everyone argues about working vs non-working media, and the fee lines are always the same suspects: platform fee, data fee, ad serving, verification, measurement. between the dsp, the data providers and the verification vendors the stack adds up fast - and none of it shows in the cpm you bid.

i only saw the full stack itemized because growth channel (the platform i work with) breaks the lines out in the ui. no idea how visible this is on a ttd or dv360 seat.

so a question for buyers at holdco scale or on reseller seats: what's your real working-media ratio once every line is itemized? and which line surprised you most the first time you saw it broken out? not vendor-bashing - i honestly don't know what normal looks like.

At first glance, that looks like a sharp reversal from October's decline. But this month also marks the first time we've included app-ads.txt alongside ads.txt, bringing mobile & connected app inventory into the same view.

That means November is less about supply rebounding & more about seeing a larger part of the market for the first time.

• Across the combined dataset, 591.9k lines were added and 300.2k removed, resulting in a net increase of 291.7k. A significant part of this increase comes from app inventory entering the dataset for the first time. That makes Nov a new baseline rather than a like for like comparison with October's -65.2k. The consolidation we've been tracking across web inventory hasn't necessarily stopped. It's now being measured alongside a much larger pool of app supply.

• Another area worth looking at is how direct & reseller entries changed. Pubs added 226.9k direct lines & removed 92.1k. Reseller additions were higher at 365k, against 208.1k removals. While resellers contributed more additions in absolute terms, direct entries saw fewer removals relative to their additions. For every direct line removed nearly 2.5 were added. The corresponding ratio for reseller lines was around 1.75.

• The growth was also concentrated among mid traffic publishers. They contributed +219.9k net lines, accounting for roughly three-quarters of the total increase. low traffic publishers added another 75.4k, while high traffic publishers were slightly negative at -3.7k. The top 1,000 publishers remained essentially flat to negative with most of the growth coming from the next 9,000.

• On the SSP side, Rubicon (Magnite) led overall net line gains with 1,882, followed by OpenX at 1,517 and AppNexus at 1,105. OpenX is particularly worth watching here. It appeared in the top five across all three publisher tiers and also led established SSPs in direct domain gains at 532. Minute Media led the scaling tier at 126, while Prismriot topped emerging at 75. Prismriot also recorded the largest rank increase in its tier, moving up 289 positions. It's worth noting that these rank changes are measured within each SSP tier, so a significant jump in ranking doesn't necessarily translate into a similar increase in domain volume.

The duplication numbers add another layer to the picture. Established SSPs recorded 32% duplicated domains, compared with 30% for both scaling & emerging. Their direct plus reseller share was also higher at 34.78%, against 29.45% for Tier 2 & 28.01% for Tier 3. This overlap matters because it points to domains where an SSP has both a direct connection & a reseller path. Established SSPs also recorded the highest average intermediary count at 0.98, compared with 0.92 for the other two tiers.

The bigger question isn't how much supply was added this month. It's where that supply came from & what it means for supply quality. App inventory expands the view of the market but adding more supply isn't always the same as adding more unique inventory.

I'd been briefing playables for years without really knowing what happens after I send the doc. I asked the team at soralexgames to walk me through one from concept to final build. Watching the storyboard turn into a rough prototype, then into the playable, then into a stack of variants with a QA pass for every network made me a little sheepish about all the small tweaks I've casually asked for over the years.

For those of you on the UA side, how much of the production process do you actually see, and did knowing more change the way you write briefs?

Hi everyone,

I work in programmatic advertising with ~5 years of experience. I switched to one of the Big 4/agency networks in India back in August, and honestly, the work culture and pace are burning me out fast.

I’m seriously considering taking a short break to reset, but I’m terrified of how recruiters will view a gap—especially in an industry that values continuous hands-on experience over certifications.

Has anyone here taken a short career break (a few weeks to a couple of months)? How tough was it to land interviews and get back in? Would love to hear your honest experiences.

Just pulled the Amazon DSP audio inventory across the accounts I have access to.

I went through every publisher behind it and found a few surprises:

People keep picking Amazon Publisher Services (APS), one of the inventory options inside Amazon DSP audio. Advertisers see the "restrict music genre" option, unselect rock, and assume audio campaigns mean music.

Not everything behind audio is music, radio or podcasts. There are also mobile games, some Alexa voice, and supply I could not identify despite years on the platform.

Behind APS sit seven sources: AdsWizz, Amazon Music, DAX, Magnite DV+, Spotify, Triton and Twitch.

You know Amazon Music, Spotify and Twitch. The other four:

• AdsWizz is a tech reseller with mostly good quality supply: lots of radio and podcasts, plus Pandora and SiriusXM. Most of the podcasts only show up through the podcast ad type or through deals.

• DAX (Global's Digital Audio Exchange) is mostly radio, but it also carries deals with Odeeo (audio ads inside mobile games) and other game monetisation.

• Magnite DV+ is the same picture as DAX: radio, plus game supply.

• Triton (Triton Digital) is mostly iHeartMedia, plus a lot of inventory I could not trace.

The waste sits in the game and untraced supply inside DAX, Magnite DV+ and Triton. Unless your targeting, frequency caps and all the smaller settings are right from day one, the spend lands on placements that teach you nothing for the next campaign.

