Only around a third of ad dollars reach ‘intended audiences,’ ANA finds

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) today released the rest of its programmatic supply-chain transparency report, just in time for annual performance reviews holiday parties.

The big takeaway: The group’s audit of an estimated $88 billion in open web programmatic advertising spend found that only 36% of ad spending on demand-side platforms (DSP) actually reached advertisers’ “intended audiences.” Not great, Bob!

Other findings include:

• 29% of every ad dollar went toward fees for DSP and supply-side platforms (SSP), aka the adtech vendors that support the pipes of programmatic advertising.
• 35% of every dollar was spent on either nonviewable, nonmeasurable, or made-for-advertising inventory, or on nonhuman, bot traffic (!).

The research: The study examined $123 million in ad spend and 35.5 billion ad impressions between September 2022 and January 2023 from 21 brands, including Nissan, Discover, Walgreens, and State Farm. Forty-six other brands were interested in participating in the study, the ANA said, but were unable to either clear legal hurdles, or get log data from their adtech partners in the first place.

The first half of the research, which was released in June, revealed that 23% of programmatic advertising dollars went toward made-for-advertising websites, which are typically clickbait designed specifically to attract ad dollars. The new report walks back those claims slightly, and adjusts that figure to 15%, or about $10 billion in media investment. The first iteration of the report prompted several adtech vendors to update their policies regarding clickbait inventory.

What to do about it: The report suggests that media buyers prioritize inclusion lists over exclusion lists and have direct contracts at every step of the adtech supply chain, from DSP to SSP to verification vendors.