The Great Programmatic Clean-Up: Why Your Media Budget Needs a Reality Check
By Sanjeev Patel, Digital Lead at December19
Remember when programmatic advertising was going to save us all? Those halcyon days when we believed technology would deliver surgical precision, infinite scale, and Swiss-watch efficiency? Well, reality called, and it's asking for its money back.
The ANA's Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study delivered a sobering wake-up call: for every pound you spend on open web programmatic, only 36 pence actually reaches a real human eyeball. The remaining 64%? It's gone on a magical mystery tour through a labyrinth of fees, fraud, and what can only be described as digital sleight of hand.
We've created a system where two-thirds of our investment disappears into a Bermuda Triangle of Made-for-Advertising sites, non-viewable impressions, and bot traffic that would make a sci-fi writer blush.
The problem isn't just the waste—it's the sheer impossibility of explaining it.
December19's Antidote to the Madness
At December19, we operate on the radical principle that you should know where your money goes. Our approach to programmatic isn't about accepting the status quo—it's about systematically dismantling it.
Supply Path Archaeology: We don't just audit our supply paths annually like some sort of compliance checkbox exercise. We treat it as an ongoing investigation, constantly mapping where impressions flow and where pounds leak. Think of it as financial forensics for the digital age.
Direct Relationships, Real Control: We're pushing for direct DSP partnerships that give us actual visibility into the process. No more playing telephone through seventeen intermediaries who each take their cut while muttering about "industry standards."
Curated Excellence Over Open Market Chaos: We prioritise Private Marketplace deals over the programmatic Wild West. Yes, it requires more effort. Yes, it means smaller scale initially. But we'd rather reach 100,000 real humans than 500,000 sophisticated bots with impeccable click-through rates.
Plain English, Please: We're championing contracts written in actual human language, with data access rights that don't require a legal degree to understand. If you can't explain where the money goes, you shouldn't be handling it.
The Real Stakes
This isn't about penny-pinching or chasing vanity metrics.
It's about building sustainable, effective advertising that actually works. When we clean up our supply chains, something magical happens: performance improves. Viewability increases. Fraud decreases. We make contact with actual humans rather than elaborate digital phantoms.
The tedious work of supply path optimisation isn't glamorous, but neither is explaining to your CFO why 64% of your media budget vanished into the digital ether. One conversation is infinitely more comfortable than the other.
Time for a Collective Reckoning
If you haven't forensically examined your inventory paths recently, consider this your gentle nudge.
Not just for the sake of better performance metrics, but for the survival of your sanity and the integrity of the entire ecosystem we're all trying to make work.
The programmatic promise was real—precision, scale, efficiency. But somewhere along the way, we allowed it to become a shell game played with other people's money. It's time to demand better, build better, and prove that technology can actually deliver on its original promise.
The question isn't whether we can afford to clean up our supply chains. It's whether we can afford not to.
Have you seen tangible results from supply path optimisation? Reduced fraud rates? Improved ROI? The industry needs more success stories and fewer cautionary tales. Let's share what's actually working.
