• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, January 7, 2024

Programmatic media-buying was supposed to be about economic savings, reduced workflow, precision targeting and a better return on advertising investments, but new research from the Association of National Advertisers reveals it is full of angst and trust issues.

And while that may not seem surprising following a year's worth of ANA programmatic media supply-chain transparency reports, the new data quantifies it.

The data -- released as a supplement to those transparency reports -- is based on a survey the ANA conducted late last year among members involved explicitly in programmatic media-buying, and it ranks metrics such as "brand safety," "viewability," and "invalid traffic" higher than fundamental media objectives like "reach," "CPM," "return on ad spending," "awareness," "incrementality," "completions," "conversions," "brand lift" and "cost-per-conversion."

Interestingly, "carbon footprint" -- arguably the most goodwill ad metric -- was dead last in importance.

"We found that the top-rated metrics important for programmatic advertising campaigns are all related to 'bad things' that can happen with programmatic media: ads appearing in non-brand safe environments, ads that are not viewable, and ads that are served to bots rather than humans," the just-released ANA report concludes, noting: "These are 'table stake' metrics for programmatic advertising."