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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
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B
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Digiday Podcast, a show for anyone wondering why the hell we are still talking about principal media buying. I'm Kameka McCoy, senior marketing reporter here at Digiday.
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A
And I'm Tim Peterson, executive editor of video and audio at Digiday Media. Is it principal media buying? Is it principal buying? Is it principal trading? Is it? I think so. We had our senior media buying editor Michael Berge and our executive editor of News on Seb Joseph to speak about principal buying. And one of the questions that I had for them is what's the difference between principal media, principal trading, principal buying? There are other rebates, kickbacks, all of these things. And I guess the big question is why are we still talking about all of this in the year 2026, when it was the year 2016 that the association of National Advertisers issued its transparency report, drawing the entire industry's attention to the practice of agencies getting rebates and kickbacks from ad sellers and not necessarily passing those on directly to to clients to the brands.
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B
Yeah, you could call it either marketers recurring nightmare or matter of deja vu, however you want to label it. But we are indeed once again talking about it 10 years afterwards. So we tee it up a little bit in the conversation which we'll get into later. But we had some big things go down with WPP and a whistleblower and was it thousands of pages worth of whistleblowing documents that pointed to some of these practices that marketers have poo pooed on for years but also quietly just kind of accepted?
- [01:57]
A
Yeah, it was really within the past month that there's been not a flood of news but like three different things that have popped up that have kind of like renewed, drawn renewed attention to principal media. So former WPP exec Richard Foster, who had filed a lawsuit against WPP late last year over I think wrongful termination, there were new documents submitted in that case, I believe submitted by WPP that included a memo Richard Foster had written in which he really kind of itemizes WPP's principle media practice. Basically all the money that WPP was pocketing and effectively the form of revenue from the likes of Amazon, Google, TikTok and he's got numbers. Seb has reported on this. So articles on the site showing that I think the same week as that all came to light, or within a week or two of that all coming to light, WPP had earnings. During that earnings call, WPP Media CEO Brian Lesser basically doubled down on the principal media practice. WPP. And then shortly before I think, all of this, you had Acadia CEO Jared Belsky, which is an independent agency, adage, had reported on how he had passed all of his rebates on to clients. I think it was like six or seven figures worth of rebates that he passed on to clients as a way to draw attention to the practice of principal media. And I think in Jared's view, how agencies should handle these rebates or kickbacks that they receive for buying ad inventory in bulk from major platforms and publishers. And so what all of this is kind of raised is this question of, is principal media okay or not? So we had Seb and Michael on to kind of make the case for and the case against principal media and see where we ended up falling on it. Did you find yourself falling on one side of the fence or the other?
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B
Absolutely not. To me, this all hinges on who I'm working for. If I am a client and there's no transparency, then, yeah, obviously I'm against it. But, you know, if I'm an agency and I'm already having to, you know, strong arm money out of my clients as it is, you know, I'd be in favor of it. So there's a lot of gray area. What about you? Did you find yourself on one side of the fence or the other?
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A
I found myself cutting a hole in the fence, kind of looking at it as that it's a fence, not a wall or maybe a fence with a gate. I don't know. I'm doing a terrible job with this analogy as we speak, but I feel like there's a case for and a case against and that obviously, like, it's a super nuanced topic, But I think 7 Berge did a great job at, like, distilling what the case for principal Media is, what the case against Principal Media is, and then how the two could actually be bridged. But that there's like, one or two important caveats for that, taking it into account the pros and the cons of principled media. So as with so many things. Yeah, I don't think it's like a binary thing of good and bad. I think there's good and bad to it. It depends on how people handle it. So
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B
with no further ado, the case for and against principal media buying with Michael and 7s.
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A
Sup Bergi, welcome back to the show.
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C
Good to be here.
- [06:02]
D
Thank you. Good to be here.
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A
Yeah. We're glad to have you because Principal Media is all the rage once again. We're back in what, 2017, when the ANA transparency report, I think, came out in kind of shining a light on this practice of agencies getting kickbacks from platforms and publishers and kind of pocketing that as opposed to passing it along to clients. It was a very big deal at the time, if I remember correctly. But it hasn't gone away. And even if I remember right, Bergi, you wrote a explainer on principal media or principal buying, principal trading. There's so many different terms when it comes to this, but I think you cited the Transparency Report, and even in in it, the ANA kind of said like, look, it makes sense that agencies would be getting these kickbacks and holding onto them because the alternative is clients. You pay the agencies more. This is kind of just the cost of doing business. But so we have a bunch of different terms here. We also have a bunch of recent news that has, I think is the reason why we're doing this. It's kind of put new attention on the practice of principal media. And there are different sides on whether this is perfectly fine and acceptable or whether this is extremely problematic and controversial. We will get into that. We're going to get into the case for and case against principal media. But Berge, I'm hoping you can help us set the table on what exactly principal media is, because again, there are terms like principal media, principal buying, principal trading, rebates, kickbacks. Are all of these referring to the same thing or are there important nuances there?
