The Media Quality Obsession - The Marketing Architects

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[00:00]
Rob DeMars
A great ad on the super bowl is a great ad next to a cooking show. And I know I'm probably even a little bit going spicier than you guys might on this topic, but like we were talking about before, it's great messages on great quality media to real humans that are experiencing your story. And that's it. At the end of the day, the programming that you're putting it on doesn't play into it as strongly as the creative itself.
[00:23]
Elena Jasper
Marketing Architects hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions. I'm Elena Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co host, Angela Voss, the CEO of Marketing Architects, and Rob DeMars, the chief product architect of misfits and machines.
[00:43]
Angela Voss
Hey guys.
[00:45]
Elena Jasper
We're back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news. Always trying to root our opinions and data research and what drives business results. And today we're talking about media quality, a word that everyone in our industry seems to use a lot, but almost no one can define. So, so we're going to get into why the standard definitions of quality we don't think are working for the average marketer and why we think quality is really a question of effectiveness. And then that's going to lead us to some pretty contrarian places, especially in ctv. So should be fun. But I'm going to kick us off quick with some research and I couldn't decide between two today, so we're going to cover both. The first is from eMarketer and it's titled Media Buyers Struggle to Define Quality Inventory and It's Costing Them. This was written by Peter Allen Clark and it covers a survey that eMarketer ran with verve. And the big sort of headline finding is that quality is almost impossible to pin down. Buyers say quality matters, but they can't agree on what it is. Some people say it's all about reach. Some say it's a brand safe environment. Some say it's dwell time or audience signals. And reach was actually the most common answer. The piece also talks about how modern buying models are so complex that no one can really explain them anyways. So it's hard to define what is quality in a model that we're all confused by. And the second is from Ad Exchanger, and this one is more focused on CTV because quality is a huge topic in that space. It's titled New Channel, Same Old Tricks, How Legacy Web Tactics Are Undermining CTV Advertising. This is by Matt Wasserloff of Blockboard and he says that a 20 year old web tactic called Reach Extension has crept into ctv. This is something that TV advertisers buying linear haven't traditionally dealt with. And what's happening is even direct deals with big premium publishers can quietly include spoof domains and bot traffic right alongside the good stuff. So advertisers think going direct in CTV protects them from some of this and it really doesn't. So I wanted to start with the definition debate because that survey that we covered found that the industry really can't even agree on what quality media means. And that feels like an important place to start. So why don't we try. How would we define media quality?
[02:50]
Angela Voss
I was thinking about this from the perspective of quality media, in my view reaches the right audience for the right marketing objective at a cost that makes the math work across both short and long term. That actually feels more complex than some of the definitions that I've heard. But I think the industry has built up elaborate vocab around viewability, around brand safety, contextual adjacency, and almost all of it describes the environment in which the ad shows up. Yet there's little evidence that might matter to the consumer. Somewhere along the line. Sporting events, the Emmys, the Grammys, the Golden Globes were kind of classified as premium, likely just due to the cost to air in those programs. But without evidence that cost might be worth it. It may be depending on what you pay, because those programs do tend to pull in audiences that watch little television. So it might be worth more, but we just need to do our jobs in assessing how much more.
[03:56]
Rob DeMars
I'm glad you and I are aligned on this one, Alina, because I'm just going to say it slightly differently, which is reach, brand safe, dwell time, blah, blah, blah, right? Quality media is about media that reaches the right number of real humans, which is you have to like even remember that part of it, right? In a context where the ad can actually do its job and at a price where the math works. Right. It's really that simple at the end of the day. But we love to get out our little fancy marketing pants and come up with all of these features. But the all just proxies.
[04:35]
Elena Jasper
Yeah, I like that. Both of your opinions. I agree. Like is it being seen by a human? Can it do the right job? For example, an ad in television, you're going to have more time for things like brand building versus something like a display ad or a paid search ad. It just has a different job to do. And then is it at the right price? There's a lot of angst around media quality, which I understand, I think it's a super important topic. But I think the pendulum can go both ways. There can be some marketers who aren't thinking enough about it and they're buying a bunch of media that's low quality. And then there can be others that are overthinking it to the point where they think media quality means it has to be on certain programs at certain times, surrounded by certain things. But I think that's when it's probably a little bit of overthinking happening. So sometimes a part of this debate is that if the outcome is good, like if the result is clean from your marketing and you're seeing a return, you shouldn't really care how you got to it. And I'm curious, Ange, how we feel about that. Like, if the results are there, should marketers be overly concerned about their quote, unquote, media quality?
[05:37]
Angela Voss
I think direct to consumer brands might have a little bit of a leg up on something maybe like qsr, where it's a little harder to track some of this stuff. But I think the big question is what results? If we're saying if the results are there, should we be concerned? Because that's often a measurement problem. Right. Last click. Attribution says the results are there. View through Windows, say the results are there. MTA models with convenient assumptions say the results are there. So I think before you declare your media clean and right, just because the dashboard looks good, you have to ask whether or not that measurement strategy is really honest. Because when that measurement is solid, you've got incrementality, testing a match market, something with real rigor, and the outcomes hold, then yes, I would say spend less time kind of policing the inputs.
[06:25]
Elena Jasper
That's a good point. If you're confident in your measurement, measurement is actually a great way to judge your media quality, because if it's providing a return you're confident in, then it's probably being seen by humans. Yep. And they're probably seeing enough of it to respond to it.
[06:39]
Angela Voss
Television specifically is a channel that we've talked about many times that provides both a short and a long outcome. And so if you're a brand that can measure that short, you should be measuring the short. It also is a channel that does an amazing job at building the long demand. And so we need to be measuring that as well. But if we're debating things like media quality and we don't have a measuring stick for the short, then that becomes more of a sticky conversation. And more of a debate, more of an opinion without being able to look at something like an actual outcome, a sale that was driven from television.
[07:15]
Elena Jasper
Rob, one thing I wanted to ask you is there's a part of this debate that is around creative performance and there's a belief that a prima environment is going to make your creative work harder. So that's why you should pay more for it and prioritize it and look for that sort of quote unquote quality. Do you buy that? Do you think that that's true?
[07:36]
Rob DeMars
