• by Rob Williams , April 27, 2026

Left to right: Zach Lain, PepsiCo; Joseph Lerner, A+E Television Networks; Mac Hagel, Razorfish; Stacey Bohrer, OpenX (Photo: Rob Williams)

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – Programmatic advertising may be getting more trusted, but buyers still see plenty of murk in the pipes.

At a POSSIBLE panel moderated by OpenX’s Stacy Bohrer, agency, brand, publisher and supply-side executives said media buying is shifting from a narrow focus on low CPMs and scale toward a more demanding view of supply quality, transparency and outcomes.

Asked how much they trust the programmatic supply chain today on a scale of one to 10, panelists mostly landed around six or seven.

That may not sound like a love letter to ad-tech, but several speakers said trust has improved from a few years ago as buyers, publishers, DSPs and SSPs share more signals and work more directly together.

SSPs Move From Plumbing To Performance

Mac Hagel, president and head of media at Razorfish, said decision-making is moving closer to the supply side, even as DSPs still play a central orchestration role.

“The SSP has really moved from plumbing to performance,” Hagel said. He pointed to private marketplaces, bidding signals and cleaner supply paths as examples of where SSPs now have more influence over buying strategy.

For buyers, the shift means supply-path optimization is no longer just about cost reduction. Increasingly, it is about knowing what inventory is being bought, what signals survive the transaction and whether those signals can improve business outcomes.

PepsiCo Wants To See Where The Data Breaks

Zach Lain, global data partnerships lead at PepsiCo, said the brand-side question has changed.

“We used to ask, ‘Can this reach my audience?’” Lain said. “The question has really evolved into, 'Can you prove to me what you’re showing'?"

That is a meaningful shift for large advertisers. For a company with broad household penetration, simple reach is not the hard part. The harder question is whether partners can show how models work, where they are weakest and whether the data is useful enough to guide decisions.

Lain said brands need partners to be more transparent about weak spots, not just sell polished claims about precision.

“Show me where the data is the weakest,” he said. “Show us what’s weak about it.”

Publishers See Upside If Buyers Pay For Quality

Joseph Lerner, vice president of programmatic at A+E Global Media, said supply-side intelligence can be good for publishers, provided all sides work together more closely.

He said publishers often have meaningful data about their audiences across linear television, connected TV (CTV), free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels and digital products, but that data is not always fully passed through programmatic pipes.

The opportunity, he said, is to move beyond transactional buying and cheap reach toward outcomes that matter more to advertisers.

“If you understand what you’re buying, there’s a value behind it,” Lerner said. “No one’s afraid to pay for it. It’s just a matter of getting what you pay for transparently.”

Quality Isn’t The Same As Premium

One of the more useful distinctions came in the discussion around “premium” versus “quality.” Lain argued that premium is often a label applied to certain publishers or inventory, while quality should be defined by whether a placement actually works for a specific brand goal.

A site or channel may not look premium on a media plan, he suggested, but if the audience is engaged and the context helps move a brand’s objective, that may be quality inventory.

That distinction matters for media buyers trying to balance cost, relevance and results. A low CPM is not automatically efficient if the impressions do not help achieve the brief. A higher-priced placement may be worth it if it drives a better outcome.

New SPO Is About What Buyers Buy

Hagel said the next generation of supply-path optimization will be less about simply finding the cheapest route and more about optimizing toward outcomes.

“The past 10 years were about how we buy,” he said. “The next 10 years are going to be about what we buy.”

That is the heart of the shift. Media buyers still care about CPMs, but price alone is becoming a weaker proxy for value. The harder job is determining whether the inventory, audience signal and context actually support the campaign’s goal.

Why It Matters For Media Buyers

For media buyers, the panel’s message was clear: programmatic trust is improving, but only for buyers willing to interrogate the supply chain.

The practical questions are:

• Can the signal change a buying decision?
• Does the data survive the trip from publisher to buyer?
• Can partners explain where their models fail?
• Is the campaign optimizing toward a business outcome or just a dashboard metric?

In other words, buyers are not just asking whether programmatic can reach people cheaply. They are asking whether it can reach the right people, in the right environment, with enough transparency to justify the spend.