The Cost of Keeping Quiet: Ad Fraud, Incentives & The Silence Protecting Billions, with Sarah Caputo & David Nyurenberg

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The marketing industry spends more than $4,000 per U.S. household every year.

Analysts estimate that 20–30% of that spend may be lost to waste, inefficiency, and outright fraud — tens of billions of dollars annually.

So here’s the uncomfortable question:

If everyone knows the plumbing is broken… Why does the system keep running?

In this episode of Signal & Noise, Rio Longacre and Brett House sit down with ⁠Sarah Caputo⁠ & ⁠David Nyurenberg⁠ to unpack what rarely gets said out loud: the persistence of media waste isn’t just a technology problem — it’s an incentive problem.

From opaque take rates and arbitrage models to CTV supply path manipulation, from procurement-driven CPM pressure to vanity metrics masquerading as performance — this conversation pulls back the curtain on how the ecosystem actually works.

Sarah and David bring firsthand experience from agencies, holding companies, publishers, and the brand side. They share real stories of:

• Arbitrage margins north of 80%

• Inventory labeled one way and delivered another

• Contract loopholes that block transparency

• The career risk of asking the wrong questions

• And the quiet pressure to “not rock the boat”

  
  

The uncomfortable truth? Silence is often rewarded. Transparency can be punished. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

We dig into what brands can do right now — from contractual protections and audit rights to internal capability building — to regain leverage and reduce exposure to hidden inefficiencies.

If you work in AdTech, MarTech, CTV, programmatic, or media buying, this episode will feel very familiar.

If you’re on the brand side, it may change how you think about your next RFP.

Read the companion article: 👉 ⁠https://www.signalandnoise.ai/post/the-cost-of-keeping-quiet⁠

Subscribe for more candid, operator-level conversations about advertising, media, technology, and the incentives shaping what’s next.

No hype. No spin. Just signal.

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Read the full transcript below:

Brett House (00:01)

Welcome everybody to another exciting episode of Signal in Noise. We are a no BS media franchise bringing clarity to data tech and AI. And as usual, I'm joined by my co-host Rhea Longacre. I'm Brett House. We've got some very exciting guests today. David Nurenberg and Sarah Caputo. Did I say that right, Sarah? I did. Great. Great. The topic before I introduce David and Sarah, which is the first time we've had two

Sarah Caputo (00:22)

You did, yeah. Congrats.

Brett House (00:31)

guests at once, which should be pretty interesting, is the cost of keeping quiet, media responsibility, and the incentives that enforce silence. Now that's a juicy topic. So as you can imagine, this episode should uncover a lot about ad fraud and related topics. ⁓ But the difference between this and other episodes is that David and Sarah have written a really compelling article, which should be available when this episode launches.

about their first-hand experience sort of in the dark underbelly of ad tech and mar tech, right? Seeing how incentives ⁓ impact and affect people's decisions when it comes to ⁓ media quality, ad fraud, and what you're representing to brands and how brands are thinking about a lot of these topics. before we go any deeper into the theme, which we'll re-overl-introduce in a second,

I want to give Sarah and David an opportunity to introduce themselves for those that don't know them rather than me doing the introductions. David, why don't you start and then Sarah follow up.

David (01:38)

Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, Brett kudos to getting my name right. that's usually a challenge for many. so I'm David Nirenberg. I am a performance marketer for about 15 years now. Started out on the publisher side, then bounced around to a few ad tech companies, then was on the holding company side, then had my own consultancy for four years. And then after that, I've been deep in the CTV space for the past five years.

working and leading up CTV innovation strategy and multiple agencies. Currently, I'm the SVP of digital at Intermedia Advertising. We're a 50 year old linear TV agency out of LA. We're on test with building up our digital and CTV capabilities and ⁓ bringing over many of these legacy linear DR advertisers into the performance CTV space. So I've been naturally ⁓ challenged with.

figuring out all the challenges in the CTV space around transparency and driving performance and measurement. So that's where I've been having lots of fun in the past five years.

Brett House (02:42)

Sarah.

Sarah Caputo (02:43)

Yeah, thank you guys. Hard to follow David. He's very good and well known apparently as well. ⁓ I have been in the industry 21 years. ⁓ I always joke that my career is old enough to drink legally now. And I have been in basically every role, but I did start at agencies and I actually started at brand on the brand side. did a lot of brand positioning work and creative and development for large CPG companies, hospitality. I moved into Allstate on the brand side as my en-road into enterprise. I was there eight years and moved around building capabilities from department to another ending up in housing all states media buying program from a managed service model oversaw programmatic social and the tech stack. So quite a bit happened there. And now I'm on my own as a consultant and advisor. I've been teaching a lot of workshops with Amazon, Nielsen, Viant, Roku, cars, Walmart's coming up for their ad platform on attribution and housing, you name it, DSP, competitive's there.

But I also flip on the brand hat and work enterprise side to try to help them with their, ultimately their data and tech stack to ensure that they're going to be able to go to market adjacent to the ⁓ goals that they have.

Brett House (04:08)

Yeah, well and kudos well kudos to Sarah for saying 21 years because most of us stop at 20 and uh We talked about it in our last episode like i'm like wait Yeah, i'm like I don't think i'm ever gonna say 30 so i'm gonna say 20 until I retire and like you know 70 80 years old i'll be like 20 years of the ad tech and bar tech world Uh, but anyways, I like I like your story about 21 in in the drinking age

Sarah Caputo (04:12)

Okay. Good.

Rio (04:17)

Your 30s kind of scary, isn't it?

Sarah Caputo (04:21)

Thanks Well, once it's old enough to drink, I will not say how many years it's been.

Brett House (04:39)

So Rio.

Rio (04:39)

Nice, love it. Awesome. Well, that was great intro for the two of you. And this episode, The Cost of Being Quiet, I guess the genesis of this, Brett, was we all went to dinner. It was a bigger group and Sarah did sit at the side of the table at the opposite side of the table. So we didn't get to engage with her as much as we probably would have liked to, but we all started talking about this, this concept. And then David and Sarah wrote this amazing article, which I encourage everyone to read, The Cost of Keeping Quiet. And that's really where this episode came out of. And this

What I really liked about it is this for anyone who's worked in the media, in the media space knows that it's kind of taps into something that everyone knows, but no one really says out loud. Namely the system is broken because silence is not only encouraged, but it's kind of rewarded, right? Like we spend massive dollars as an industry and a lot of that value just gets leaked out through waste, low quality inventory, MFA, bad incentives. We all know the...

you know, the saying, show me the incentives, let's show you the outcome as well. There's a lot of really like poorly aligned incentives, let's just say in the industry. And the core issue is that like, it's not that fraud exists. We all know it is. mean, we know it's not 1%. We know it's a lot higher than that, right? We know that, you know, it be 25, could be 30, could be more than that, right? Depending who you ask. If you ask the foo, he'll tell you it's 80, 90%, right? But there's a lot of fraud out there. We know it exists and somehow the market structure tolerates it.