I'm into sound effects today. I don't know why, but no. And I think we've talked about this in some capacity before on the podcast. But these fancy environments, do they sprinkle magic onto your ads and somehow make the story better? And all of that is just being done to justify high CPMs at the end of the day. And what actually makes great creative work is what it's the work, right? Is it distinctive? Is it well branded? These will overcome prestige placements all day long. A great ad on the super bowl is a great ad next to a cooking show. And I know I'm probably even a little bit going spicier than you guys might on this topic, but at the end of the day, like we were talking about before, it's great messages on great quality media to real humans that are experiencing your story. And that's it. At the end of the day, the programming that you're putting it on doesn't play into it as strongly as the creative itself.
[08:34]
Elena Jasper
Yeah, I would consider that a very spicy, spicy opinion, but we'd agree. So I would say based on where we're at so far in this episode, we are clearly a little more skeptical of media quality than most people are, I would say, in the industry. However, is there still a quality bar that we think marketers should never go below?
[08:56]
Angela Voss
Yeah, absolutely. I would say the floor is fraud's the floor. Bot traffic, spoof domains, you know, these made for advertising sites. Those are not a quality debate. They're more of just a conversation around theft. You're paying for something that doesn't exist. So below that floor you're just burning money and no measurements system really reduces you or rescues you because you there's nothing real to measure there. I think above that floor, the quality conversation is mostly about cost efficiency and just fit. But that floor itself, I think is non negotiable for marketers. And the industry consistently underestimates how far fraud has crept into supply chains. And those are supply chains that I think that a lot of marketers assume are clean and safe for them to be in.
[09:44]
Elena Jasper
Yeah, definitely a big issue. But that's where we're talking earlier about measurement and how important that is. And if you have proper measurement in place, that's also going to protect you from things like fraud in your media buys.
[09:54]
Rob DeMars
I mean, absolutely. There's a floor. It's just not exactly what people think. To me, the floor is, was it a real human and did they actually have a chance to see the ad? Not a bot, not a muted autoplay in a background tab, not a 2 inch pixel below the fold. That's the bar above the line. I get pretty agnostic about what does premium mean, but below it, you know, none of the fancy stuff matters because you're paying to reach no. 1.
[10:24]
Elena Jasper
Right. I don't know why I found that funny. That's true.
[10:27]
Rob DeMars
I find it funny too. Right? I mean, it's like, okay, we got all this fancy stuff, you can measure it down to a T. You didn't actually read a reach a person, but hey, looks good in a boardroom spreadsheet.
[10:39]
Elena Jasper
Yeah, sure does. So we've been repeating sort of this view on the podcast for a while that we believe everything works at zero. What do you mean by that? And why does cost matter so much in TV in particular? Because sometimes you get in debates about TV versus digital. So how do you think the two compare?
[10:55]
Angela Voss
I think we love our little mental shortcut phrases that we have around MA and hope kind of those seep into the industry as well. But when we say everything works at zero, it's kind of our way of reiterating that cost matters a lot. We work in a channel like television where I think people think, oh, well, it's expensive, so it should be expensive, you know, simply at free. Everything works from an ROI perspective and it's a massive game changer for brands. We see this all the time. A brand that's been running on television for years at cpms, maybe in the low double digits and just going about it, assuming that's the cost to play in television. And they're brought on as a client of marketing architects and start buying through our homegrown DSP that we call Annika. And CPMs are cut in half or more, which effectively gives them twice the reach and they watch their business skyrocket. You know, and I think in, in digital, you've got thousands of levers, you've got bid adjustments and targeting layers and retargeting pools, and the CPMs swing really wildly based on how many levers you pull in. In tv, particular in ctv, you're buying large audiences and sometimes at fixed costs. And the math can be really brutal and transparent. You either have enough people at a cost that leaves room for the business to profit, or the channel just doesn't work. And that there's a little. There's very little place to hide that. Transparency is why I love television. It really forces honest conversations about scale and efficiency, that digital can defer almost indefinitely behind kind of optimization theater as it would be.
[12:32]
Elena Jasper
But CTV has changed things a little bit for TV advertisers because it's brought in more of those digital challenges. I would say there's been a lot recently I see on LinkedIn and in industry articles about how fraud can sneak into ctv. Even direct CTV deals. That Ad Exchanger article was talking about, even buyers that they go direct, they pay a premium and they expect to have no sort of fraud in their campaign. They might be experiencing that. So what were some of the challenges we saw in CTV that caused us to build our own DSP and not use just an industry solution, which most advertisers, I think it's fair to say, are buying through one of the main industry players? Why did we build our own?
[13:12]
Angela Voss
I think the article kind of points out something that the industry doesn't really want to admit, which is that going direct doesn't protect you. Major media companies signing direct deals with advertisers can still quietly deliver that low quality made for advertising junk or bot traffic right alongside the premium stuff. And that makes it really hard for advertisers to know what's going on there. We saw that pattern. We kept seeing data that didn't add up.
[13:40]
Elena Jasper
And.
[13:41]
Angela Voss
And because we own our dsp, we could do something that most buyers can't, which is just pick up the phone and call the source directly. We have direct relationships at that level and when the numbers look wrong, we go straight to the conversation. Without that intermediary, there's no ticket system. We're not waiting for a managed service team to escalate something that we have a question about. And that access is only possible because we control that full tech stack down to where those bid requests originates. Sometimes it shows up in ways where you're looking at your outcomes and they're just too good to be true. And they probably are. You know, when they look too good to be true, they probably are.
[14:21]
Elena Jasper
So most marketers can't build their own dsp? Well, they could, but maybe they can't and maybe they shouldn't. So if I'm a marketer and I'm having to buy through sort of industry solutions, what should I demand from my partners? Like how could I still try to protect my brand from some of that inventory?
[14:39]
Angela Voss
Start with a test that we don't usually think of as marketers. Ask your DSP to get a publisher on a call so you can ask them questions about their inventory. If the answer is no, or if it takes three weeks and six emails, that probably tells you how much transparency is actually available to you. I think from a reporting perspective, what reporting do you actually receive? Does it give you enough detail to challenge specific inventory? Top line metrics and aggregate viewability scores are not enough to really diagnose what's going on. You need log level data, impression level details so you can identify patterns and raise questions and hold partners accountable for the specific supply side sources that are accessible via their inventory. And then I think of course build in independent verification that sits outside your partner's own reporting. Double verify ias, you know, pick one and run it yourself. Your partner's dashboard and your verification vendor shouldn't be the same source. It's just checks and balances that are important and just responsibility on part of the brand.
