In today’s fiercely competitive advertising landscape, brand procurement teams are under incredible pressure to demonstrate value for every media dollar spent. Too often, they conflate efficiency and value.
The push for tighter margins is not without impact, especially as it extends across the entire advertising supply chain. Agencies feel the pinch as brands demand more for less, forcing them to seek high-volume impressions at the lowest possible cost.
On the surface, these savings might seem like a win, enabling brands to extend their reach while adhering to budget constraints. Yet, this relentless drive for efficiency has unintended and far-reaching consequences that have significantly reshaped the industry.
The meaning behind metrics
Agencies are often driven to focus on short-term cost-saving strategies that meet “contract metrics” but sacrifice brand-building and business-driving metrics. This trickles down into media buying, where the pressure to achieve the best possible price can overshadow considerations around quality and impact.
Agencies may turn to programmatic channels and low-cost inventory, which, while cheap, can introduce risks. Media supply on these channels often includes MFA (made-for-advertising) sites, platforms designed solely to capture ad revenue.
These sites present themselves as cost-effective options, offering high impression volumes that satisfy procurement’s demand for efficiency. However, they often use click-bait content that inflates metrics but fails to meaningfully engage real audiences. And many of these MFA sites and programmatic channels are fertile ground for bots that mimic human behavior and inflate metrics like views and clicks.
The ecosystem becomes vulnerable to fraud when media buying strategies are subjugated to misconstrued cost-saving as agencies pursue lower-cost impressions to meet client expectations. Recent industry initiatives, however, have shown that concerted efforts to combat fraud have made a tangible impact.
According to the 2024 US Ad Fraud Savings Report, cross-industry anti-fraud efforts resulted in $10.8 billion in fraud savings for advertisers in 2023. This progress underscores the importance of adopting robust fraud-prevention strategies and transparent partnerships throughout the supply chain, addressing a long-standing vulnerability in digital media.
A shared responsibility
While the push for efficiency often starts with procurement demands, this doesn’t absolve publishers of their responsibility to maintain quality standards. Publishers play a crucial role in ensuring that their platforms offer real value to advertisers and authentic experiences for audiences.
There’s a shared accountability here – publishers must actively safeguard their inventory against low-quality content and fraudulent activity. When they commit to building high-quality environments, they not only uphold their credibility but also support a healthier ecosystem where media buys deliver greater value.
In the current scenario, everyone loses: Brands waste money on impressions that don’t reach real consumers, while agencies find their work compromised and trust in digital advertising erodes.
The focus on cost-cutting has thus created a paradox. Striving for efficient media buys has led to inefficiencies and waste on a massive scale. Brands eager to keep costs down indirectly support low-quality publishers, which further incentivizes the creation of more MFA sites. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle where the pursuit of efficiency compromises the very effectiveness it aims to secure.
The elephant in the room is this value vs. efficiency equation. And it really comes down to a question of how the industry defines value.
Redefining priorities
As procurement teams push for efficiency, brands must begin to realize the trade-offs involved. Instead of chasing the lowest possible cost per impression, they might consider investing in higher-quality inventory on reputable sites, even if it comes at a premium.
This shift could encourage a healthier ecosystem where real engagement matters more than inflated numbers and where every ad dollar works toward building genuine connections with audiences. Embracing quality over quantity is a long-term strategy that protects brands from fraud and bot traffic and strengthens the relationship with consumers, fostering trust and loyalty. This long-term value must be measured over time as a brand health metric and not simply relegated to short-term buying metrics.
The advertising industry faces a choice: continue squeezing every dollar for efficiency’s sake or reframe the equation to prioritize quality, transparency and impact. Focusing on impressions and views is tempting in a market driven by short-term metrics. But if those numbers don’t translate into real connections with real people, they’re hollow figures in a complex system.
The future of digital advertising depends on a balanced approach that values both efficiency and integrity, where brands, agencies and publishers work together to build an ecosystem that rewards quality, discourages bad actors and delivers true value to everyone involved.
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.
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