Audio also has fewer targeting options than display or video on Amazon DSP, so some strategies you use there are not available here.

My suggestion: skip APS at the start and buy through deals, where the inventory is narrower. Once you have data and a list of Amazon audiences that convert further down the funnel, APS becomes a good source of reach, especially for small target populations.

If you have questions about Amazon DSP let me know. I helped a few people here already.

Source: pulled from the Amazon DSP audio inventory on 9 Nov

I recently started a new role where I need to reach out to people I’ve never spoken with before, like potential clients and partners. Getting that first conversation going has been tough. What’s worked for you when contacting someone for the first time? Cold messages, LinkedIn, intros, events? Any tips are appreciated.

Putting together a 6 week US CTV test for a fitness app. Roughly $35k through The Trade Desk, alongside existing paid search and Meta campaigns. The conversion we care about is a paid subscription after the trial, not the install.

I'm choosing the measurement partner before the campaign goes live. Every demo seems happy to show installs after an impression. My concern is how much credit goes to someone who would've signed up through branded search anyway.

We can supply subscription events and keep a few comparable markets out of the test. We can't identify the person on the couch, and I don't want the report pretending otherwise.

Which CTV to app attribution platforms make their matching method, lookback windows and overlap with other paid channels easy to inspect? Also interested in the export you get when finance asks for evidence.

A small pilot is fine. Signing an annual contract before seeing how the results change under a shorter view-through window feels backwards.

Do you think supply side decisioning can gain traction and take market share away from DSPs? IMO if you have the right data, an ad server its more advantageous to be closer to the supply side. Curious on everybody's takes

Looking for arguments for/ against using a self service curation platform to have more control over inventory quality and ability to put my audience decisioning as close to the supply as possible via curated PMP deals.

Vs leveraging the audience targeting in the DSP and maintaining a whitelist methodology to control inventory via open exchange

What have others done to test and generate data points to understand where the benefits exist?

Not looking for biased answers, but what are the best DSPs for clients across all industries- Healthcare, finance, home services. Compliance is critical with steing customer service. Partners that sign BAA's are ideal

I’m currently interviewing for a Senior AM role at StackAdapt (remote w/local travel) and a Senior Trading Specialist role at TTD (hybrid w/3 days in-office).

My #1 priority is work-life balance as compensation is similar ($130-140K).

I'd love to hear from folks who have experience working in similar roles at either company.

Thanks!

Hi! I am a UX researcher on Microsoft Ads, although I was at Google on DV360 for many years so our paths may have already crossed. I am running a user research study next week to help my team learn more about brand advertiser needs re: upper-funnel goals, and how advertisers bid/optimize/measure video campaigns (display video, YouTube, CTV etc.).

Who: I want to include some NON-Msft Ads users focused on brand campaigns/programmatic (buying video) since the bulk of Msft Ads users are search/performance focused

What: 60minute interviews (via Teams). We provide thank-you incentives for research participants ($150 global gift card)

When: Nov 9-13, 2026

If you are interested and this seems like a good fit for you (or a teammate), you can contact me at [email protected]. I am using a Microsoft Form to collect availability for scheduling, so you are also welcome to use this: Help Shape Microsoft Advertising Buying & Autobidding | Nov 4-13 User Research. Also feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

-Thanks so much, Kate V. (Principal UXR, Microsoft)

I have pretty good programmatic advertising experience from working in the industry over 6 years, however, I’m looking to appear a bit more competitive on paper.

What programmatic certification courses do you all recommend? I’m not really looking for platform specific courses like (dv360, and trade desk academy) more general programmatic courses. Also anything focused on strategy would be helpful too.

End goal is to be more on the strategic side than execution side if that makes sense.

Thanks!

I'm making up the term a bit, but it feels like my new campaign is in "placement jail" or aka dumpster-level impressions on what would otherwise be fantastic quality sources (big brand news sites).

I'm very experienced in performance marketing, but my sources are not display/programmatic and hoping you guys could share insights on my problem.

I feel like my placements within GDN are hot garbage. I am getting total dogshit CTRs on my ads like .02% and the results are like $7.00 CPCs which just has no chance in hell to work out for the campaign.

Tricky part is I've ran this SAME approach on GDN before (many years ago) and was getting like 1% CTRs and the campaign backed out as profitable.

I am using what I know to be proven creatives, as I see many, many competitors running the same things, and I just put my own twist onto them. Lots of experience reverse-engineering working creatives. I don't think I have a creative problem.

I just feel like I'm in some kinda placement jail. I am whitelisting a variety of large news publishers as placements and using standard image ads. Just the CTR feels so broken.

Am I just not bidding enough for "premium" placements and am being served dumpster impressions that never work for anyone but brand advertisers looking for impressions?

If the above were the case, should I be jacking up CPMs hard to force myself into clickable placements? What's the problem here? How do you diagnose?

Looking forward to hearing thoughts!

Say you've got $10k to split across display, native and video.

Do you give each format a fixed testing budget upfront or put everything into one campaign and shift spend based on results?

The second approach sounds more efficient until you realise video, native and display aren't necessarily chasing the same outcomes.

How are people structuring their initial tests, especially when there's barely enough budget to get meaningful data from all three?