[15:42]
Elena Jasper
Having that extra check seems important. So there's a narrative now that AI is going to make a lot of this junk inventory even worse. It's going to just become more prevalent. But it also, on the other hand, might be essential in building tools to catch this types of inventory. So how do you think marketers should think about using AI without it leading to low quality, both media buys and low quality creative?
[16:04]
Rob DeMars
I think we can agree AI did not invent junk inventory, right? It just really lowered the cost of making it. So there's basically more of it thanks to AI. But the same speed is also the best defense we've got. The move isn't to just fear AI, it's to point it at the problem. Really use it to detect the spoof domains, you know, flag the weird traffic patterns, you know, and pressure test your creative before it ever runs. I think on the creative side, the risk isn't that AI makes bad ads, it's that it makes average ads really fast. So you can use it to explore hundreds of directions and then discern of those directions which are the ones that are going to ring the bell. So that's actually an advantage. So you know, use AI to raise your floor and your speed, but you can still work in the human taste. That really brings it to the next level. So, you know, I'M bullish that people catching the junk are going to be better armed than the people making it.
[17:10]
Elena Jasper
I'd also say that when I see a bad. I've seen bad AI ads now on tv, like they're starting to become more of a thing. They make me just as uncomfortable as just a bad ad is a bad ad.
[17:23]
Rob DeMars
I happen to sit on the side where I actually think advertising can write incredibly well. I think it can produce amazing quality video. But people love to pick on the bad examples. And I liken it to autonomous driving. So AI can create amazing autonomous vehicles. They actually drive way better than humans do. Right? They do. They just, they have the data, they have the reflexes. And yet if one accident happens with an autonomous car, it's national headlines. But it's like how many people are driving around getting in car accidents right now that are human? So we love to pick on the examples that didn't work. But there's so much amazing stuff that is happening in terms of ad creation around AI.
[18:12]
Elena Jasper
Yeah, agreed. And you're right, people just have a much. They're a lot pickier. There's harsher on AI created work.
[18:18]
Rob DeMars
You'd be like, oh, it didn't write any good headlines. How many copywriters have you worked with where you're like, no, I'm sorry, keep going. I mean it's like, oh, but the robot didn't do a good job.
[18:28]
Elena Jasper
Yeah, totally. Much harsher standard.
[18:30]
Angela Voss
I think the thing that scares me the most is the automated bidding optimization towards kind of proxy metrics so completion rates or viewability scores because that fraudulent inventory is very good at gaming those proxies, that's kind of its entire business model. So the defense is to tie that optimization to outcomes, outcomes that are hard to fake. Orders, calls, actual conversions through your own pixels. Fraud kind of evaporates at that layer because there's nothing left to game. And this is where direct to consumer marketers have an advantage. You know, with US and our DSP, we can assess for our D2C marketers what's true and what's not, what's real and what's not and can optimize our DSP according to what we see. And that's where our retail based clients or clients like QSR that have a little harder time tying outcomes to what's happening on a bidding level can gain access and an advantage through the metrics that we see from other clients.
[19:31]
Elena Jasper
Yeah, so we're having that like both performance and brand experience is helpful, helpful for clients. All right, well to wrap us up with something fun here. What is a premium version of something that you tried once and realized maybe it wasn't exactly a scam, but it was definitely not worth it.
[19:46]
Angela Voss
I had a wagyu steak once at a high end restaurant that was not worth it. It was really expensive and I love steak. I haven't even tried it again because I was like, you know what? I much prefer the rib eye off my husband's Weber Grill.
[20:03]
Elena Jasper
Yeah. Just not, not enough of a difference.
[20:06]
Angela Voss
Yeah, no, yeah. Nope, just wasn't enough.
[20:08]
Elena Jasper
I've never tried that. But I get all my steaks well done, so I don't think, oh, my husband would allow me to order a nice steak. Oh, my gosh, no, just destroy it.
[20:17]
Angela Voss
But like, how do I know it's wagyu you could bring? I don't. I'm not, you know, educated enough to be able to tell. So someone could bring me, I don't know, probably a piece of pork and I'd be like, yeah, it's great. It's fine.
[20:28]
Elena Jasper
It's great.
[20:30]
Rob DeMars
I technically cannot tell the difference between my Keurig K cup coffee that I have every morning, my donut shop coffee that I get at Costco, and a premium coffee. I'll go into the coffee shop, it's a great experience. But then I get that straight up black coffee, and I'm like, I don't even know if I like it. I actually think I like it worse. You know, it's like it tastes burnt or something. Now, to all the baristas out there, I'm not talking about the full on mixology coffee. That's an art form. That takes real skill. I'm talking the straight. I'll pay $8 once a month maybe to have that experience. But my K cup donut shop coffee is to me is taste premium.
[21:15]
Elena Jasper
Yeah, that's a great one. I would say the same. I think you and I probably don't have good tasting coffee, but I would say the same. It does make a difference to me. Some people are very particular, but yeah, I don't have good taste. So for me, yeah, as long as it's coffee, it's fine.
[21:29]
Angela Voss
I can tell the difference between, like my church coffee, like when I go to church, and you're like, I don't even know what they're serving there. But like, it's in this massive pot, right? And we don't get ultra premium, but we do get Starbucks, like just ground coffee. And that's just my go to.
[21:45]
Elena Jasper
But yeah, that you can tell a little bit.
[21:47]
Angela Voss
I'm like, this doesn't. This tastes more like mud than coffee.
[21:52]
Rob DeMars
What's yours, Elena?
[21:53]
Elena Jasper
So we, we moved into our house a couple years ago and now we're better about this, but originally we fell for a door to door salesman. We just kind of felt bad. And he was selling premium pest control. It was like eco friendly and we didn't have a pest problem. But he was like, oh, I see chuggers on your house. And I'm like, I don't know what that is.
[22:10]
Rob DeMars
Oh, I don't want a chugger.
[22:12]
Elena Jasper
No. I was like, I don't know, but I want that gone. And it did. Nothing like it. The bugs felt the exact same.
[22:17]
Angela Voss
They're always the one that shows up and goes, I just got done with the Johnsons. You know the Johnson just down the. They're just, they're like seven. Just far enough away that you're like,
[22:27]
Elena Jasper
no, I don't, I don't know who those people are. No, they literally said that. They're like, oh, you do a lot of houses in this neighborhood. And yeah, just. And I know all the like Cialdini influence principles. I know all of them, but I'm still like, still fall for it.
[22:39]
Angela Voss
So yeah, yeah, they do work.
[22:42]
Elena Jasper
That's it for this episode of the Marketing Architects. We'd like to thank Taylor de Los Reyes for producing the show. You can connect with us on LinkedIn and if you like the podcast, please leave us a review. Now go forth and build great marketing
[22:56]
Angela Voss
marketing architects.
[22:59]
Rob DeMars
All bugs die the same, right? Whether it's a premium brand or not. Death is death.
[23:06]
Angela Voss
Yes. Right.
[23:06]
Elena Jasper
And I'm convinced, like eco friendly egg might have been part of the problem. I don't want it to be friendly to the environment.
[23:12]
Angela Voss
I want to kill the bugs.
[23:13]
Rob DeMars
I want the bugs to die.
[23:14]
Elena Jasper
Yeah, I want them.
[23:15]
Rob DeMars
I don't want them to have a nice nap.
[23:17]
Elena Jasper
No, definitely not.

