The fight against harmful ad placement starts with smarter buying

The latest Adalytics report sent shock waves through the programmatic world, and the ensuing dialogue is following an increasingly familiar script — blame the platforms, tools and methods that have promised all of us brand safety, and/or impugn the entire open web programmatic space as irredeemable.

It is an incomplete and lazy response, particularly given the weight of this report’s findings relating to child sexual abuse material. We have to do better, and the “we” I’m referring to in this case is the buy side of the equation.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that the sell side has no role in this. There is responsibility at all points of the supply chain. However, the funding comes from the buy side, so the critical role that brands and agencies play in the solutions to the problem is undeniable. The simplest of economic lessons will tell you that the market for something will effectively disappear if demand dries up. All of us involved in media buying decisions need to roll up our sleeves and make sure that the market for low-quality, fraudulent and — in this case — hugely damaging inventory dries up as quickly as possible.

I’ve often compared the problems with programmatic quality to the war on drugs of the 1980s. There is only so much you can do in the form of supply restrictions to solve the problem. You have to interrogate the root causes of the demand at the same time. So, what can the buy side do to make a difference?

Dive deep into supply chain management

Before you can address quality problems, you must have an intimate knowledge of the supply chain from one end to the other. This means demanding a level of radical transparency from your partners. Don’t accept flat CPM buys that obscure inventory and fees. Move away from vendors who refuse to provide you with log-level data. Work to understand what is being declared in the bidstream and how that matches up to what you’re actually getting in your buys.

Historically, the most fundamental responsibility of media buyers has been to be in tune with what they are buying. We have to get back to that. Today, there are degrees of separation between buyers and sellers that are still relatively novel, but that is not an excuse to lose sight of our primary responsibility to know what we’re buying.

Understand price vs. value

Here I would make a callback to an opinion piece I wrote for The Current just last year: All impressions are not created equal. We’ve allowed media to become far too commoditized. You can’t measure the cost of media the same way you measure the cost of office furniture or electricity. If the game we’re playing on the buy side is just about driving down prices, then someone will always be willing to come along and play that game with an asymptotic race to the bottom.

Delivering successful programmatic media is about creating value. Efficiency can be an output of this, but it cannot be the primary goal. That is a recipe for low inventory at best and a brand disaster like this latest report at worst.

Put the ‘open’ in open web

As I mentioned, a lot of people have reverted to blaming the open web. They say it’s too complex of a marketplace for brands and agencies to navigate. I don’t accept that. A truly open web is not the problem, but the solution. These issues stem from players in the space that are not being open and transparent.

Running back to the comfort of some form of more direct buying is an easy panacea, but it will only make this problem worse. Walled gardens have created and sustained much of this problem, and simply trusting them with an even larger share of our dollars is not the answer.

Don’t look away

This seems like a pretty easy one, but it’s clearly not happening across the board. The complexity of the open web programmatic world allows the buy side to look away when it’s convenient. Do you need a lower CPM to avoid a challenging conversation with your boss? Do you need that CPA to come in just a bit lower to make the next client call go more smoothly?

I love the adage that a value isn’t a value until it costs you something. Have the hard conversations internally and with clients about this issue and why it’s critical to focus on quality even when it’s not convenient.

Despite what you may have heard, problems like the ones uncovered in the Adalytics report are supremely solvable. By focusing on transparent partnerships and committing ourselves to the principles of the open web, even when it’s hard, we can put a stop to this.

The only votes that matter in this equation are dollars, and the buy side is casting them in droves even as you read this. Let’s make sure we’re always voting for the right side.

This op-ed represents the views and opinions of the author and not of The Current, a division of The Trade Desk, or The Trade Desk. The appearance of the op-ed on The Current does not constitute an endorsement by The Current or The Trade Desk.