Mostly because so many people benefit from the spend continuing to flow, right? The more that's spent, everyone is taking it. You know, the way ad techs typically price is a take rate, right? There's a DSPs take a percentage, SSPs take a percentage, all these other vendors take a percentage. And so there's incentives to keep the spend high and there's a disincentive to really call out the fraud that we really all know is there. The buy side, you would think, is the last line of defense for

for the market are protecting their budget, right? And it's only if buyers demand transparency, insist on control. When they observe dark patterns and bad behavior, calling that out, you think they would be doing that. But because of these incentives, it's very, very difficult to solve. As the FU himself put it, fraud is an incentives problem. In this episode, we helped to discuss that and see how we can maybe talk about breaking that loop. So with that said,

We know ad fraud is a census problem. We know it's not 1%. We know it's more than that. Brett, first question's over to you.

Brett House (07:09)

All right, so I'll start with, ⁓ you guys have some very interesting ⁓ stories to tell from your own experiences, and that's really what the article is about. And the article, by the way, for the audience is on signal-and-noise.ai, which at the point of this episode being published should be live. It's not live yet, but it should be live when this episode goes. So why do you think, and I'll start with you, David, and then we'll go to Sarah. Why do you think the system keeps rewarding?

silence. I we talked a lot about incentives and misaligned incentives, ⁓ but tell us from your firsthand account what you've experienced and what you really think the driving behavior is.

David (07:48)

Yeah, well, I think there's multiple factors here, one of which being that just the financial models on top of which this industry runs, right? In many cases, most media bot, most vendors, agencies are taking some type of margin, right? Sometimes it's transparent flat margin. Many media vendors are operating on non-transparent margins, right? So they're depending on the arbitrage model, right? And, you know, in a world where there are multiple amounts to feed,

right digital introduced this ecosystem of tech players that are all trying to extract value out of the media dollar where in the past you know you would have the agency and you would have the publisher right and the agency would pay the publisher there was a very direct non-complicated line of payment. Now you have a DSP you have an SSP you have the publisher you have the ad server you have the measurement partner everyone is trying to extract

⁓ Some value out of the CPM while at the end of the day The publisher still needs to get paid and still needs to make enough enough money for to sustain themselves, right? So and then at end of the day also the media buyer and the agency also needs to Be able to pay their staff and get some money out at the same time, right? So with all these different mouths to feed, you know You're gonna need scale right? You're gonna depend on moving as much money as possible to what Rio said ⁓

So you're not going to want to kind of do anything possible to hurt scale and raise questions about where money's going and to whom. You're going to want to just keep everything just flowing nice and happily between all sides.

Brett House (09:29)

And when you say you in this topic, are you talking about the brand, the buy side, the brand and their agency representative or is that more of an agency problem where it's like use it or lose it type of issue, right? Where they're getting budget, they're required to spend that budget and then they can put some, yeah, and they can throw out some vanity metrics.

Rio (09:47)

and they get paid out of cut of that budget, right?

David (09:50)

Right, well.

Brett House (09:53)

Right? ⁓ Some reach metrics and ROAS metrics that don't necessarily prove definitively outcomes and yet continue to defend their budgets. Right? What do you think?

David (10:04)

Yeah, I think it's very convenient. We love pointing fingers at the tech companies in the space and agencies, but in many ways brands are kind of responsible for this world that we live in these days, right? They keep pushing their agencies and partners down on margin to the point where it's...it's not sustainable. view media as all commoditized, right? So they just want the lowest possible CPMs, right? And naturally when you go after the lowest possible CPMs, you're gonna have to sacrifice something there and often that is media quality. But at the same time, brands don't want to know that they're buying poor quality media or MFA or anything like that. So yes, the tech companies, some agencies, vendors, they might not be, they, might not be operating above board and trying to keep things under the water so to speak but at the same time they're kind of having to deal with the hands that the brands are dealing them which is lower CPMs, lower margins and naturally you know people need to get paid and companies need to keep growing revenue right so something has to give there.

Rio (11:15)

It's funny you mentioned that. once had a client, we were pitching him and then they told us, have with you to pitch. we've decided to outsource it to India. It's like, this is buying media. isn't like your, I don't this isn't like business process outsourcing, right? This is like, you know, I just thought it was crazy, right? And they said, they'll do for half the price. So crazy stuff. So Sarah, mean, love to get your take. I I loved in the article you talked about your experience of one of the big holdcos about

Yeah, you receiving some backlash for actually questioning some of these things. Maybe you can start to dig into that a little bit.

Sarah Caputo (11:51)

Yeah, I think you guys have covered quite a bit of ground and I'll go further upstream since David has already hit on quite a few points.

They don't, I think we have made a problem with programmatic that it's more science than art. I think it's problematic for a few reasons. One, the creative is just getting lost in translation and we're over-indexing on precision and science, which is just not the reality, nor is it logical from a marketing perspective. But the second part of that is, is you are putting pricing pressure way upstream, especially in the larger companies with procurement involved. We're looking at it as a cost, ⁓you know, situation, like you said, front end CPMs versus an outcome situation. And they don't understand the complexity of what's being bought. So Rio, to your point around, you know, outsourcing to India, not saying there's anything bad with certain skills and capabilities, but usually you want to sit close to those partners and relationships because when you're spending hundreds of millions of dollars and your business is relying on those outcomes, sitting closer to those teams and proximity and security, It's really, really important. So I think we're looking at the wrong things from a brand perspective. And then the second thing I'll say is structurally, brands are not built for this sort of complexity. And what I mean by that is, if you're really doing the right thing on the brand side, you're focused on product, customer experience, and user value, and also driving those revenue outcomes. So when you get stuck into the nuances of having to...triple check and go under every single nook and cranny that the industry has made so incredibly complex without a doctorate degree. It has created a problem and pressure on the brand side where it's difficult also to keep up. So it's just kind of full circle to be honest on all sides. And brands aren't usually reputationally allowed to talk about their partners or where they may have gone sideways. So it becomes a reputational problem to boot.

Rio (13:57)

So it's interesting, so David, on one hand you're saying like it does go up, it should be the brand's ultimate, they should be accountable for this, let's say, right? But know, Sarah, you're saying that it's super complex, maybe it's unfair to expect the brand to know it. we had Fu in this pod a few months ago and he even said, he doesn't even think programmatic should be handled by, he says he thinks it should be handled by brands, which is an interesting argument because he said really it's an auction, right? Why would you need someone doing it for you? So I thought those are all interesting. So what do you think though? Like who's really...

Does the buck stop at the brand? we expect them to be better informed about like, know, should they know, for example, that more than 50 cents out of the dollar in open exchange is not going to the publishers being scraped off by all these intermediaries? love your thoughts on that.

David (14:39)

Yeah, I think procurement who is not technically savvy and doesn't really understand what's happening in the industry ⁓ really has an outsized role in all this where I can't tell you how many pictures I've had where, you know. come in with a great media strategy, great research, great pitch, Brian loves it. And then at the end of the day, it still comes down to just procurement asking for your CPMs and they're just comparing your CPMs to the other agencies. And that's where the final decision or a big part of the decision ultimately comes from. So to Sarah's point, we've made this more of a science. Right, Sarah said it's more of a science. We've kind of made this more of a science and less of an art.

Brett House (15:17)

It's a race to the bottom, right?

Sarah Caputo (15:19)

It is,

David (15:25)

Where advertising historically has been both part science and part art, right? And the art part of it has been like the psychological aspect of advertising. How do you influence people? What are the best channels to influence your target audience? ⁓ What unique out of the box ideas do you have to stand out from the crowd? That art all gets lost at the end of the day when what the brand really wants to know is how much are you this publisher for? versus the competitor agency, I'm sure getting that same publisher for what are your rates on the DSP, right? All these pricing factors completely disregard ultimately what really makes advertising special and what many people who work in advertising got into this industry for.

