The Accountant's Role in Advertising

Marshall Garber, CPA

The advertising industry has recently earned its place in corporate infamy, as several well-publicized disagreements between the largest agencies in the business and their clients over financial irregularities have erupted in the media. The irregularities are serious enough to have caught the attention of the FBI, which has taken an investigatory interest in clients' concerns of agencies' financial wrongdoing, especially in the area of media buying. Advertisers' suspicion that agencies are making covert deals with the media using their budget funds as leverage have been brought into the open, at times in a confrontational manner.