We all know that we’re supposed to eat our veggies and skip the junk food. But knowing isn’t the same as doing.
Marketers instinctively know that better data and higher-quality media drive better outcomes. But bad habits are sticky and they die hard, said Jamie Barnard, CEO of Compliant, a startup that tracks data quality standards across digital media.
The ad industry has “a volume-based mentality,” said Barnard, who knows that struggle firsthand. He spent nearly 16 years at Unilever as its general counsel focused on global marketing, media and ecommerce before leaving in 2022.
So, what needs to happen for the industry to stop eating so much junk food?
Quality doesn’t have to cost
That’s the question Compliant set out to answer earlier this year by running a set of controlled tests with four global brands spanning CPG, financial services, consumer electronics and consumer health care.
The results, released on Thursday, will shock no one (not that people don’t need to hear this): Quality drives performance and efficiency, buying low-quality inventory is money down the drain and, as it turns out, spending on better media doesn’t have to cost more.
According to Compliant’s findings, advertisers who prioritize data integrity and make a point of buying impressions from high-value publishers with better data practices see a 33% lower cost per action, a 32% reduction in CPMs and a 5% higher return on ad spend.
But as obvious as that sounds, the reality is more complicated, said Sameer Amin, VP of data-driven marketing at Reckitt, one of the advertisers that participated in the study, whose portfolio includes everything from Lysol, Mucinex and Clearasil to Durex, K-Y and baby formula brand Enfamil.
One of the reasons why buyers continue to chase cheap, high-volume inventory is because of inadequate measurement.
“Econometric models, marketing mix analysis – these things tend to give good ROI to low-cost inventory without really looking at the quality of the impressions,” Amin said. “But we’ve found that if we look at the right data and prioritize things like viewability and brand safety, we can get better results without necessarily having to pay more.”
Quality by design
Not that there’s a switch marketers can flip to go from prioritizing scale to focusing on quality.
The best thing they can do, Amin said, is to educate themselves and roll up their sleeves.
“You need to invest in the data, you need to invest in the tools and you need to invest in the talent that can use the data and the tools,” he said. “It’s easier just to trust the big platforms, like Google and Facebook, but if you want improvement, you have to do the work.”
Reckitt, for example, curates inclusion lists for its supply partners to identify quality inventory and excludes publishers that fall below a set data integrity threshold. Then, it strikes private marketplace deals directly with preferred publishers, Amin said, which gives brands more control over the quality and context of their media buys.
There are dedicated staff to oversee these partnerships and deals who make sure that investments align with brand objectives and marketing goals and that trusted suppliers are recognized and prioritized over time.
Reckitt also created brand safety and suitability frameworks tailored to each of its brands, reflecting the different requirements across its portfolio.
“It doesn’t really make sense to have the same protocols for a sexual intimacy brand like Durex as you would for a baby milk formula brand,” Amin said. “What would work for one you’d exclude for the other and vice versa.”
In other words, decisions about audience and media are driven by strategy, he said, and not by procurement or solely based on price. Although it is nice to know that one can get quality supply without having to overspend, he added.
Will this time be different?
Hold up, though. This isn’t the first time marketers have clear evidence that quality trumps quantity.
Remember, in 2017, when JPMorgan Chase cut its programmatic site list from 400,000 to 5,000 without any drop-off in performance? And recall that high-profile ANA transparency report from a few years ago that exposed an astounding amount of waste in the programmatic supply chain?
Point being, even with clear proof, change has been slow.
“New Report Finds That Quality Pays Off In Programmatic” – the headline of this article – really shouldn’t be a revelation in 2025, and yet, somehow, it is.
So what makes this time different?
One big factor is artificial intelligence. With AI starting to play a major role in media buying and optimization, the need for transparency and high-quality data is more pressing than ever, Barnard said, which might finally be enough to push brands to act on what they know.
The rise of generative AI and agentic tools makes detailed data and real-time analytics possible, but also amplifies the need to fix data quality issues from the get-go.
“If you buy media from publishers with bad data practices, then no amount of downstream optimization can reverse the impact that will have on targeting and efficiency,” Barnard said. “It’s really important that marketers and their generative tools have transparency into the quality of media on the supply side.”
As part of its platform, Compliant has a scoring framework, which it calls the Data Integrity Index, that independently verifies and measures whether publishers are adhering to responsible data practices and industry standards, including privacy compliance.
It provides a transparency score that marketers can use to guide their media buying decisions.
“It’s very easy to look at everything that’s wrong with programmatic, but there is actually so much good inventory out there,” Barnard said. “Shifting toward a value-based model means rethinking which metrics matter, and good data standards should really just be part of the fabric of programmatic.”