Rio (16:06)

Has it always been that way or has it intensified in recent years? Like the procurement driven, let's say, like as Brett, you said, the race to the bottom in terms of just trying to find the lowest CPMs.

Brett House (16:06)

Yeah, look,

David (16:16)

From what I understand, ⁓ once McKinsey and Deloitte and all those consultancies started getting into the advertising space and working with the brands and really influencing procurement, I think that was in the early 2010s, around around that time. That's when things really started, started being more price focused in that sense.

Rio (16:23)

Damn consultants. Yeah, consultants

Brett House (16:37)

Yeah, well.

Rio (16:38)

did invent procurement. Just, I confirm that. I didn't, but consulting did. Yeah. Sarah.

Brett House (16:42)

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's an interesting point about ⁓ you guys are saying science, but I think there's something profoundly unscientific about like media ineffectiveness and the fact that brands. may not have a full grasp or even the agencies of how much of their actual media investment is actually being seen by end users and how much is actually going down the either it's an impression that's being ⁓ triggered but not shown like in the case of CTV or it's an ad fraud play where it's going to an MFA based site. To me if you're scientific about this and you're really focusing on outcomes, right? Shouldn't you be able to

Sarah Caputo (17:06)

Yeah.

Brett House (17:27)

connect the dots and understand the inefficiency built into your impression served, your total dollar spent, and go to cut that out? Wouldn't that be the more scientific approach if it's really about driving performance? Is that even possible when you're in a world where you're being forced down the cheaper approach to barring media?

Sarah Caputo (17:52)

Well, I'd say try explaining that to procurement teams. I love procurement, by the way. I worked really well with them at Allstate, and I'm not just saying that. They definitely understood where there was expertise to lean on for a penny. Yeah, I loved Marie, honestly, Marie Colby, I'm going to shout her out. There's a couple others. They were really amazing at allowing expertise to come through. I have to, she's retired anyway. ⁓ But I think it's less about, it's more about

Rio (18:05)

Some of your best friends work in procurement, right? ⁓I'm just giving you a hard time.

Sarah Caputo (18:22)

The science is more about what people feel can be definitively quantified and comparing the apples to apples, and that is the common denominator that they come up with, versus the art part, versus that science quantifiable part, is actually about logic and intuition. And somewhere along the way, we have forgotten that we all have instincts and you don't need to quantify everything to the nth degree and at 100 % definitive and determinative. in our language in order to make a logical business decision. We were able to do this before the internet really, really well and we lost sight of that because everything needs to be put on a deck, on a stakeholder report or on a QBR where everything is to the dollar. And so this is where I always guide brands to take a step back and do really thorough outside platform and inside platform testing to kind of show what trends are over time versus relying on every single penny because it's impossible, one, two, it's quite inefficient to do so. So I think it's pivoting to more of the testing methodologies as a gold standard in order to come to those conclusions and making sure you have that testing in place before you ⁓ sign your life away to one partner or a set of partners. Go in a crawl, walk, run and test into these things in a way that's smart and logical.

Brett House (19:48)

And when you test into these things, mean ⁓ you could test, for example, a top of funnel brand awareness play that might have a halo effect over your more direct response lower funnel advertising approaches. Right. Would you say test those things to see the you know, with the control, right. ⁓ Exposed versus unexposed to see how those perform so people can be more convinced. I I saw this a lot in the financial services industry where financial services 70 to 80 percent. This was JP Morgan, Bank of America, etc. ⁓ spent 70 to 80 % of their total budget was spent on direct mail marketing for the most part. Direct mail and direct response digital extensions. And there tended to be, and I've talked about this before in the pod, they tended to look negatively at the brand spin that was being spent on bigger. broader reach channel, CTV, television, et cetera, because they couldn't attribute the halo effect as cleanly as they would have liked versus what they were doing in direct mail marketing and in direct response marketing, which was much closer to sort of an action or a conversion event, right?

Sarah Caputo (20:54)

The Wonder One. Physical address based on your customer file if you have accuracy there and offline wise I get it, but you're right. It's the equivalent to me of last touch attribution. Just because someone had an impression and a piece of mail, you have to look at everything as an impression. I look at a billboard the same way. Everything is an impression to the consumer's eyes. It's just eyeballs that you want and attention over time. So it's exactly right. The physical address combination is a one-to-one match. So you'd kind of tend to default toward things even

Brett House (21:07)

Yep.

Sarah Caputo (21:26)

So if you took a step back, your logic and intuition would probably say, maybe we're over-inducing.

Brett House (21:32)

Yeah, and if you scientifically look at it, yeah, like we would do these pretty advanced models that were sort of a combination, they were MTA, but they were a combination of MTA and MN, kind of a, and what they proved was that the halo effect actually had a direct impact on the lower funnel performance, right? And when you compare apples to apples between a sort of an 80-20 split between lower and upper and like a 50-50 split, the 50-50 split won.

Sarah Caputo (21:41)

Yeah.

Brett House (21:58)

every time. We would simulate these programs. We had like 10 years of historical data, ⁓ so it wasn't like we were operating with a small data set. ⁓ But it's hard to prove because it's not tangible. You can't really show it in a spreadsheet, and people tend to trust what they see as that last click or that final action committed by the consumer.

Sarah Caputo (22:21)

Exactly.

Rio (22:22)

We talk about a lot of this being the age of outcomes, right? Sorry, David, I cut you off. We talk about this being the age of outcomes, right? And, you know, outcomes, know, Brett, you just mentioned all the different ways we measure things. The last click being one, you know, and I think you can make the argument these are just vanity metrics and they're widely abused. So David, let me maybe start with you. Love to hear, like, how can better, like, better metrics, better understanding of what they mean, how could that maybe drive, like, better targeting of media, better planning, and maybe help

David (22:23)

And it also is for the long term.

Rio (22:51)

those brands be better informed in like how, what they should be looking at in terms of how they value its success.

David (22:56)

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think one, starts with understanding that not every impression is created equal. We've really commoditized media to the point where a reach number on display for many people will almost be similar to a reach number on CTV, right? And because display is so much cheaper, they'll be like, all right, let's put more money into the display than it should probably get. ⁓ But ultimately, You really need to have an understanding of the dynamics of every single channel and the various pitfalls involved and how things are gained because the thing about digital is you can spin up an almost unlimited amount of impressions and there's a giant ecosystem of bad actors who are constantly evolving because it's just and finding ways to extract more and more value out of the ecosystem because it's just so easy to do, right? So like understanding those pitfalls.

Valuing channels accordingly and also knowing that ultimately what you get what you pay for right? So if you're pay for cheap impressions those impressions themselves, maybe there's some value there But it's not gonna be the type of value that you might you might think that reach number Probably isn't isn't as real as you want wanted to be right when you're looking at it. So I know some new patients right and said you need to set expectations with your with clients to ⁓

Advertising has always been a long game, right? How many people watch an ad on their TV and automatically convert when they see that ad? No matter how much we want to push this performance to TV narrative, I think it's ultimately hurting us as an industry because it's creating these false expectations with clients that, yeah, if you put a QR code in creative, people are going to scan the creative and they're going to convert, right? Now, those units often come at pretty expensive premiums.