Summary5 min read

The Marketing Architects — Episode Summary Episode: The Media Quality Obsession
Date: August 4, 2026
Hosts: Elena Jasper, Angela Voss, Rob DeMars

Episode Overview

This episode of The Marketing Architects dives into the elusive concept of "media quality" in marketing, specifically within TV and CTV (connected TV). The team analyzes why the industry can't define what quality actually means, how it's commonly misunderstood, and ultimately argues that effectiveness—measured by true business outcomes—should be the guiding standard, not just context, cost, or proxies like brand safety. The episode also explores how fraud, measurement, and emerging AI technologies influence (and sometimes undermine) media quality, and wraps up with a lighthearted discussion about "premium" products that failed to live up to the hype.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Impossible Definition of "Media Quality"

[02:06–04:35]

Research Roundup: Elena explains that the term "media quality" is overused but rarely understood, citing two key articles:
- eMarketer: "Media Buyers Struggle to Define Quality Inventory and It's Costing Them" – Shows industry disagreement about whether quality means reach, brand safety, audience signals, or dwell time.
- Ad Exchanger: "New Channel, Same Old Tricks" – Exposes how legacy web tactics like “Reach Extension” introduce fraud into CTV, undermining direct deals with premium publishers.
Host Reactions:
- Angela: "[The industry] has built up elaborate vocab around viewability, brand safety, contextual adjacency ... almost all describes the environment ... Yet there's little evidence that [the environment] might matter to the consumer." [02:49]
- Rob: "Reach, brand safe, dwell time, blah, blah, blah ... Quality media is about media that reaches the right number of real humans ... at a price where the math works." [03:56]

2. Effectiveness > Perceived Quality

[04:35–06:39]

The team debunks the myth that "premium" environments guarantee better ad performance.
Elena: "If the result is clean from your marketing and you're seeing a return, you shouldn't really care how you got to it." [04:35]
Angela highlights the measurement challenge: "Before you declare your media clean and right just because the dashboard looks good, you have to ask whether that measurement strategy is really honest." [05:36]

3. Measurement as the True Barometer

[06:25–07:15]

Robust measurement (incrementality testing, match market, real outcomes) is crucial to accurately judge media investment.
Angela: "Television specifically ... provides both a short and long outcome ... if we're debating things like media quality and we don't have a measuring stick for the short, then that becomes more of a sticky conversation."

4. The Myth of "Premium Placements"

[07:15–08:33]

Rob: "These fancy environments, do they sprinkle magic onto your ads? … All of that is just being done to justify high CPMs at the end of the day."
Notable quote: "A great ad on the super bowl is a great ad next to a cooking show." [00:00, 07:48]

5. The Non-Negotiable Floor: "Fraud is the Floor"

[08:55–10:23]

Angela: "The floor is fraud’s the floor. Bot traffic, spoof domains, … Those are not a quality debate. They're more of just a conversation around theft." [08:55]
Rob: "To me, the floor is, was it a real human and did they actually have a chance to see the ad? … Above the line, I get pretty agnostic about what does premium mean, but below it, ... none of the fancy stuff matters because you're paying to reach no one." [09:53]

6. "Everything Works at Zero" – Why Cost Matters

[10:38–12:32]

Angela: "When we say everything works at zero, it’s our way of reiterating that cost matters a lot … In TV, you’re buying large audiences and sometimes at fixed costs. The math can be really brutal and transparent."
Example: Lowering CPMs for a client doubled reach and “watched their business skyrocket.” [11:40]

7. CTV’s Unique Risks and In-House Solutions

[12:32–14:38]

CTV brings digital’s fraud and complexity to television.
Angela: "Going direct doesn’t protect you ... Major media companies signing direct deals can still quietly deliver low quality made for advertising junk or bot traffic right alongside the premium stuff." [13:11]
Their own DSP allows direct conversation with sources and instant investigation—impossible with industry-standard solutions.

