DSPs want to vet buyers before letting them into their platforms. No one wants to serve ads from advertisers they don’t trust.
But what happens when a DSP is worried about a buyer digging too deeply into its supply chain? Apparently, that’s reason enough not to onboard them – which is odd, given how loudly the industry talks about transparency.
Check My Ads has been building its reputation as a nonprofit programmatic industry watchdog for years, and many ad tech vendors have been quick to hype their work with the organization as an example of their commitment to transparency, said Check My Ads COO Arielle Garcia.
But giving Check My Ads an actual DSP seat – where it can perform the same inventory analysis as any other buyer – is seemingly a bridge too far, Garcia said.
A DSP that Check My Ads declined to name on the record recently refused to give the organization a seat on its platform, even after both parties cosigned a master service agreement (MSA). AdExchanger reviewed emails between the companies, which were provided by Check My Ads, and confirmed the existence of the MSA.
According to the correspondence, the DSP had been so eager to work with Check My Ads that it waived its minimum spending requirement.
But then, before Check My Ads could run its first campaign, the DSP got cold feet and called off the arrangement, citing discomfort with “the scope of protections extended to our vendor and supply partners.”
Take a seat (or not)
This was the first time Check My Ads had formally pursued a DSP seat, according to Garcia.
The purpose was to aid its research into programmatic buying, she said, with the intention of publishing best practices for how small advertisers can avoid waste in programmatic campaigns. For example, the organization recently published a report on Google’s Performance Max based on its firsthand experience using the platform.
Check My Ads also plans to eventually offer “agency-lite” managed services to small advertisers in a nonprofit capacity, Garcia said. Hence its plan to set up a DSP seat like any other agency.
But Check My Ads also wanted a DSP seat for the most mundane of reasons: to promote itself. In addition to its watchdog work and researching ad platform updates, Check My Ads runs campaigns to market its services, newsletters and merchandise, such as branded apparel.
“It’s important for Check My Ads to have technical expertise and stay current with how the industry is evolving,” said Iesha White, director of intelligence at Check My Ads, who spent a decade as a media buyer. “In order for us to do that, we have to have skin in the game and spend money.”
White had personal prior experience buying ads through the unnamed DSP and reached out earlier this year to a contact who worked there to see if it would grant a seat to Check My Ads.
Based on the email exchange, the DSP was very interested initially. It set up a platform demo for Check My Ads in April, after which White’s contact emailed a summary of the meeting takeaways, including that the DSP agreed to waive its minimum spending requirement.
The DSP also sent an MSA for Check My Ads to sign in mid-May. AdExchanger confirmed that this MSA was signed by both companies.
The post-demo recap email also reflected an understanding of why Check My Ads wanted a DSP seat.
It read, “Your objectives: Moving beyond Google PMax / Demand Gen into ‘real’ programmatic with full transparency and control, no black box. Running small but meaningful test campaigns ($1k–$20k/month range) for your own research and analysis, and for select advertisers where you can learn and potentially generate revenue. Evolving over time into a selective mini-agency model. (woot woot! SO honored you’re thinking of us).”
Supply partner protections
But from there, the mood shifted.
It started innocently enough. White’s contact emailed on May 20 to notify Check My Ads that its DSP seat should be live by the following week. But in the meantime, the contact said, the DSP was requesting more information about planned test campaigns, the brands involved, expected budgets and campaign objectives.
White responded on May 21 that Check My Ads was still working on signing commitments with brand clients. But she disclosed that Check My Ads wanted to run its own brand lift campaign, as well as a CPA campaign to drive newsletter sign-ups. This CPA campaign had a test budget of $1,000, which fell into the range that the DSP had approved in the previous email exchange.
White followed up on June 3 for a status update. Her contact responded that they were “still confirming next steps.” They added, “In the meantime, I have one last question: If you identify any vendor performance concerns on [redacted], can we agree to loop us in first before escalating externally?”