Right? So the brand is going to pay that expensive premium thinking they're going to drive lots of outcomes. Then they're going to get their reporting back and see that not many people actually scan that QR code. And then they're going to be turned off from CTV for the immediate future. So I think for us, right, you do need to measure things in multiple ways. Right. The last touch, the direct response actions many times, especially in CTV are more directional. Because there's so many different measurement gaps and signal loss happening in the industry. So there's that. And then there's long term approaches via MMMs and match market tests and all those type of more extensive testing. It's easy for us to look at the last touch model and just depend on that because it's fast, immediate. Oftentimes it gives us the metrics that we want to see. But if you've If you put all your eggs in that basket, long term you're to see diminishing returns and you're going to go into what many DTC brands have experienced over the past several years after the DTC hype cycle died out, which is what I call the death loop, where they're just constantly chasing those direct response metrics. They might look good, but they're not building long term brand awareness and they're ultimately probably converting against people that were going to convert regardless and wasting lots of budget.

Brett House (26:07)

Yep.

Rio (26:08)

A lot of those DCC brands are now gone, is interesting, or they've scaled back significantly. You mentioned CTV. I saw you posting about this a lot, and I really liked this, and I'd to maybe get your thought in there before we hear from Sarah on the vanity metrics thing. you admit legit CTV, in-stream, high-quality inventory, versus let's call it bogus CTV where it's out stream. ⁓let's say a lot of times below the fold even, right? That, you know, that might be lower CPM. So I think, I think a lot of clients are confused about that. Is that safe to say about like, what is CTV?

David (26:45)

Well, the thing is that I think we've kind of overstated how much available CTV inventory there is, right? We love talking about how many people are watching CTV, right? But I rarely see people go into how many people are actually watching ad-supported CTV compared to the entire CTV universe, which also includes non-ad subscriptions.

Brett House (27:08)

Yeah, which would be the fast channels, right?

David (27:10)

Right, right. like to me, like we still haven't really def- like we like to think that fast are lower quality publishers, right? But we also haven't really defined what quality in a CTV space is, right? So for me, it's like ad load, right? We really need to start tracking ad load against publishers, right? Because if there's five ads every two minutes in a CTV stream, that's going to piss people off and they're also not going to necessarily be- put as much attention into the ads as they might otherwise if there was only like one or two ads every so often, right? So that's like a proxy metric for me that we need to start looking at for CTV that currently we're not doing. Additionally, there's a lot of ⁓ actors in the space because CTV is so expensive, because there's not as much inventory as we'd like to think, they're mixing in online video and to your point, those kind of those out stream units, which is like the bulk of what's out there ⁓ in the online video space.

Brett House (28:04)

And is that being labeled as CTV within the buying platforms in some cases where it's off the television glass?

Sarah Caputo (28:08)

Okay.

David (28:11)

⁓ So

Rio (28:11)

Sorry, you're laughing.

David (28:11)

like, so the thing is like

Sarah Caputo (28:14)

Well, was laughing because I think David has an opinion based on a website read. I'm like anticipating how he's going to phrase this.

Rio (28:18)

Hahaha!

Brett House (28:21)

Yeah, because you you tie to you tie CTV to the device, which would be the television glass, which is your sort of sight, sounded motion experience. It's different than any other digital device that we use. Right. Or do you tie CTV to the type of content? Right. So you could argue that that CTV content YouTube might be an exception to this, but is generally longer form. It's generally more narrative driven, whereas the stuff that's off of the television glass tends to be shorter form, less narrative driven.

Rio (28:22)

⁓Yeah, the device ID,

Brett House (28:51)

been like the TikTok feeds and such, how do you, like is it a content thing, is it a device thing? You're talking about the ads being served, ⁓ but what is CTV?

David (29:01)

Right. Well, you know, there's OTT, which is streaming content over an internet connection, right? And then there's CTV, for me at least, where you're actually watching that OTT content on a TV screen. Now a lot of buyers will be buying what they think is CTV, but ultimately they're also buying Hulu, ⁓ which is being watched on people's iPads, or on their phones, or on their computer devices, which to me, that's okay. ⁓ But like the fact that...

Brett House (29:10)

Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

David (29:33)

The OTT streaming space is highly non-transparent. There's not a lot of signals being shared in the metadata at the same time, right? You're not really seeing what you're delivering against. It's all blinded in many ways as like one bundled package. ⁓ That leaves a lot of space for bad actors to slide in, in addition to legitimate ⁓ CTV, right?

They're also sliding on desktop and mobile devices, ⁓ media running on their own and operated sites, for instance. And because it's all bundled under one business name, you really can't tell, okay, ⁓ is this desktop mobile tablet impression actually in the streaming app or is it an outstream impression on this publisher's own and operated website? And there's a good amount of that happening, which I think is diluting the quality of CTV these days. and further not helping things. On the flip side of that, those desktop mobile impressions are also a bit more trackable, right? ⁓ They're oftentimes, they're in a cookie based environment. ⁓ So that helps on the direct response side of things too. So one of the reasons ⁓ vendors, publishers might be mixing in ⁓ those types of online video units, is because it helps them not only does it help ⁓ on the cpm side of things because they're actually cheaper but also helps on the direct response performance side of things because it's in a more measurable signal rich environment where often times if it's a downstream unit someone that site probably didn't see it they didn't hear it shutters live in and i was has been his ⁓ crusade for for a while but it makes the numbers look better in the media bars and on the water

Brett House (31:25)

Sarah.

Sarah Caputo (31:27)

I mean, I'm gonna just go philosophical, cuz I feel like they've locked around again. We've made such complexity out of everything that we've touched, starting with display ads and now this is like PTSD 2.0 with CTV. Like, well, you'd go through an agency or through a regional buyer to buy your linear, say what demographic generally you're after, and then you'd pay a certain amount.

Brett House (31:29)

Yeah

Rio (31:30)

Love it.

Brett House (31:43)

Yeah.

Sarah Caputo (31:53)

You reconcile it on the back end, bada-bing, bada-boom, we're good. And now they have made it so complex, this industry, in terms of what am I buying, where am I buying, where is it showing up, what's getting fraudulent clicks, what are the type of media, and ultimately it is so hard to track as a brand.

This is where I don't think agencies will die or go away. Like having that advisor is very smart to keep up with this and to David's points, like where to turn and where to look. ⁓ but I'm a bigger fan of being closer to the inventory, aligning it to, you know, the, target demographic, looking at your reach that you need to make sure that's really nice and clean. ⁓ and trying to use some of that logic and intuition we talked about before on where should I show up contextually relative to this audience. And. Use the data where you can, overlay testing, go direct to the source as. close as possible and then use bidding environments or auction environments as like remnant or an augment in a secondary strategy, not your leading strategy. And even then try to ask the right questions of where is this buy going? But I love contextual and it's for the same reason you buy news on the morning and linear. So why are we thinking about it differently in programmatic? It should be about your audience who you're trying to reach and tying logic, like I said, back to shows, programming. ⁓on and on in this topic.

Brett House (33:21)

Yeah, well, and aligning your advertising to the medium that it's being served in, And your top of funnel brand awareness plays.⁓ should be going to mediums that are reach mediums where there's a ton of engagement, Super Bowl ads, things like that, big screen television, whereas there are things that are more appropriate for direct response, deeper funnel engagement, like your email channels and your direct mail channels, et cetera. to me, part of it's, it's where are you reaching your audience and then appropriately advertise to them in a relevant way within that environment, right? Like that's why I sort of think a QR code on CTV that's a non that's a television screen CTV by ⁓ seems to me a kind of a miss it may work and maybe you guys can prove me wrong but it seems like it's a ⁓ misapplication of the medium.

