Programmatic agency execs speak out on CTV transparency
By Tim Peterson • December 15, 2025 •
This article is part of a series covering our Programmatic Marketing Summit. More from the series →
“Transparency” is one of those terms that often gets bandied about when talking about CTV ad buying. Specifically programmatic CTV ad buying. But what does it actually mean?
Well, at the recent Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit, agency executives spoke out — on stage and in behind-closed-door town hall sessions — on how they see transparency in CTV. The comments ranged from wrangling inventory across CTV’s long tail of supply to determining the right routes to inventory from the likes of Netflix.
Here’s a selection of what they had to say.
Inventory control
“Has anyone seen any improvement in their CTV transparency in their buys at all, anywhere? Is it still just everyone’s not getting any feedback of data, what episode you ran on [in] streaming, anything, no transparent pricing? Anyone found any solutions to address that other than yelling into the ether?”
– Anonymous agency executive
“In terms of optimizing the publisher list, we’ve been able to determine the percentage that goes to more run-of-network versus live sports. Hulu, for example, we’ve allocated the percentage of spend and impressions based on the specific allocations across the publisher list that we use. This is for a very large-volume client, though.”
– Anonymous agency executive
“There’s been a lot of AI slop out there lately. We’re seeing a lot of it on YouTube, especially. Mobian was telling me a few weeks ago they’re seeing 5% of [ad] delivery they’re measuring [is ads running] on AI slop. And like 70% of that was published in the last 30 days. So it’s growing like crazy right now.”
– Doug Paladino, head of programmatic, PMG
“A lot of CTV deals, especially with larger buys are done usually [through PMPs, or private marketplaces] or some kind of package where it’s done separately outside of programmatic channels.”
– Anonymous agency executive
“What’s nice about CTV is like 80% or so of inventory is really served from two publisher ad servers [Comcast’s FreeWheel and Magnite’s SpringServe], and we’re connected to those curation tools. And really seeing and curating based on a lot of signals that aren’t available in DSPs…. [For example,] ‘Monday Night Football’ on ESPN, we can go into those tools, curate when I want to create a deal that runs Monday night, 8 pm to 11 pm when channel equals ESPN and push that to every DSP. That’s a ‘Monday Night Football’ deal, and I can get it at my run-of-network rates that way instead of having a [streaming pay-TV provider] or Disney curate it for me at much higher rates.”
– PMG’s Doug Paladino
“There’s a lot of value in PMP in that you can still maintain your targeting, your decisioning. Your optimization capabilities are stronger there. So for clients that are more agile and that want that optimization, there’s a lot of value in buying their CTV through PMPs.”
– Meghan O’Keefe, evp of precision and performance, Publicis Media Exchange
DSP decisions
“I just wrapped up an A/B test last month of buying Netflix directly from Netflix or through Yahoo DSP. It’s the same targeting. Netflix charges for any sort of targeting, and so I was thinking with things like dayparting and geotargeting, is it worth paying the DSP fees to execute that? I don’t have the results yet. I looked after two days and was seeing much better performance through Yahoo DSP, but I don’t have all the data yet.”
– Anonymous agency executive
“We have 55 different DSP seats. And so if I have a new LG Ads deal that I want to push out, I need to push that to 55 different places. But with centralizing that and some curation tools, I can create one deal, push that out. If I need to make adjustments, block news to it or whatever, I can do that centrally. That helps make sure that every brand is using the deal that’s curated by us as opposed to the DSP’s off-the-shelf deal.”
– PMG’s Doug Paladino
“A lot of our clients are in a multi-DSP world right now. The average client might have a CTV DSP, a retail DSP if that’s important to them, and then they might have the rest of their buy, so to speak, in another one. So we’re seeing clients have two or three DSPs on their plan but serving very specific strategies.”
– Publicis Media Exchange’s Meghan O’Keefe
Intermediary issues
“There’s still a lot of intermediaries at place, whether they’re bundled deals or curation where you’re starting to package different inventory together. You still want to make sure you’re getting that direct access to supply, that the price you’re paying matches the supply that you’re getting. And it matches the right content. That you’re not paying a really high CPM and ultimately what you’re getting in your bundled deal is really long tail [inventory], for example. So there’s still a lot of those same rigor that you want to put against your CTV supply strategies.”
– Publicis Media Exchange’s Meghan O’Keefe
“We’re buying [Netflix] directly right now. And some of the issue is integrations with certain brand measurement partners. We have to run direct for that reason. And similarly we have to pay the upfront costs and demo targeting.”
– Anonymous agency executive
“We’ve built our own buying platform for CTV, and a big reason behind that was we were able to make sure we’re getting the log-level data that gives us the transparency to curate what we want and make sure we’re buying the stuff we want and not some masked stuff that’s not what we think.”
– PMG’s Doug Paladino
“Applying identity within the DSP is one [type of fee] that is really particular to CTV. I mean, CTV is a fragmented identity space, so to control for frequency – which we of course want to do – you often need to apply your identity within the DSP, which can come with a fee. That’s a little bit different for CTV.”
– Publicis Media Exchange’s Meghan O’Keefe