8. Advice for Marketers in a Flawed Ecosystem

[14:20–15:42]

Demand transparency: Ask your DSP to set calls with publishers; request log-level, impression-level data.
Use independent verification (e.g., DoubleVerify, IAS).
Angela: "Your partner's dashboard and your verification vendor shouldn't be the same source." [15:36]

9. Will AI Worsen or Save Media Quality?

[16:03–18:17]

Rob: "AI did not invent junk inventory ... it just really lowered the cost of making it. So there's basically more of it thanks to AI. But the same speed is also the best defense we've got." [16:03]
AI can help catch fraud, but also risks flooding the market with mediocre creative at scale.
Angela’s concern: "The thing that scares me most is automated bidding optimization toward proxy metrics ... That fraudulent inventory is very good at gaming those proxies." [18:29]
Solution: Optimize toward outcomes that are "hard to fake—orders, calls, actual conversions..."

Notable Quotes & Moments

Rob DeMars: "A great ad on the super bowl is a great ad next to a cooking show." [00:00, 07:48]
Angela Voss: "Fraud’s the floor ... Below that floor you’re just burning money and no measurement system rescues you." [08:55]
Angela Voss: "When we say everything works at zero, it’s our way of reiterating that cost matters a lot." [10:55]
Rob DeMars: "I think on the creative side, the risk isn’t that AI makes bad ads, it’s that it makes average ads really fast." [16:38]
Angela Voss: "Your partner’s dashboard and your verification vendor shouldn’t be the same source." [15:36]

Fun Closing: "Premium" Products that Disappointed

[19:46–22:38]

Angela: Disappointed by an expensive wagyu steak ("not worth it"—prefer her husband’s home-cooked).
Rob: Can’t tell the difference between premium coffee and Costco K-cups.
Elena: Fell for "premium pest control" from a door-to-door salesman, with no reduction in bugs.
Rob: "All bugs die the same, right? Whether it's a premium brand or not." [22:58]

Episode Takeaways

Media quality isn't about context or premium labels—it's about real, measurable effectiveness.
Fraud in media buying is rampant and hard to detect without transparency and independent verification.
Marketers should focus on real outcomes rather than proxies or industry myths about premium inventory.
AI is both a risk (in generating junk) and a necessary defense (in detecting fraud).
Cost, scale, and robust measurement are more important than chasing "prestige" environments.

For Marketers:
Demand transparency and proof, value efficacy over context, let real business results—measured honestly—drive decisions, and never pay for anything below the "human-seen" floor.