David (34:17)

I can prove you

Rio (34:17)

Well, I think it's nice. I think it's nice having the option. Go ahead, David.

David (34:17)

wrong I've never seen it work. I've never seen it work maybe it's nice to have the option but to me it's like okay you're going you're buying CTV because you want to be on the full screen you want to get the most attention possible right so why are you making your video asset which is the most powerful form of advertising in my opinion smaller harder to look at and then also drawing attention away from that asset to a QR code.

Brett House (34:20)

Yeah, you've never seen it work?

David (34:45)

to some words on the overlay. And then you're also asking the person to start fumbling for his phone, trying to scan. Now he's not hearing the message. So to me, I think it's, again, us trying to force a channel to be something that it's not. And... ⁓

Brett House (35:01)

totally, totally. Yeah.

Rio (35:02)

Well, what do think about the new, like Amazon, Amazon has some really like they have those little buttons now, like I'd say it's an ad for diapers. can like, like, yeah, cause it's basically right. Cause they, cause they, and they, plus Amazon knows who you are, right? They know who you are. Um, because it's within their, within their, within their own, you know, this is content owned and operated, owned and operated content, right. Uh, that they're able to serve up within their platform.

David (35:08)

Those, see those are better. Those are more integrated.

Sarah Caputo (35:10)

Yeah, like dissent.

David (35:15)

Right. and amazon doesn't charge you more for those types ⁓ of units they're the same price as any other unit which also i like ⁓ most publishers for like those QR code units they're asking for pretty high minimums and they not cpms are higher so again that goes back to my earlier point ⁓ it's you're trying to create this perception that ⁓ humans operate in this psychological way where they're gonna scan the QR code and the advertisers should pay more for that and that's just creating bad expectations that often don't come to fruition.

Rio (35:59)

So the title of your article was, you know, cost of keeping quiet. And, know, you had some great examples in there of, mean, we talked about the perverse incentives, right? To continue spending more, not calling out maybe some of the shady behavior. I'd love to hear from the two of you for the sake of the viewers here. Maybe we can talk about like when you did try to bring up some things you found that didn't look right when you tried to do like David as a media buyer or Sarah, both as an in-house planner buyer, as well as agencies. I'd love to hear maybe each one of you, you're an example of like, is there a cost for keeping quiet? Like, like what happens when people try to speak out? Maybe Sarah, start with you.

Sarah Caputo (36:40)

Yeah, I mean the examples I have are there. ⁓ We, know, at Allstate when I took over the program didn't own the ad account that's in the article of the social media ad account, which is important.

Rio (36:51)

So it was run by the agency,

Sarah Caputo (36:53)

So run by the agency.

Rio (36:53)

right? It wasn't.

Sarah Caputo (36:54)

Yeah, and they recently had gotten acquired at that literal same time that I told them we would in house this social media program by a top consulting firm under their digital arm. And we were definitely a big piece of business. And they would they refused to hand over that ad account to me. ⁓

Rio (37:14)

Why would they not do that? Why would they not want to hand it over?

Brett House (37:15)

Yeah, aren't they contractually obligated to, know, like there's terms and conditions and limits with your MSA with these agencies, right? In terms of...

Sarah Caputo (37:20)

No. Technically, no, if your MSA doesn't give you explicit ownership or they're not working out of your account. So that's one of the pieces in this.

Brett House (37:32)

Yeah.

Rio (37:33)

If you have a poorly written MSA, then you maybe don't.

Brett House (37:35)

Yeah, blame the lawyers for this one. They should have had protections. But tell us.

Sarah Caputo (37:37)

Yeah, yeah. Well, and they don't, this is going back to procurement, not understanding the nuances of why you should work out of one account versus another, because it all looked like Meta Facebook was the name at the time. So I actually, it wasn't the consulting firm that did this. was the contact who lost the business that I was working with who refused. And finally, I just said, screw it. Somebody's working with this company because it's a very large firm and another means. And I went through procurement and said, who else owns this contract on the consulting side?

⁓ And inevitably the first email shocker that I sent to say we're holding up work over there until I get my ad account. They released it. So it took me a couple of weeks and back and forth and some contentious conversations. But ultimately I was like, I'm not getting anywhere. And only reason I was able to talk them into it and to release those keys over to us was because we were a big company. So if you're a mid-sized company and you don't have that leverage or power then then you're gonna have to get super creative and you might end up paying literal dollars in order to get that power back.

Brett House (38:39)

You have no leverage at all, yeah. I mean, it's yeah, that is just it's that's that's a bad act, right, or a bad actor. But what what data what assets did they actually have that they were holding hostage in a sense?

Sarah Caputo (38:58)

Yeah. So if you think about any time you start a new campaign, you've got a, you've got all the fighting you've got. had multi-millions running in this one platform with all these campaigns, which we're relying on the second year. Yeah. You've got a one and a half to three week ramp up time. You've got all the historical data, the connections into, you know, the buying signals in order to have this performed. So plan B would be.

Rio (39:09)

All the creatives there.

Sarah Caputo (39:24)

creating your own account from scratch and you're going to create a disruption in the business because of the time that it's going to take to create a new account but also that onboarding time in order to get that campaign off and running and producing the way that you expect so that there isn't a disruption. mean, high media because hopefully it performs and you don't want a four week break in that process. So it was not a great problem.

Rio (39:46)

It's interesting. actually was asked by a client to do media audit. Another agency was buying media for them and they refused to give over access to the DSP and their excuse was, there's multiple clients in there, which is fine, right? I mean, you can't prove or disprove that, but they couldn't give us access to other clients' And then they refused to give us the markups. It took months months of fighting and legal letters from a client eventually to get that. What was legally theirs, right? So think that's interesting. Not super surprising to hear.

Rio (40:15)

Yeah, must have been frustrating. David, love to hear from you. mean, what, like you had a good example in the article about, you know, think raising your hand and saying like, maybe he be buying his inventory, right?

David (40:25)

Yeah, so I'll actually give two examples. One was a very early on in my career formative experience. So I started out at a ⁓ good publisher, Gameloft. They create great mobile games. I was part of the team that rolled out their initial programmatic offering. So that was a really good learning experience about how publishers operate and how they build out their programmatic stacks and all that. And I learned what I needed to learn there. And then I went to a vendor, right? And this vendor operated on an arbitrage model. That's how. we would sell the media at xcpm and then the goal was to buy was to maximize margin and buy it as a at a lowest possible of a cpm as possible while hitting the advertisers goals at the same time so try to find that perfect mix of hitting the goals while maximizing the margin. ⁓ Very early on I noticed that the sites we were running on by and large and where the majority of spend was going to were sites that I'd never heard of that if you went to these sites, they were your classic templated, know, not legit content type sites. ⁓ You could call it MFA or whatever you want. This was back in the mid 2010s. So MFA still wasn't a name people were throwing around yet. ⁓ So like, I noticed that I'm like, you know, I don't think anyone would want to be on these sites, but at the same time,

Rio (41:49)

So is this principle-based media? Was it like where they actually are buying and then selling, keeping the spread?