- [07:52]
D
There are some nuances among them all, but if you boil it down to its essence, principal media is essentially agencies negotiating and buying inventory directly from publishers, from media at a certain price. They in, along the way get some sort of break on pricing and then they take that inventory and they then put their clients into it at a markup. The agency makes money on this. I think one of the most opaque elements about this is when you look at holding company annual reports and form 401ks, it really is kind of. I'm sorry, fred. Yeah, not 401ks, 10ks. Thank you. It's kind of hidden and there's all sorts of terminology used to kind of vaguely refer to it, but it's kept as opaque as possible. The one thing that I will say, and we'll get into the for and against later on, is just that, you know, agencies argue they need to do this because procurement has cut back any other way that they can make money on media investment for their clients. And yet you've got a lot of people in the industry saying that's a pretty terrible way to make money if you're kind of hiding not only the markup that you're charging advertisers and your clients, but also not being clear about how the rebates you're getting back from media is playing into that.
- [09:26]
B
This is a conversation to Tim's point that we've had since 2017. I remember at our maybe two programmatic summits ago that we had where we had our town hall and it was a talking point then, so it said, seems to be a recurring issue and maybe the industry's worst kept secret. Why are we talking about it again now?
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D
I would argue because not only does it come up with kind of industry association reports, but I think more and more people are trying to define what it is so that it can be addressed properly. When a client is, you know, taking on a new agency and usually a holding company, you know, the verbiage the contracts need to be crystal clear about how principal media is being used and leveraged and how much transparency there is or isn't around it. And I think one thing that has kind of come to light in the last few years with newer contracts between clients and agencies is there has been opacity. Seb and I back in January, I think wrote a report, wrote a story about Forrester doing a report, trying to say if you're going to do principal media, here's what you need to ask for client and here's what you need to do agency to kind of try to clarify that process. I think it's the lack of clarity around how it's used and how it's being factored into contracts that has kind of resurfaced this issue as a pretty big one again.
- [11:05]
C
Yeah. And just building on that, I think as it has become a bigger contributor to the kind of Holco commercial model, I think naturally that has drawn a lot more scrutiny and you know, kind of obviously kind of criticism and sort of skepticism as well in equal sort of measure. And I think the WPP kind of lawsuit that, you know, there were some new kind of, it was sort of initiated in sort of November, but some new documents came to light earlier. Earlier. When was it? Last month. I think that has provided a. It's brought all of this into sort of sharper focus because, you know, it's arguably the most detailed public illustration yet of what that sort of conflict looks like in practice, you know, primarily because, you know, this is coming from the agency's own internal records. And I'm sure we'll kind of go into that a little bit More. But you know, being able to see what has become such a abstract topic whittled down into sort of hard or codified into sort of numbers. I think a just a real sort
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of
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C
sort of organizing principle for kind of the industry. But it's just really quite informative to see how this sort of thing works at that type of industrial kind of scale at the operation under the market.
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A
Yeah. And this lawsuit that you're talking about, Seb. So this was a former WPP exec Richard Foster, who headed up their production arm, Business Insider reported late last year he had filed, I believe it was a wrongful termination lawsuit against wpp. And then in February, the Times reported, and then he followed up with a whole series of deep dive reports where there were now documents submitted by WPP of a. I'm hesitant to call it a memo because I think it was like 30 pages or more that Richard Foster had written.
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D
We're way past memo here.
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A
Yeah. But that he had sent to, I believe it was WPP Media CEO Brian Lesser, if I'm not mistaken. Where in it he's making all kinds of different arguments and really making a case for the production arm. But as part of that he's throwing out all kinds of numbers about the principal media practices of wpp, basically how much money they're pocketing as a result of their deals with Google, Meta, Amazon, TikTok down the line. And Seb, what was the term that they used in there that WPP used in Foster then cited in terms of how they categorize the that revenue?