Summary prepared by The Marketing Architects Podcast Summarizer

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[00:00]
Rob DeMars
A great ad on the super bowl is a great ad next to a cooking show. And I know I'm probably even a little bit going spicier than you guys might on this topic, but like we were talking about before, it's great messages on great quality media to real humans that are experiencing your story. And that's it. At the end of the day, the programming that you're putting it on doesn't play into it as strongly as the creative itself.
[00:23]
Elena Jasper
Marketing Architects hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions. I'm Elena Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co host, Angela Voss, the CEO of Marketing Architects, and Rob DeMars, the chief product architect of misfits and machines.
[00:43]
Angela Voss
Hey guys.
[00:45]
Elena Jasper
We're back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news. Always trying to root our opinions and data research and what drives business results. And today we're talking about media quality, a word that everyone in our industry seems to use a lot, but almost no one can define. So, so we're going to get into why the standard definitions of quality we don't think are working for the average marketer and why we think quality is really a question of effectiveness. And then that's going to lead us to some pretty contrarian places, especially in ctv. So should be fun. But I'm going to kick us off quick with some research and I couldn't decide between two today, so we're going to cover both. The first is from eMarketer and it's titled Media Buyers Struggle to Define Quality Inventory and It's Costing Them. This was written by Peter Allen Clark and it covers a survey that eMarketer ran with verve. And the big sort of headline finding is that quality is almost impossible to pin down. Buyers say quality matters, but they can't agree on what it is. Some people say it's all about reach. Some say it's a brand safe environment. Some say it's dwell time or audience signals. And reach was actually the most common answer. The piece also talks about how modern buying models are so complex that no one can really explain them anyways. So it's hard to define what is quality in a model that we're all confused by. And the second is from Ad Exchanger, and this one is more focused on CTV because quality is a huge topic in that space. It's titled New Channel, Same Old Tricks, How Legacy Web Tactics Are Undermining CTV Advertising. This is by Matt Wasserloff of Blockboard and he says that a 20 year old web tactic called Reach Extension has crept into ctv. This is something that TV advertisers buying linear haven't traditionally dealt with. And what's happening is even direct deals with big premium publishers can quietly include spoof domains and bot traffic right alongside the good stuff. So advertisers think going direct in CTV protects them from some of this and it really doesn't. So I wanted to start with the definition debate because that survey that we covered found that the industry really can't even agree on what quality media means. And that feels like an important place to start. So why don't we try. How would we define media quality?
[02:50]
Angela Voss
I was thinking about this from the perspective of quality media, in my view reaches the right audience for the right marketing objective at a cost that makes the math work across both short and long term. That actually feels more complex than some of the definitions that I've heard. But I think the industry has built up elaborate vocab around viewability, around brand safety, contextual adjacency, and almost all of it describes the environment in which the ad shows up. Yet there's little evidence that might matter to the consumer. Somewhere along the line. Sporting events, the Emmys, the Grammys, the Golden Globes were kind of classified as premium, likely just due to the cost to air in those programs. But without evidence that cost might be worth it. It may be depending on what you pay, because those programs do tend to pull in audiences that watch little television. So it might be worth more, but we just need to do our jobs in assessing how much more.
[03:56]
Rob DeMars
I'm glad you and I are aligned on this one, Alina, because I'm just going to say it slightly differently, which is reach, brand safe, dwell time, blah, blah, blah, right? Quality media is about media that reaches the right number of real humans, which is you have to like even remember that part of it, right? In a context where the ad can actually do its job and at a price where the math works. Right. It's really that simple at the end of the day. But we love to get out our little fancy marketing pants and come up with all of these features. But the all just proxies.
[04:35]
Elena Jasper
Yeah, I like that. Both of your opinions. I agree. Like is it being seen by a human? Can it do the right job? For example, an ad in television, you're going to have more time for things like brand building versus something like a display ad or a paid search ad. It just has a different job to do. And then is it at the right price? There's a lot of angst around media quality, which I understand, I think it's a super important topic. But I think the pendulum can go both ways. There can be some marketers who aren't thinking enough about it and they're buying a bunch of media that's low quality. And then there can be others that are overthinking it to the point where they think media quality means it has to be on certain programs at certain times, surrounded by certain things. But I think that's when it's probably a little bit of overthinking happening. So sometimes a part of this debate is that if the outcome is good, like if the result is clean from your marketing and you're seeing a return, you shouldn't really care how you got to it. And I'm curious, Ange, how we feel about that. Like, if the results are there, should marketers be overly concerned about their quote, unquote, media quality?
[05:37]
Angela Voss
I think direct to consumer brands might have a little bit of a leg up on something maybe like qsr, where it's a little harder to track some of this stuff. But I think the big question is what results? If we're saying if the results are there, should we be concerned? Because that's often a measurement problem. Right. Last click. Attribution says the results are there. View through Windows, say the results are there. MTA models with convenient assumptions say the results are there. So I think before you declare your media clean and right, just because the dashboard looks good, you have to ask whether or not that measurement strategy is really honest. Because when that measurement is solid, you've got incrementality, testing a match market, something with real rigor, and the outcomes hold, then yes, I would say spend less time kind of policing the inputs.
[06:25]
Elena Jasper
That's a good point. If you're confident in your measurement, measurement is actually a great way to judge your media quality, because if it's providing a return you're confident in, then it's probably being seen by humans. Yep. And they're probably seeing enough of it to respond to it.
[06:39]
Angela Voss
Television specifically is a channel that we've talked about many times that provides both a short and a long outcome. And so if you're a brand that can measure that short, you should be measuring the short. It also is a channel that does an amazing job at building the long demand. And so we need to be measuring that as well. But if we're debating things like media quality and we don't have a measuring stick for the short, then that becomes more of a sticky conversation. And more of a debate, more of an opinion without being able to look at something like an actual outcome, a sale that was driven from television.
[07:15]
Elena Jasper
Rob, one thing I wanted to ask you is there's a part of this debate that is around creative performance and there's a belief that a prima environment is going to make your creative work harder. So that's why you should pay more for it and prioritize it and look for that sort of quote unquote quality. Do you buy that? Do you think that that's true?
[07:36]
Rob DeMars
