Curt Larson

The media industry has a junk food problem.

Marketers and their agency and DSP partners have grown so focused on vanity media metrics, such as clickthrough rate (CTR), cost-per-click (CPC) and video watches, that roughly half of all ad supply is made-for-advertising (MFA) inventory – sites and pages that use clickbait headlines and filler content to generate traffic and cluttered layouts with awful user experiences to cram more display and video ads onto the page.

Tying ad spend to conversions by making ads actionable is one sure way to measure ROAS more effectively. To that end, many brands are turning to solutions like shoppable TV ads.

Whereas brands and DSPs are whittling down the number of supply paths they use to purchase ad inventory, publishers are financially incentivized to work with as many partners as possible. But there are changes afoot that could alter the economics for publishers.

Sustainability was a hot topic for the advertising industry in 2022. The momentum will only grow in 2023, though decarbonization remains a multiyear journey.

Without an easy interface for clicking through to purchase, audio and video ads have, until recently, been best suited to upper-funnel brand-awareness campaigns rather than direct response. But now, tried-and-true technologies like retargeted display ads and QR codes are making audio and video formats more actionable.

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Curt Larson, vice president of product at Sharethrough. At Apple’s developer conference in early June, the company unveiled its new “Intelligent Tracking Prevention” initiative. The move will launch on Safari […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Curt Larson, vice president of product at Sharethrough. In late 2013 Facebook kicked off the merger of native advertising and real-time bidding with the introduction of FBX and its exchange […]