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C
They called it non product related income. And that was sort of a blanket term for how they described like rebates services and proprietary inventory deals, which is kind of like WPP speak for principal media. But Tim, you sort of kind of like nailed was a real kind of thorough breakdown as to kind of how it worked for Group M. Right. Because what those documents revealed was that essentially Group M at the time we're talking sort of circa 2023, they kind of aggregated client budget to hit like volume thresholds with kind of vendors that then triggered essentially rebates. Right. In the form of kind of
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free
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C
or discounted sort of inventory, which was then, it was then reclassified as a sort of proprietary kind of media and then offered back to clients through sort of your typical opt in agreements. Now I think what was really interesting in that was that there was a technically that mechanism existed for clients to benefit. The problem was when you dig into the numbers, you know, is that almost none of the clients did Right across, I think it was like the top 30 biggest clients in the U.S. nearly all of them. 97.4%. Yeah, 97.4% of the kind of proprietary inventory that was being bought on their dime was going unused. You know, Google, Group M's biggest client in that region, I think they had an annual kind of billings of like 2.3 billion, but they were using less than sort of 1% of the proprietary media that was kind of being bought. So ultimately like the, that wasn't flowing back to them, even though they were being booked by Group M as kind of income. And so, you know, I think we'll see as you know, with regards to how this case kind of plays out. But, you know, whether that is ultimately because clients weren't participating or because they weren't fully aware of how that spend was kind of being used is, I think that'll be really revealing and then may be quite instructive as to the future trajectory that kind of principal media is on.
- [16:35]
A
And that's the interesting dynamic here because on the one hand, it's similar to a friend gives you $20 to go buy a six pack or a 12 pack or what have you. And let's say you get to the grocery store, you buy it, and the cashier is just like, oh, hey, actually I'm going to give you a disc on this, or, you know, give you an extra six pack. I don't know where this analogy is going, but, like, it's making me just pocket that. You just pocket that. I'm still gonna, like, the receipt's still gonna show that you paid the full amount. So when you go back to your friend, they're just like, hey, where's my change? You give them the correct change, you have the receipt to back it up. Little do they know you got however much that you just kind of kept in your pocket. That's a little shady. At the same time, you're the one who went to the store, you're the one who had the relationship with the cashier. You were kind of being compensated for your services in some respect. It's tricky because you could kind of make the argument of, well, this is part of the agency doing its business. On the other hand, it is ultimately the client's money. What's the case for this? Because then soon after what I think maybe the same week as the seb, you were doing all the reporting on the Richard Foster memo, WPP had its quarterly earnings call, which was for the year of 2025. And in that WPP Media CEO Brian Lesser kind of doubled down on the principal media practice of wpp.
- [18:22]
C
Yeah, Just to. Before we dig into that, I think you really touched on this sort of nuance here, which I think sometimes goes. Doesn't maybe get kind of talked about as much as the sort of headline sort of tension point. Right. And you know, I think fundamentally what we're talking about here is a shift in how the agency acts, right. In that traditional relationship, they act as a broker, they buy media, like you say to him, on a client's behalf. They get a fee for doing so, and they pass that value of what they buy back onto the client. They are ostensibly an agent for the client with the client's interest, theoretically, at least.
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A
Theoretically, doing a lot of work, theoretically,
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C
heavy lifting, for sure. But with principal kind of media, the difference really comes down to the fact that the agency is buying that media inventory for itself first. Right. And then it resells it to clients. So it's almost inverting that sort of brokerage model that we sort of talked about. And I think, you know, in that paradigm where you've got the agency simultaneously acting as an advisor and your supplier, you know, that's where things, as you were saying, start to get a bit touchy. Right. Because on the one hand, yes, the agency is offering you good value, but you've got no real straightforward way to know whether or not that's the best value available because the entity helping you arrive at that decision is also profiting from it. So you can kind of see how it becomes a slippery slope. But you're right, I think there are definitely cases for and against it. And Nutbergi, I know you and Sam worked sort of closely on the Brian Lesser sort of story where he was essentially talking about how this could become a competitive moat for Hulkos.