David (41:54)

Yeah, but it's not like we weren't getting the inventory upfront. We were just basically ⁓ buying through a DSP through multiple SSPs. So was just classic arbitrage. But my bonuses were based on how high my margins are. So I was driving the highest ⁓ margin business and getting the highest bonuses out of all the traders. And I felt really dirty and bad about it.

Rio (42:01)

Just overcharging, okay.

Brett House (42:18)

Yeah, you were buying like the cheapest inventory possible, selling it at the highest price possible. And then you low and bold realized that the cheapest inventory was being produced in sweatshops overseas with WordPress sites that keep generating more and more versions to show fake ads, real ads to fake people in a way, right?

David (42:35)

Exactly. Exactly. So like on average I was getting 80 to 90 % margins and the advertiser was none the brand was none the wiser because of course we weren't transparent. So we couldn't share the site lists even when asked, know, the blanket excuse with our publisher relationships forbid us from sharing those site lists. Even though we didn't have any direct publisher relationships, were all buying, we were just buying SSP volume. ⁓ But we could provide a top 10 list, right? And I always wondered why. ⁓ why the publishers in that top 10 list were okay to share even though that top 10 list was completely fabricated and just had sites that, you know, would look good to the lay person. ⁓ So needless to say, like, I didn't feel good doing that. So I didn't stay too long at that company, but that was one of my... And also, I also realized just how easy it is to hit these vanity metrics that advertisers want ⁓ even if you're running on just BS inventory at the same time.

Right. So that was my early toe in the water and the incentives and just the way things work game. I went to another media vendor, a media vendor after that. That one was actually worse in many ways. And we could get into that on another podcast, perhaps where we share just more war stories. But after that, the holding company side. Right. And when I went to the holding company side, that was my attempt at trying to make a difference and trying to use the knowledge that I had accrued doing things that I wasn't proud of to protect.

Rio (43:54)

Hahaha

Brett House (43:55)

Hahaha.

David (44:08)

Brands and do right by them And you know, I was still naive and I thought you know the agencies they they just didn't you know, they you know, they want to do right They just didn't know they just don't know better for whatever reason and they just need more knowledgeable people coming from the the other side is typically people go from the agency side to the vendor side I don't think it's as common for vet for people from the vendor side to go to the agency side, right? so I was a bit naive and I thought that you know, I could drop make a difference and ⁓ help educate brands and drive out from there ⁓ but lo and behold you know even at the holding company i saw that our trading desk was still buying all the same crap that i was buying in my past roles ⁓ you know i tried to do something about it i tried to speak up but tried to actually pitched ⁓ the client on a what at that time i called a curated marketplace strategy I'm this is before curation was even a thing but my whole idea was what we need to go to these middlemen what we need to buy tens and tens of thousands of sites why can't we were holding company we have the direct publisher relationships well we just on board a bunch of not

Rio (45:16)

Just creating a loud list of premium publishers, right?

David (45:19)

well i don't know what i was like let's just get the indies gone right which is the bill that the marketplace of p ⁓ p's layer on audiences on these bundle p p marketplaces and then we can still scale you know it's gonna be a bit of a higher cpm at the same time but like will still be able to kill our audience targeting the only to bring in more publishers but what more control over the over the inventory several know exactly where the money's going on the wall or buying ⁓ i thought that was a great idea and you know the client thought it was an amazing idea and it

Brett House (45:22)

Yeah. Of premium. Yeah.

Rio (45:47)

the client liked it. Okay, good.

David (45:49)

I liked it. I loved it. They're like this makes a lot of sense. ⁓ But my leadership didn't like it. They didn't like it at all.

Brett House (45:56)

Yeah. Yeah, the, the client,

Rio (45:57)

Because were the margins

Brett House (45:58)

in the-

Rio (45:59)

lower on the other inventory? Is that it?

David (46:02)

⁓ it was so it was a combination of margin non-transparent margins kickbacks of the other different suppliers and all those you know all those things that go into

Brett House (46:14)

So it economically didn't make as much sense to the agency to be fully transparent. And the brand, just so we know from a brand perspective, was this a ⁓ kind of a big premium brand that should, you know?

David (46:16)

to the agency even though right.

Brett House (46:27)

be advertised. Yeah, this is Microsoft. So they should. Yeah, this is not like a Temu, you know, cheap product direct from the warehouse type of situation. This was a real brand that wants to get in front of real buyers. Right. And, you know, talk about engineering relevance into the advertising sort of the bid stream or the advertising ecosystem. It doesn't seem to me that you're achieving the goals of Microsoft by advertising against shitty content that is largely the audience.

David (46:27)

yeah, this is Microsoft. Duh, this is one of big...No.

Brett House (46:57)

that go to these places are probably largely irrelevant to Microsoft's interests from a from a

Rio (47:02)

Well, think about it, the brand supported David's strategy. David as the planner and buyer is recommending a strategy, right? I mean, and then, yeah, it makes sense. Like the brand, you think they'd be supportive, right? they were, which is great, but then the agency didn't like it. It sounds like an...

Brett House (47:12)

Yeah.

David (47:15)

He just didn't like it. No. ⁓ this was actually right after I got promoted to a bit of a higher level of role where I could set strategy and call some level of shots. ⁓ the end result was I was put on a pip and basically told, we like what you do. We like you. We want you to stay here. But if you keep rocking the boat, we're going to have to do something about

Rio (47:37)

Quit being so honest, quit listening to your clients. ⁓ Quit doing what's right for them. That's crazy.

David (47:40)

Yeah. Yeah. Right. was like, yeah, yeah. So it was like, shut up and we'll be good or keep talking and there's going to be problems. And my ultimate decision was I quit. And then I went to do my own consultancy for four years where I got to actually work directly with brands and agencies that want to do right by their clients and help them out in the ways I thought best and drive value. so yeah. So like on one hand, there's experience where, you know, keeping quiet actually made me more money. Right. not doing necessarily right, drove my bonuses. And then there was another just like, think, you know, a lot of people on the holding company side deal with this type of situation where they just, you know, come in, they do their job. They don't, they know they can't rock the boat because they'll jeopardize things. ⁓ And, know, they come in for a paycheck and then leave. ⁓ But for me, at least I just couldn't, I couldn't do that.

Brett House (48:36)

I mean, do you think it's changing? Sarah, I'm going to throw this at you. mean, with the spotlight being shown on these dark corners, these dark recesses of misaligned or bad incentives, the dark underbelly of the ad ecosystem, I mean, do you think that things will change and how do you better align incentives? Because you could argue that there are incentives that could be driven by the brand. In this particular example, it was not the case. The brands seem to want to do the right thing.

Rio (48:44)

The dark underbelly. I love that.

Brett House (49:03)

the agency wanted to maximize margin, right? And so that became your kind of breaking point. What do you think needs to happen for things to improve? Do you think it will change?

Sarah Caputo (49:18)

So I'm reluctant that it's going to change. see different... ⁓companies, I call it the shell game. Whenever a word gets out about one thing and where the bodies are buried in the dark underbelly, which is the brands start understanding what questions to ask. now, know, we're open path for Tradesk is a good example of that for me. I love going direct to publishers. like having a closer throughput, but in the case of open path, they're changing the algorithm to wait inventory and push the inventory delivery into open path, which they're making a higher margin on. And the problem with that is not that it's competing with SSPs on the CPM, which is every argument I keep getting, it's that they've created a new supply path and they've forgotten that everything starts at the top of the waterfall. And now they're competing against a PG deal. That's the apples to apples comparison where brands already are buying that up front and now they have to unravel and detangle an inventory mess that Tradesk has not been proactive in communicating that are making higher margin on that. Q4 earnings are coming out soon so I'll be curious to see when they're dipping in there what that will look like. ⁓ But ultimately that's one example of Tradesk burying bodies on their fees, their platform fee which is compounding fees. mark up on their inventory, they're marking up on data, marking up on everything and it doesn't show up on an invoice. So ultimately what they

Brett House (51:02)

Yeah, and they're eating into the direct buy plays by the publishers, right?

