Show notes
Ari Paparo and Eric Franchi are joined by Erez Levin, a former Googler who focuses on media and inventory quality. They dig into what “quality” really means in programmatic advertising, why short-term outcomes can be misleading, and how incentive structures have pushed spend toward lower-value impressions.Takeaways Quality is best understood through effectiveness, but most measurement overweights short-term signals. “Not all impressions are created equal.” quality varies by context, format, and goal. Video definition loopholes led to premium pricing for lower-attention formats and contributed to market confusion. MFA, SPO, and curation are connected symptoms of incentives that reward cheap scale and vanity metrics. Verification helps, but quality needs to be addressed across the full media workflow, including experimentation and MMM. Agentic buying could either improve quality controls or make it easier to optimize only to what’s measurable in the near term. Publisher traffic declines reinforce the difference between commoditized content and differentiated journalism or creator-led media. ChaptersLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices