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D
Yeah, absolutely. I mean it. Well, to your point, it does call into question the term agency anymore because they are no longer acting as agents. And, you know, I think it depends on their largesse towards their clients. To use your analogy, Tim, you know, if that's a good friend, you probably give him one or two of those free beers that you got. And if you don't, maybe you question the friendship in the end. But back to that point, I think, look, as we know from WPP's 25, 2025 financial results, it is not a holding company that is in great shape right now. It's in the midst of massive transformation. They're trying to simplify the offering, but along the way, they would argue they need to make Money. Principal media is a way to make money because of the markup that they can charge their clients for that inventory that they have purchased for what is probably a much lesser price. As long as, and this goes back to the Forrester report and what I constantly hear from consultants, as long as there is some transparency about what they are doing, they don't necessarily need to disclose the percent of markup, but they need to say what, what they're buying and where they're putting their clients inventory so that there is some transparency in the process. And it seems that clients are okay with that so long as they have some understanding of what is being purchased on their behalf and where their ads are appearing. And then of course is are those investments, you know, offering some sort of return in terms of, you know, effectiveness? If, if an agency is buying crap media for really cheap and then marking that up to the client and the client is having its ads put in there and they're not getting the return on that investment, there's going to be a problem. I would imagine holding companies like WPP and Publicis and Omnicom, the primary users of principal media are smart enough to know that you better make sure that some of that inventory is actually going to deliver value for the client or else you're completely short circuiting what principal media can do.
- [22:47]
C
I think ultimately we're talking about just standards being sort of built around this, right? Like not every client is going to want to know, like you were saying to a Bergie, every sort of facet of how their money is kind of being spent. They just want to know that they spent X, they get Y. So it's kind of like seeing this sort of play out along a spectrum of ignorance, I guess, right? On the one end you've got the ignorance is bliss people and then on the other end you've got the trust but verify sort of camp. I think as long as, you know, there is that understanding that there will be some flex on both sides of the table as to and everyone is able to arrive at some consensus, then, you know, I can only see this becoming a kind of bigger thing. And I think we're starting to see some of that play out now in some of the pitches that are happening. Right. There's more onus now on marketers a to learn about, you know, kind of how principle media sort of works, at least to a degree because it is such a complicated thing. But then put in place, and I think we talked about this before Kimiko and Tim, but put in place some guardrails to sort of protect themselves from agencies sort of running amok with their inventory. Being able to do this essentially in a more controlled environment. And I think over the next sort of year, 18 months, we'll see, we'll start to see that become more mature. I guess as with all of these trends, we sort of go through that sort of Wild west sort of phase and then we arrive at something a little bit more amenable.
- [24:33]
B
I know that Holdcos as we're having this conversation get like a lot of flogging for this, but not for nothing, for good reason. To Lesser's point, there's also this sense like, oh, this could be a competitive advantage, especially when bleeding money. Talk to me a little bit about what does that competitive model then look like. I also see this being competitive for independent and smaller shops saying, hey, we're transparent, you know, don't go with a big holdco. But what is it like from you guys as POV as you're reporting on this space?
- [25:04]
D
It's a little harder for smaller independents. Some of the large independents certainly could do this a Horizon Media, maybe even to some degree a Tinuity or a pmg. But one thing you do need here is scale and this is why it benefits the holding companies much more than it does kind of smaller independents. So that's the only thing I would distinguish there from my vantage point. There's not much in terms of differentiation there besides, we're going to get you better value. We're still going to make our markup on this, but we're going to get you a better deal because of our ability to negotiate with publishers. But the main point I wanted to make is just that it's a little harder for smaller independents to actually leverage this. So it's going to remain mostly the province of larger agencies because of that need for scale.
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C
I wonder how this evolves, like in tandem with the upfront. Right? Because imagine if Holco y were to buy out the entire sort of ad inventory for, I don't know, like a major sports league, whether it be Premier League, Champions League, NBA and advertisers who want to reach that audience, they have no choice but to work with that kind of Holco. I wonder if that is like how this stuff sort of nets out in the medium to long term. Like, I don't. Tim, you're closer to that than me. But like, I don't know.
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A
Yeah, it's funny because like when Bergi was initially defining principal media, up until a point it was just I was sitting there thinking, well, that's the upfront. That's how the upfront. You have a lot of agencies who have become the principals and upfront teams. And I mean, especially since the pandemic where there was all the uncertainty, there was so much talk around flexibility that, you know, opportunistic or otherwise, you had some of the agencies holding companies being like, okay, clients, don't worry about it. Like, we'll be on the hook for this inventory in the upfront and we'll figure out how to fill it. Similarly, they said to the TV networks and the streaming services, like, look, just sell to us. We can buy in bulk for you, and we'll be the ones figuring out, like, how to get brands in to fill this inventory. And it worked out for everyone. I haven't heard any pushback against those deals.