Sarah Caputo (51:06)

Correct. That's correct. And so the end point here is they've now gone in and created a new mode to get rid of all the fee-stocking, quote unquote, and that's called the advanced mode now. They did not, this is when they labeled all SSPs as resellers in the platform. So in September, they actually started making these changes. did not.

Rio (51:30)

Did they label every SSP a reseller?

Sarah Caputo (51:34)

and that's deprioritized in the algo, but also they have something called the T.

Rio (51:37)

Interesting.

Sarah Caputo (51:38)

VQI, which is the TV quality index. I bet you it's deprioritized on the score as well. So you're seeing this inverse effect with delivery now, over-indexing and competing with large brands that have direct buy. So my argument here is not that it's wrong. don't dislike the strategy and going close to make sure that we have ⁓ great inventory, regardless of where it's coming from. It's the execution.

They're charging publishers 5 % as a fee. They're on disclosed markup on top of that. And now what they've done, this is my articulation of an example, is they've changed fees in one area and pulled it into a different area. And buyers are not really aware of this change. So I'm not optimistic.

Brett House (52:23)

Yeah, a lack of transparency around that. It's a little bit of a game gaming the system in a way, right?

David (52:29)

And I have to give them credit because there's been this whole narrative over the past year or so of direct versus resellers and resellers are bad. And that narrative was largely seeded and started by the trade desk. And they started pushing. They started putting together these S chain reports for clients showing them how much resold inventory they're buying and how they need to optimize into direct and to turn off resellers.

And it was a long game because then they rolled out, of course, they already had Open Path, but then they started rolling out Open Path more and more in their position, in their market positioning and pushing it harder to clients. then they have that ASP 500. And then, know, they forced Co-Kai on everybody. Where now Open Path and ASP 500 are on by default when someone creates a new line item in Co-Kai. So I do have to give them some level of credit. It was some good social engineering there. Not that I disagree with the...

Brett House (53:26)

Yeah, push from a positioning perspective to direct and then actually eat into the direct margin of the business. Actually become a direct supplier in a sense.

David (53:32)

Right, right, because open path. ⁓

Sarah Caputo (53:33)

That's right. Yeah, which competes with the agencies they work with. So think about the Holdco as part of the volume proposition there is they're buying massive amounts of inventory. I'm going to flip what David said on its head earlier and you get economies of scale for brands. Well, this is essentially what the Tray Dusk is now doing. So how does that work with the Holdco model TBD on what that will do to cannibalize that?

Brett House (53:51)

Yeah, principle based by, yeah.

Rio (54:00)

Plus they're going direct with many big brands. I had a big pharma client, Trade Desk was there going direct and you know they're still working through agencies but you how much longer do they, if they don't have to they won't right? I mean it's clearly like they're, I mean that's the direction they're going in I would argue.

Sarah Caputo (54:15)

Yeah, so that's the optimism. That's one example. It's very recent. It's it's taking something and turning it into a different problem. So I think ultimately what should people do? I would like brands to hold themselves accountable to ask the right questions, hold companies to margin instead of CPMs. like to make sure that they ask questions on going beyond the invoice, not just what's buried in the CPM. Tell me every dollar quarter by quarter how much you took of my media dollars so you get to the true working and non working. If your partner.

Rio (54:51)

Would it even be possible to get an answer, though? I mean, like, it's so opaque, right?

Sarah Caputo (54:55)

And not if you don't push them in the programmatic realm. Absolutely. I've run those audits and I've terminated contracts as a result of the findings because you can't lie on the data. This is where I do like quantification.

Rio (55:06)

But you would need to see the markups, right? You would need to have access to in platform to see them, right?

Sarah Caputo (55:11)

Well, it was a manual poll on the behalf of this one DSP that I'm thinking of, and it was over 55 % fees. So it was a million dollars that they were taking in profit on this one campaign a month.

Rio (55:24)

Well, I ran one audit, Sarah, and I found some markups up to 400 % for no reason. It's crazy. I mean, I think that's a little extreme, 15 % is what they're supposed, let's say, contractually supposed to be taking. If you're seeing markups for, if extra work is going in and it's justified, maybe, but a lot of the markups I remember finding were not. So keep going. I'm sorry, I cut you off.

Brett House (55:25)

Wow.

Sarah Caputo (55:46)

No, that's okay, but it's egregious and I think that they're less outliers than they are the norm if you don't know what you're asking. So go beyond the CPM and go into margins and pull manual pulls. The third thing is...Um, coming from the buy side, had really great partners that were very honest and their sales structures are meant to promote their own products. Can we actually turn that on its head? I don't really know that we'll combat that fully, but I always align myself with those that made recommendations or suggestions and went outside of their role and outside of their company, because those are the good actors. You kind of want to like shadow and, you know, ask for those POVs. So do you think they exist? I think they should be speaking up more. And ultimately, you know, that's kind of some of the advice I'd give, but there's a lot more where that came from. This is where I think training comes in.

Brett House (56:37)

Do you, yeah, and do you think, and speaking of training, do you think that there needs to be, is there a re-skilling here? mean, if it, let's say we're just focused on the marketing department for a second, we could go to other departments, but like, do we have the right people in place that know the questions to ask that are technical enough to understand the nuances of the ecosystem for digital in general, not just programmatic or CTV and otherwise? And, and do we have to re-skill in that department or in that area, or do we think that they can?

⁓ That people have the the knowledge. They're just not asking the right questions. I what do you think?

Sarah Caputo (57:14)

I think that legacy CMOs are largely grown up in brand and product positioning, like where I started. What you're seeing is the convergence of AI and tech and machine learning and all sorts of different ⁓ complexities that is starting to flip that, but it's a slow flip. You're getting people like me that are starting to get ingrained and T-shaped more in that analytics realm. And my feeling is that there's still a lot ⁓

Brett House (57:19)

Yeah.

Sarah Caputo (57:43)

A lot of brand and legacy brand, I'm not saying that's bad, but you need to make sure you're hiring right on your team for those gaps and be aware of those gaps. ⁓ But this is where I personally love that I'm leaned into analytics and tech, but also have the business strategy side. So the consultancies and advisories like mine will pay off dividends if you just do sounding board gut checks and also don't rely on your own team, because then you're just talking to yourself within your walls. ⁓There is definitely, I think, in the future going to be this turnover of talent and where they grew up. But right now, it's still heavily in the brand realm from what I see.

Rio (58:23)

How about you David? know we're getting a little short of time. What are your like if you were to give some advice to let's say people on the brand side like what what coders should they be doing in order to get ahead of this to create a better environment or maybe or is it not their responsibility as the agencies love to hear your advice?