I'm into sound effects today. I don't know why, but no. And I think we've talked about this in some capacity before on the podcast. But these fancy environments, do they sprinkle magic onto your ads and somehow make the story better? And all of that is just being done to justify high CPMs at the end of the day. And what actually makes great creative work is what it's the work, right? Is it distinctive? Is it well branded? These will overcome prestige placements all day long. A great ad on the super bowl is a great ad next to a cooking show. And I know I'm probably even a little bit going spicier than you guys might on this topic, but at the end of the day, like we were talking about before, it's great messages on great quality media to real humans that are experiencing your story. And that's it. At the end of the day, the programming that you're putting it on doesn't play into it as strongly as the creative itself.
[08:34]
Elena Jasper
Yeah, I would consider that a very spicy, spicy opinion, but we'd agree. So I would say based on where we're at so far in this episode, we are clearly a little more skeptical of media quality than most people are, I would say, in the industry. However, is there still a quality bar that we think marketers should never go below?
[08:56]
Angela Voss
Yeah, absolutely. I would say the floor is fraud's the floor. Bot traffic, spoof domains, you know, these made for advertising sites. Those are not a quality debate. They're more of just a conversation around theft. You're paying for something that doesn't exist. So below that floor you're just burning money and no measurements system really reduces you or rescues you because you there's nothing real to measure there. I think above that floor, the quality conversation is mostly about cost efficiency and just fit. But that floor itself, I think is non negotiable for marketers. And the industry consistently underestimates how far fraud has crept into supply chains. And those are supply chains that I think that a lot of marketers assume are clean and safe for them to be in.
[09:44]
Elena Jasper
Yeah, definitely a big issue. But that's where we're talking earlier about measurement and how important that is. And if you have proper measurement in place, that's also going to protect you from things like fraud in your media buys.
[09:54]
Rob DeMars
I mean, absolutely. There's a floor. It's just not exactly what people think. To me, the floor is, was it a real human and did they actually have a chance to see the ad? Not a bot, not a muted autoplay in a background tab, not a 2 inch pixel below the fold. That's the bar above the line. I get pretty agnostic about what does premium mean, but below it, you know, none of the fancy stuff matters because you're paying to reach no. 1.
[10:24]
Elena Jasper
Right. I don't know why I found that funny. That's true.
[10:27]
Rob DeMars
I find it funny too. Right? I mean, it's like, okay, we got all this fancy stuff, you can measure it down to a T. You didn't actually read a reach a person, but hey, looks good in a boardroom spreadsheet.
[10:39]
Elena Jasper
Yeah, sure does. So we've been repeating sort of this view on the podcast for a while that we believe everything works at zero. What do you mean by that? And why does cost matter so much in TV in particular? Because sometimes you get in debates about TV versus digital. So how do you think the two compare?
[10:55]
Angela Voss
I think we love our little mental shortcut phrases that we have around MA and hope kind of those seep into the industry as well. But when we say everything works at zero, it's kind of our way of reiterating that cost matters a lot. We work in a channel like television where I think people think, oh, well, it's expensive, so it should be expensive, you know, simply at free. Everything works from an ROI perspective and it's a massive game changer for brands. We see this all the time. A brand that's been running on television for years at cpms, maybe in the low double digits and just going about it, assuming that's the cost to play in television. And they're brought on as a client of marketing architects and start buying through our homegrown DSP that we call Annika. And CPMs are cut in half or more, which effectively gives them twice the reach and they watch their business skyrocket. You know, and I think in, in digital, you've got thousands of levers, you've got bid adjustments and targeting layers and retargeting pools, and the CPMs swing really wildly based on how many levers you pull in. In tv, particular in ctv, you're buying large audiences and sometimes at fixed costs. And the math can be really brutal and transparent. You either have enough people at a cost that leaves room for the business to profit, or the channel just doesn't work. And that there's a little. There's very little place to hide that. Transparency is why I love television. It really forces honest conversations about scale and efficiency, that digital can defer almost indefinitely behind kind of optimization theater as it would be.
[12:32]
Elena Jasper
But CTV has changed things a little bit for TV advertisers because it's brought in more of those digital challenges. I would say there's been a lot recently I see on LinkedIn and in industry articles about how fraud can sneak into ctv. Even direct CTV deals. That Ad Exchanger article was talking about, even buyers that they go direct, they pay a premium and they expect to have no sort of fraud in their campaign. They might be experiencing that. So what were some of the challenges we saw in CTV that caused us to build our own DSP and not use just an industry solution, which most advertisers, I think it's fair to say, are buying through one of the main industry players? Why did we build our own?
[13:12]
Angela Voss
I think the article kind of points out something that the industry doesn't really want to admit, which is that going direct doesn't protect you. Major media companies signing direct deals with advertisers can still quietly deliver that low quality made for advertising junk or bot traffic right alongside the premium stuff. And that makes it really hard for advertisers to know what's going on there. We saw that pattern. We kept seeing data that didn't add up.
[13:40]
Elena Jasper
And.
[13:41]
Angela Voss
And because we own our dsp, we could do something that most buyers can't, which is just pick up the phone and call the source directly. We have direct relationships at that level and when the numbers look wrong, we go straight to the conversation. Without that intermediary, there's no ticket system. We're not waiting for a managed service team to escalate something that we have a question about. And that access is only possible because we control that full tech stack down to where those bid requests originates. Sometimes it shows up in ways where you're looking at your outcomes and they're just too good to be true. And they probably are. You know, when they look too good to be true, they probably are.
[14:21]
Elena Jasper
So most marketers can't build their own dsp? Well, they could, but maybe they can't and maybe they shouldn't. So if I'm a marketer and I'm having to buy through sort of industry solutions, what should I demand from my partners? Like how could I still try to protect my brand from some of that inventory?
[14:39]
Angela Voss
Start with a test that we don't usually think of as marketers. Ask your DSP to get a publisher on a call so you can ask them questions about their inventory. If the answer is no, or if it takes three weeks and six emails, that probably tells you how much transparency is actually available to you. I think from a reporting perspective, what reporting do you actually receive? Does it give you enough detail to challenge specific inventory? Top line metrics and aggregate viewability scores are not enough to really diagnose what's going on. You need log level data, impression level details so you can identify patterns and raise questions and hold partners accountable for the specific supply side sources that are accessible via their inventory. And then I think of course build in independent verification that sits outside your partner's own reporting. Double verify ias, you know, pick one and run it yourself. Your partner's dashboard and your verification vendor shouldn't be the same source. It's just checks and balances that are important and just responsibility on part of the brand.