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C
Yeah. I think given the state of the world, just two steps back, even the state of the world, I think that is kind of how this will kind of play out. Right. And I think it allows agencies to more realistically stake a claim for why these markups have been placed because they're having to take on a lot of risk in a very tumultuous sort of market.
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D
Good point. The only question I have there is, or the only distinction I would make is, you know, the upfronts for years were agencies committing their clients dollars. This is the agencies buying the inventory themselves. They're put. If. Unless I'm misunderstanding something.
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A
No, they're putting the money downfront. Deals in which the agencies are the ones signing the paperwork. They're the ones on the hook.
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D
Historically, that wasn't that much the case, although I would also say it's become
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A
the end of the pandemic.
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D
Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
- [28:20]
C
So.
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A
Which is like, in what's interesting, there is going back to my grocery store analogy. So originally I was saying, like, oh, it's me going out and, you know, buying on behalf of my friend. And in this case, like, the agencies are kind of becoming the grocery store, in which case they're buying the inventory wholesale. When I go to the grocery store, I know I'm not getting the same price that Vons or Albertsons or what have you is paying for Pepsi and Coke. There's a markup. The grocery store isn't telling me what that markup is.
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B
I was going to say that in this conversation about the case 4. And again, I was like, okay, so maybe transparency is what makes the case 4 stronger.
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C
Right.
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B
Makes the case for principal media buying, or however you want to label it stronger. But to your point, Tim, When I go to the grocery store. No, I don't know how much Costco got my cornflakes in bulk for. So maybe transparency is not the hinge.
- [29:15]
C
100%. I think the last several years of, well, like, Kimiko, like, you nailed it. Right. I think the last, if the last several years have proved anything when we talk about this type of thing is that marketers don't really care about transparency. Like, they, it's, it's great for a sort of keynote topic, but you know, when it comes to actual execution, like, yeah, we never, like, how many, how many kind of real transformational media strategies, operating models have we seen built in the back of that? Despite all of the bluster and sort of, you know, kind of hyperbole that was announced several years ago? Not much.
- [29:55]
A
Yeah. Because we haven't talked about the ultimate version of principal media in my mind, which is Google's performance Max and Meta's advantage. Plus, like, ultimately those are principal media products. In both cases, it's Google and Meta saying to an advertiser, look, just tell us your budget, tell us what outcome you're looking for. We'll figure out everything else. Don't worry about it.
- [30:20]
D
Yeah, well, you just explained why agencies are upping their principal media offerings as much as possible so that they don't see all that money go directly to the medicine Googles. I mean, I think that's the answer right there. And to your point, Seb, I mean, that's a mic drop moment right there. Marketers kind of don't give a shit as long as they're getting what they need. And a lot of the complaints around this sometimes feels like more kabuki theater than actual concern.
- [30:51]
C
Yeah. I think when you dig into some of the data out there and you see we're actually doing a piece on this soon. So I'll drop a bit of a tease when you see just how little agencies now get of every dollar that goes into advertising. Like, we're talking about something that is quite existential to the future of these companies because without this, they don't. They've got nothing. They've got no other place to kind of really kind of run when you like, you know those. What are they doing now? What is it? The AI sort of orchestration layer stuff that's, that's not going to sort of work. So they've got so much riding on this, which is why I think you can see how careful they've been to try and pitch these. Right. Bergey, in the earnings calls into kind
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A
of US
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C
I do wonder how long the likes of Acadia and Jared can kind of use not using it as a differentiator, just given the broader trajectory of the kind of market.
- [31:57]
D
I love Jared Belsky and I think he's a really smart guy and Acadia does cool stuff, but I will say that that was its own form of theater. When he kind of boldly proclaimed proclaim that like, I'm giving all the money back from rebates, what he was talking about feels like something slightly different from what a holding company is doing with principal media. So again, I laud his efforts to kind of call attention to a practice that still feels far too opaque, but I'm not sure that was the way
- [32:30]
C
to do it 100%. I think he's probably appealing to a certain type of marketer that's more predisposed to that type of messaging. So it will work, right? Okay, you're one of the most successful independents out there, but you just look at where the market is headed and the way I think that marketers like to buy inventory. To Tim and Kimiko's point about performance, Mac Advantage plus and literally any other derivative of that all of the platforms have now, you know, I think it's pretty clear where the market more broadly is sort of headed.