That question struck Check My Ads as a sign of suspicion about its intentions and an indication that the DSP was becoming uncomfortable with letting a self-professed watchdog have a seat on its platform. But White responded, “We would absolutely inform [redacted] of any supply issue first, and we would reach out to any impacted SSP vendors, as is our standard practice.”
Then, after White followed up again on June 5, she got an unequivocal response from the DSP’s head of client partnerships that the platform had “decided not to move forward with this partnership.”
“As we worked through the agreement, we weren’t able to get comfortable with the scope of protections extended to our vendor and supply partners,” the response read. “We have an obligation to consider the downstream impact on them before bringing on new clients, particularly in cases where the nature of the research or activation may intersect with those partners in ways that fall outside what our MSA covers.”
Garcia responded to express her disappointment that the partnership would not move forward despite the companies cosigning an MSA. The head of client partnerships wrote back that “I personally advocated for this partnership and am disappointed we couldn’t find a path forward. This decision was made above my level, and was driven by feedback from our supply and legal teams that was first raised internally on May 20 and ultimately couldn’t be resolved within our organization.”
They added, “I respect what you’re building, and I hope our paths cross again under different circumstances.”
Typical DSP vetting
To be fair to the DSP, it’s not unusual for a buy-side platform to extensively vet buyers before giving them a seat. And DSPs can decide not to work with a buyer for any reason.
DSPs also want assurances about a buyer’s financial health, so they might run their own audits, according to an ad tech consultant familiar with DSP onboarding processes who requested anonymity to speak candidly. If the DSP noticed any red flags in recent financial filings by Check My Ads, the consultant said, it may have gotten nervous.
But, according to Garcia, the DSP never conducted any such audit of her organization’s finances.
However, what the DSP did flag were concerns that its supply partners would not be protected. Protected from what exactly was not specified. Check My Ads was left to assume that the DSP was worried about a watchdog poking around its supply chain.
It’s a reasonable concern for any DSP, said the consultant. “No DSP is going to knowingly onboard a party whose stated purpose is to turn that seat into an exposé,” they said.
Still, it’s hard to square that reluctance with an industry that never seems to tire of talking up the need for transparency.
Widespread reluctance
As it turns out, the unnamed DSP wasn’t the only programmatic platform that backed away from working with Check My Ads after expressing interest.
Another DSP that Check My Ads declined to name on the record had recently reached out to White about appearing on a podcast together. White recorded the podcast and later asked if she could get access to the DSP to test it. The DSP declined.
Check My Ads also had a similar experience with Thrad, a platform that places ads in generative AI responses.
According to emails between the two companies shared with AdExchanger by Check My Ads, Thrad initially approved Check My Ads to use its platform. But it later flagged some issues with the watchdog’s campaign setup, including that it had selected sensitive targeting topics where Thrad would be unable to place contextual LLM response ads (i.e., politics, abortion, mental health and LGBTQ). The Check My Ads merchandise storefront was also not configured to ship to Europe despite the campaign including European audiences.
But even after White removed the sensitive targeting categories and rectified the storefront error, Thrad still refused to launch the campaign. Thrad CEO Andrea Tortella later emailed Garcia to say that Check My Ads does not fit its ideal customer profile. Thrad did not respond to multiple requests from AdExchanger to comment on the matter.
All told, it appears that the industry’s apparent commitment to transparency has its limits – and Check My Ads is running up against them, according to Garcia and White. Even so, Check My Ads still wants to work with any DSP that’s willing to strike a good-faith partnership.
“If there are any DSPs out there that are confident in their supply and want to help us make programmatic accessible to small businesses,” Garcia said, “reach out to us.”
Update 7/23/26: This story was updated to clarify that Check My Ads did record a podcast with a second DSP that later refused to give the organization a seat on its platform. The story originally said Check My Ads refused to record the podcast unless it was granted a seat on the DSP first.
