Industry Experts Warn Procurement Teams of Contract Risks as Agencies Exploit Compliance Gaps

The IAS Media Assurance Masterclass Series reveals that 70% of procurement professionals areoverwhelmed by marketing contracts, while agencies quietly exploit the gaps

That’s the message from the latest Media Marketing Compliance (MCC) Masterclass, hosted by the Independent Agency Search & Selection Company (IAS), which found that marketing procurement professionals face an uncomfortable truth: contracts are no longer keeping up with the pace of change.

Led by Stephen Broderick, Senior Partner at MCC, and Jane Dormer, Client Services Director, the session laid bare the sheer scale of the challenge.

“Contracts can be full of grey areas that aren’t always obvious at first glance,” says Broderick.

“If you’re not actively monitoring them, it’s easy for costs to slip through the cracks.”

The perfect storm

Remember when life was simple? Back in the noughties, marketers typically worked with a handful of partners—media, OOH, creative, BTL, PR, activation. Contracts were often flimsy, sometimes not even signed.

Fast forward, and the ecosystem is far more complex.

The 2010s introduced principal-based media, programmatic trading, social platforms and decoupled content production.

The 2020s have added e-commerce, influencer deals, retail media and affiliate networks to the mix.

Now AI has arrived, raising fresh challenges around IP, data rights and third-party compliance.

Contracts have skyrocketed—not just in number, but in length, growing from handshakes to 100-page tomes.

Jane Dormer sums up the pressure, "Procurement budgets and staffing haven’t kept up. You now need specialists for everything from software services to programmatic, forcing teams to prioritise which contracts get attention."

The margin squeeze reality

The traditional high-volume media cash cow is officially dead.

Meta, Google and Amazon have disrupted the volume game, and retail media is increasingly cutting agencies out.

The pressure to extract margins has intensified dramatically.

Agencies, often over-resourced and stuck in outdated models, still need to hit historical margins.

The solution? Mine every contractual ambiguity and leverage client blind spots across the entire marketing supply chain.

Consider this jaw-dropper: a recent ANA study on programmatic media found that 70% of the total budget—including agency fees—wasn't going to ads ever seen by human eyes. That's not advertising; that's an expensive game of digital hide-and-seek.

The wake-up call

MMC advertiser research shows 62% cite time pressure as the biggest obstacle to effective contract management.

It's a catch-22: the more complex the contracts, the less time teams have to manage them properly, opening the very blind spots agencies exploit.

The path forward

The solution isn't complicated, but it does require a fundamental shift in approach.

Clients need to demand more. More clarity. More proof. And more compliance.

That means shifting from ‘money back’ to ‘value gained’ thinking, appointing transparent partners, and investing in real-time compliance platforms.

Johanna McDowell, CEO of IAS, believes these conversations are long overdue.

“We commissioned this masterclass because marketers are haemorrhaging value through poor contract visibility.

“It’s not just about clawing back margin—it’s about building fair, modern partnerships that reflect today’s supply chain.”

The takeaway

Take a breath.

Then take a long, hard look at your contracts.

Because in a media world where margins are shrinking and agencies are scrambling, the real power may lie in the fine print.

The days of treating contracts as afterthoughts are over.

The question isn't whether your procurement team can afford to get serious about contracts—it's whether you can afford not to.