- [33:04]
A
Yeah, it's a spectrum, as you all have been saying, because it's kind of like for anyone who's done their taxes by themselves before, and I've done this one year, one year only, will not do it again. Like, you save a lot of money that way, conceivably, at least you save money when it comes to tax preparation costs. I don't know if my refund would have been different that year had I paid an actual professional, but I know now I am paying a price professional and there's a markup. I. It's clear what the markup is again, I could do this for free for, by myself, but I don't know that I would be getting the same return as if I paid someone. So I'm happy to pay their markup. That said, if, you know, I find out that that person's just going into Turbo Tax and doing my stuff, that would be disturbing. It's too funny. But so I guess, like, where I'm kind of landing with this is there's a clear case for, and a clear case against. The clear case for is even if I'm a client, if I'm a certain type of client, I want my agency to be incentivized to be getting the best deal for Me, the case against is I want to make sure that I'm benefiting from that. It's not just my agency benefiting from that. The real sticky part is I think the transparency piece, like how much transparency is appropriate. Especially because the CMO at a brand may be okay with a certain level of transparency, a certain level of principal buying and markup and all that, but if the CFO at that brand catches wind of it, then it could be a different conversation. Especially if all the nitty gritty details of what that markup is, is getting disclosed, the CFO may then pressure, which can ruin the entire practice. And so I guess as with so many things, it feels like it comes back to these days, outcome based measurement, outcome based buying, where once that's really available and reliable, the rest of this just becomes noise. I think.
- [35:16]
B
Yeah, I think even in your, like with the relationship between the CFO and the cmo, I still think the CFO would just kind of take it on the chin if the CMO is able to prove this worked.
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A
Yeah, if they can show like, and here's the revenue that we.
- [35:29]
B
Exactly, exactly. Then you just go back full circle.
- [35:33]
D
Yeah. And without that proof. But then with, you know, lack of transparency in terms of money saved on one side or another, that's where the problem, you know, comes roaring right back into the room.
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C
On the transparency thing, I think CMOs have to decide also how much much is enough, because that could be like, at some point you just sort of have to trust that your agency is, is going to do the thing that you've asked them to do and trust that the, the contractual stipulations are tight enough, robust enough to, to allow that to sort of happen. If an agency is going to be shady, then they will find a way to be shady. Right. I think you. That would be in any walk of life. So, you know, I think as long as there are some, you know, kind of tight stipulations in that contract to basically say that if you do get found out for doing this, then it will cost you X, then I think that also stands as a good red line for an agency to not necessarily maybe kind of do that even if they kind of wanted to, because, you know, the fear of being sort of caught out could cost him a lot of kind of money. So I only say that because I was talking to a chief media officer at a company and that was, that was how he sort of had to do the mental gymnastics to be able to, to stick it for him because he was like, yeah, like trans like, how much transparency do you get? And unless, you know, we're auditing on them, on, we're auditing them at a ridiculous sort of cadence, you know, there's no way I can like say kind of 100% for sure that this is happening. This isn't happening.
- [37:24]
A
As always, the biggest benefactor the lawyers no doubt about.
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D
Feels like we just went right back to 2017 when, when that report was first issued. And it's like, wait a minute. You were hiding all this? What the hell? You're supposed to be my agency. I think, I think we've, we've come farther, far enough along now where at least the calls for transparency and the efforts to make contracts be a little bit more explicit without being, you know, capital E explicit may actually save this from becoming kind of the next big kind of boondoggle of the industry. But we might already be there. I don't know.
- [38:06]
C
Look at us being all helpful for a change.
- [38:08]
D
I'll try it.
- [38:09]
A
We'll see in a little over a month when we're at the Programmatic Marketing Summit again. Because, Kimiko, you'd mentioned two years ago when we were there, the conversation in the town halls with the agency execs was, hey, rebates and kickbacks are back, but no one really seems to care about it. Fast forward a couple years. In May, we'll be able to find out if that's still the case or how that all has transpired and we will report back then. But Bergey, Seb, really appreciate you both coming back on.
- [38:40]
D
Thank you, Tim. Thanks, Kimiko.
- [38:42]
A
Thanks, Seb.
- [38:43]
C
Cheers, Bergy.
- [38:50]
A
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