[15:42]
Elena Jasper
Having that extra check seems important. So there's a narrative now that AI is going to make a lot of this junk inventory even worse. It's going to just become more prevalent. But it also, on the other hand, might be essential in building tools to catch this types of inventory. So how do you think marketers should think about using AI without it leading to low quality, both media buys and low quality creative?
[16:04]
Rob DeMars
I think we can agree AI did not invent junk inventory, right? It just really lowered the cost of making it. So there's basically more of it thanks to AI. But the same speed is also the best defense we've got. The move isn't to just fear AI, it's to point it at the problem. Really use it to detect the spoof domains, you know, flag the weird traffic patterns, you know, and pressure test your creative before it ever runs. I think on the creative side, the risk isn't that AI makes bad ads, it's that it makes average ads really fast. So you can use it to explore hundreds of directions and then discern of those directions which are the ones that are going to ring the bell. So that's actually an advantage. So you know, use AI to raise your floor and your speed, but you can still work in the human taste. That really brings it to the next level. So, you know, I'M bullish that people catching the junk are going to be better armed than the people making it.
[17:10]
Elena Jasper
I'd also say that when I see a bad. I've seen bad AI ads now on tv, like they're starting to become more of a thing. They make me just as uncomfortable as just a bad ad is a bad ad.
[17:23]
Rob DeMars
I happen to sit on the side where I actually think advertising can write incredibly well. I think it can produce amazing quality video. But people love to pick on the bad examples. And I liken it to autonomous driving. So AI can create amazing autonomous vehicles. They actually drive way better than humans do. Right? They do. They just, they have the data, they have the reflexes. And yet if one accident happens with an autonomous car, it's national headlines. But it's like how many people are driving around getting in car accidents right now that are human? So we love to pick on the examples that didn't work. But there's so much amazing stuff that is happening in terms of ad creation around AI.
[18:12]
Elena Jasper
Yeah, agreed. And you're right, people just have a much. They're a lot pickier. There's harsher on AI created work.
[18:18]
Rob DeMars
You'd be like, oh, it didn't write any good headlines. How many copywriters have you worked with where you're like, no, I'm sorry, keep going. I mean it's like, oh, but the robot didn't do a good job.
[18:28]
Elena Jasper
Yeah, totally. Much harsher standard.
[18:30]
Angela Voss
I think the thing that scares me the most is the automated bidding optimization towards kind of proxy metrics so completion rates or viewability scores because that fraudulent inventory is very good at gaming those proxies, that's kind of its entire business model. So the defense is to tie that optimization to outcomes, outcomes that are hard to fake. Orders, calls, actual conversions through your own pixels. Fraud kind of evaporates at that layer because there's nothing left to game. And this is where direct to consumer marketers have an advantage. You know, with US and our DSP, we can assess for our D2C marketers what's true and what's not, what's real and what's not and can optimize our DSP according to what we see. And that's where our retail based clients or clients like QSR that have a little harder time tying outcomes to what's happening on a bidding level can gain access and an advantage through the metrics that we see from other clients.
[19:31]
Elena Jasper
Yeah, so we're having that like both performance and brand experience is helpful, helpful for clients. All right, well to wrap us up with something fun here. What is a premium version of something that you tried once and realized maybe it wasn't exactly a scam, but it was definitely not worth it.
[19:46]
Angela Voss
I had a wagyu steak once at a high end restaurant that was not worth it. It was really expensive and I love steak. I haven't even tried it again because I was like, you know what? I much prefer the rib eye off my husband's Weber Grill.
[20:03]
Elena Jasper
Yeah. Just not, not enough of a difference.
[20:06]
Angela Voss
Yeah, no, yeah. Nope, just wasn't enough.
[20:08]
Elena Jasper
I've never tried that. But I get all my steaks well done, so I don't think, oh, my husband would allow me to order a nice steak. Oh, my gosh, no, just destroy it.
[20:17]
Angela Voss
But like, how do I know it's wagyu you could bring? I don't. I'm not, you know, educated enough to be able to tell. So someone could bring me, I don't know, probably a piece of pork and I'd be like, yeah, it's great. It's fine.
[20:28]
Elena Jasper
It's great.
[20:30]
Rob DeMars
I technically cannot tell the difference between my Keurig K cup coffee that I have every morning, my donut shop coffee that I get at Costco, and a premium coffee. I'll go into the coffee shop, it's a great experience. But then I get that straight up black coffee, and I'm like, I don't even know if I like it. I actually think I like it worse. You know, it's like it tastes burnt or something. Now, to all the baristas out there, I'm not talking about the full on mixology coffee. That's an art form. That takes real skill. I'm talking the straight. I'll pay $8 once a month maybe to have that experience. But my K cup donut shop coffee is to me is taste premium.
[21:15]
Elena Jasper
Yeah, that's a great one. I would say the same. I think you and I probably don't have good tasting coffee, but I would say the same. It does make a difference to me. Some people are very particular, but yeah, I don't have good taste. So for me, yeah, as long as it's coffee, it's fine.
[21:29]
Angela Voss
I can tell the difference between, like my church coffee, like when I go to church, and you're like, I don't even know what they're serving there. But like, it's in this massive pot, right? And we don't get ultra premium, but we do get Starbucks, like just ground coffee. And that's just my go to.
[21:45]
Elena Jasper
But yeah, that you can tell a little bit.
[21:47]
Angela Voss
I'm like, this doesn't. This tastes more like mud than coffee.
[21:52]
Rob DeMars
What's yours, Elena?
[21:53]
Elena Jasper
So we, we moved into our house a couple years ago and now we're better about this, but originally we fell for a door to door salesman. We just kind of felt bad. And he was selling premium pest control. It was like eco friendly and we didn't have a pest problem. But he was like, oh, I see chuggers on your house. And I'm like, I don't know what that is.
[22:10]
Rob DeMars
Oh, I don't want a chugger.
[22:12]
Elena Jasper
No. I was like, I don't know, but I want that gone. And it did. Nothing like it. The bugs felt the exact same.
[22:17]
Angela Voss
They're always the one that shows up and goes, I just got done with the Johnsons. You know the Johnson just down the. They're just, they're like seven. Just far enough away that you're like,
[22:27]
Elena Jasper
no, I don't, I don't know who those people are. No, they literally said that. They're like, oh, you do a lot of houses in this neighborhood. And yeah, just. And I know all the like Cialdini influence principles. I know all of them, but I'm still like, still fall for it.
[22:39]
Angela Voss
So yeah, yeah, they do work.
[22:42]
Elena Jasper
That's it for this episode of the Marketing Architects. We'd like to thank Taylor de Los Reyes for producing the show. You can connect with us on LinkedIn and if you like the podcast, please leave us a review. Now go forth and build great marketing
[22:56]
Angela Voss
marketing architects.
[22:59]
Rob DeMars
All bugs die the same, right? Whether it's a premium brand or not. Death is death.
[23:06]
Angela Voss
Yes. Right.
[23:06]
Elena Jasper
And I'm convinced, like eco friendly egg might have been part of the problem. I don't want it to be friendly to the environment.
[23:12]
Angela Voss
I want to kill the bugs.
[23:13]
Rob DeMars
I want the bugs to die.
[23:14]
Elena Jasper
Yeah, I want them.
[23:15]
Rob DeMars
I don't want them to have a nice nap.
[23:17]
Elena Jasper
No, definitely not.