The generative AI trend generated endless hot takes this year, but the ad industry also had plenty to say about growing competition between DSPs and SSPs. Here are AdExchanger’s top 10 most popular guest columns of 2025 and why they resonated.
Social CPMs have risen. The ability to find incremental audiences on social platforms has declined. Add the growing brand-safety concerns, and the equation looks even worse.
The IAB Tech Lab video classification updates introduced much-needed clarity. But valuable inventory, now categorized differently, is being deprioritized or rejected, even though its performance hasn’t changed.
Roku announced its new and improved fraud detection tech, Watermark 2.0, to try getting the rampant problem of CTV ad fraud under control.
TV advertising is undergoing a tectonic shift from programmed to programmatic. Not unlike on the open web – but unlike on linear – advertisers can use programmatic to get scale across connected TV. There’s demand for biddable CTV because buyers realize they can get more flexibility and transparent signals from publishers.
Transparency is the keystone that will bring together the best of linear advertising with the best of programmatic. Brands should be able to get more transparency on programmatic CTV, but, just as importantly, publishers should get something in return for sharing this information, writes Nicole Scaglione, global VP of OTT and CTV at PubMatic.
Just three months after Netflix surprised the world with the news that it plans to launch an ad-supported tier, the streaming leader has settled on its third-party vendor of choice: Microsoft. But why Microsoft? It wasn’t considered a serious programmatic contender until it acquired Xandr from AT&T (and that deal only closed last month). Still, something made Microsoft stand out from the crowd.
Netflix is planning to introduce an ad-supported model to attract new viewers, and chances are it will embrace programmatic advertising, too. Without the portfolio of strategic partners that NBC and Disney have, Netflix will need to catch up somehow. Programmatic is one enticing option for doing so, writes Nicole Scaglione, global VP, OTT and CTV business, at PubMatic.
CTV is the hot new programmatic media channel, but it suffers from fraud, a lack of clear media-buying signals and a hodgepodge of approaches to measurement. The lack of standards is hampering market growth – but rather than waiting for standards to be handed down, publishers can create positive momentum with media buyers now, writes PubMatic’s Nicole Scaglione.