David (58:23)

Yeah. Now, I think they need to take more ownership over their house. So one, you could bring in Sarah. I think that's always going to be a good decision. But two, you do need to bring some technical level of expertise in-house in some way. know there's companies that have completely in-house programmatic operations. For some, they can do that. Others can't. But

Rio (58:46)

Always a good idea.

Sarah Caputo (58:48)

Thank you, David.

David (59:02)

You should not be fully trusting and dependent on your media partners and agencies and just let them let them do their thing. And unquestionably right. I've seen that not work out way too many times. Just just middle of last year I remember auditing a CTV campaign for a law firm and they spend a lot. This law firm spends about 50 million on TV all in. But their CTV vendor and they didn't have an agency they had a vendor, service vendor. sold them on the Super Bowl. They sold them CTD impressions on the Super Bowl when those were not able to be bought programmatically, right? At $120,000. No, it was not.

Brett House (59:41)

Yeah, yeah, this was not a peacock ad is what you're saying.

Rio (59:45)

How could you even, you couldn't even buy it, right? It's just, it's not even available. yeah, that's crazy.

David (59:48)

You can even buy it.

Sarah Caputo (59:49)

Unless it's video on demand later, not live. That's the only argument I can make.

Rio (59:52)

⁓ Yeah, not during the live broadcast. ⁓

David (59:56)

So like all this brand got was just a spreadsheet that said Super Bowl placement, know, XCPM, X impressions, and that's it. ⁓

Brett House (1:00:04)

And it doesn't take rocket science to figure that out, to ask the right questions. You don't have to be radically technical or analytical or a data scientist to figure that out, right?

David (1:00:13)

Well, you should have some curiosity. You should do your homework on it. But a lot of people just don't have the time. Or they just think, why would my vendor rip me off like this? They don't realize that ultimately this is unfortunately an ocean of sharks that we're all swimming in.

Brett House (1:00:24)

Yeah.

Rio (1:00:32)

So have someone check your agency's homework. It sounds like that's probably a good idea, whether it's someone in-house or maybe a third party like bringing a sour right to do that. I mean, it sounds like that's probably a smart thing to do periodically, safe to say.

David (1:00:46)

I'd say so. I'd say so. I know there's third party auditing companies as well, like in Ubiquiti. I hear good things about them. ⁓ just highly caution not to fully trust any one party with your media spend because there's just too many bad incentives around that might make things go awry.

Sarah Caputo (1:01:01)

Yeah.

Rio (1:01:04)

And how about about untangling all of the markups and take rates and different fees within, let's say within ad tech, right? I mean, I've, you know, I've worked a lot with the publisher side and you see just, you know, they're, getting pennies in the dollar sometimes, right? And I've worked on working with one, one cable company now, and they're talking about, know, like traditional dollars versus digital pennies, right? Because it's just, such a different environment. How can they start to untangle that as well? mean, love your thoughts on it.

David (1:01:33)

I mean, that's a tough one. I mean, you need to have that ad tech expertise in house, right? And you need to have really strong contracts. I mean, honestly, at end of the day, it really just starts with your contracts, with your partners. If you're not contractually protected, then there's really nothing you can do to untangle those fees. And this goes for the publishers, this goes for brands, right? You need to have full audit rights, you need to make sure that you're able to check every single dollar and where it went. and also have a full understanding of who these vendors or tech companies, where they're sending your money to, right? And how the dollar breaks down. ⁓ But I believe that the best thing they could do is start with having airtight contracts because then at the very end, at the very least, they're not gonna bring in a Sara to come in and set things right. Lawyers are very, very scary.

Brett House (1:02:28)

There we go.

Rio (1:02:28)

to our contracts. It's interesting you say that because I was brought in by Health System to audit some of their work and we found it was around 22 % ad fraud, right? Which was, it didn't seem like it was intentional. It seemed to us more just sloppy. Like there was a couple of affiliates that started, I mean a lot of the traffic was actually going overseas, right? And then it started performing well, lo and behold. And so they optimized and actually sent more traffic there. And then we couldn't even get a make good because contractually, to your point, they didn't owe them anything, right?

So we had them rewrite the contracts when they ended up reviewing with the same agency, but they ended up saying, okay, if this happens in the future, you least owe us a make good, right? We have audit rights. If we find egregious fraud, you do owe us at least a make good for that budget amount. So I think that's a good point about contracts.

Well, I see we're getting short on time here. And I know David, you have a hard stop. maybe before we go, love, maybe if you could tell our viewers how they, know, Saurav, let's maybe start with you. If viewers want to get a hold of you, if they have any questions about the work you do, if they want to contact you, if they want to bring in an expert, let's say to take a look at these things, how would they get a hold of you?

Sarah Caputo (1:03:36)

Yeah, thank you guys also for your hospitality and this amazing show here. ⁓ I am on LinkedIn, primarily, Sarah Caputo, and I do follow ⁓ quite a few people. So if you want to look under the nooks and crannies if you're starting out, I think that's a good place to start in terms of who and what companies I follow.

I also can be procured through you of digital. ran about 50 workshops for them last year from March to December. yeah, so I think I was almost 50. ran last year my first year working with them. I'm kind of. Yeah, I love shift so I can also be found there.

Rio (1:04:06)

They do great work.

Brett House (1:04:07)

Yep.

Rio (1:04:12)

And Shiv was on this pod. He was one of our early guests.

Brett House (1:04:20)

Nice.

Rio (1:04:20)

Nice. David, how about you? If anyone, I mean, know you post a lot in social and you, you know, you're, very active. And if someone's got a hold of you, like how, where's the best way to find you.

David (1:04:24)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm terminally on LinkedIn, unfortunately. ⁓ But that's probably the best place you can reach me. And I'm always happy to respond, ⁓ share notes, happy to always look at data campaigns and just let you know my feedback. So LinkedIn is probably the easiest place to reach me and I'll never leave you hanging.

Sarah Caputo (1:04:49)

or I could just pop up a QR code because David loves it.

Brett House (1:04:49)

All right.

Rio (1:04:51)

hahahaha

Brett House (1:04:52)

⁓This may not be the right medium the medium of choice for QR codes But but yeah for those watching on YouTube, we're gonna show a QR code in a minute now, ⁓ but no think Yeah exactly put pick up your phone and scan Yeah, yeah, so this was a great episode we're definitely gonna have you two back Thank you so much and in Sarah and David are gonna be contributing to signal a noise going forward

Sarah Caputo (1:04:56)

you

Rio (1:05:02)

It'll bounce around the screen, right? Just like the coin bit.

Sarah Caputo (1:05:05)

I missed my neon light in the back.

David (1:05:06)

Yeah.

Rio (1:05:16)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Brett, maybe we can do an episode on like the real dark underbelly and we can all pick our shadiest stories, right?

Sarah Caputo (1:05:21)

Yeah.

Brett House (1:05:21)

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. ⁓

David (1:05:25)

that you can bring in food for that one we could bring in yeah that'd be a fun one.

Rio (1:05:27)

Making the food.

Brett House (1:05:29)

Yeah, well Yeah, and so so wherever you're listening subscribe YouTube Apple podcasts ⁓ and Spotify We've got lots of episodes coming down the pipe And ⁓ we'll see you next time. Thanks everybody

David (1:05:44)

And check out The Cost of Keeping Silent by Sarah and I.

Sarah Caputo (1:05:48)

Thank you guys. See you guys.

Brett House (1:05:49)

on signalanoids.ai.

Rio (1:05:49)

Bye everyone.