its business-growth momentum.
All sources consulted in the research of this piece noted how the practice of JBPs can involve several types of deals, including enterprise deals that aren’t necessarily tied to spend, i.e., the benefits provided to the advertiser are not necessarily dependent on how much they spend with a vendor. Meanwhile, the other types of deals, which can go by several different monikers across Madison Avenue, such as “incentive programs,” all geared towards maximizing “endeavored spend”
“Some of these programs are things that clients are aware of, and indeed, sign-off on,” said one former agency holding company staffer, who explained that examples of incentives can include training on how to use a vendor’s platform, etc.
Additionally, vendors are often eager to include stipulations such as participation in case studies, clients agreeing to publish elements of their campaign activity on a given platform, etc. This is all very above-board stuff. Indeed, many marketers want to sign up for such elements as it can make them look good, especially in an era when CMOs are under fire from their colleagues in the finance department.
What about these ‘less spoken of’ elements?
All parties, in their heart of hearts, know what’s going on with JBPs, with discussions around “principal-based media buying” becoming increasingly commonplace in the public arena.
Some clients are even comfortable with “volume-based incentive programs” – even after the bombshell 2016 ANA transparency report – as long as such savings are passed back to them. However, agency staffers can get a bit coy when asked about elements of JBPs, including covenants with wording agreeing to move certain amounts of clients’ budgets to the concerned vendor’s platform.
“The agency groups that pretended that principal trading wasn’t happening weren’t necessarily keen to share that kind of info,” said one agency source. “But I’ve personally sat in on meetings where we’d been tracking behind [on such agreements to shift client spend], and we’d sit down and discuss how we’d meet our goals.”
Another source, who formally worked at a separate holding company, added, “There’d be agreements around endeavored spend, but with no written contractual consequences if you didn’t meet the goal. But then [if you fell behind], you’d find things just weren’t as easy as before. You’d find that the ‘nice-to-haves’ like help with campaign reporting, etc., just wouldn’t materialize like they used to.’
https://digiday.com/?p=571074
