Picture this: every time you order a takeaway pizza, it arrives, but you’re left with just 44%…

Picture this: every time you order a takeaway pizza, it arrives, but you’re left with just 44% and still need to pay the delivery driver.

It's a weird analogy, but hear me out.

In December the ANA released an updated report on the state of the programmatic ad market.

Key findings include:

- For every $1,000 in a DSP, 43.9% reaches consumers, up 7.9% from 2023.

- Campaigns are now running across 22,634 sites and apps, down from 44,000.

- MFA (Made for Advertising) ad spend has dropped from 15% to 6.2%.

- The top 100 domains/apps drive 58.1% of impressions.

While the study was relatively small compared to the scale of the market, it sheds light on some of the key challenges we still face, but also the fact that progress is being made.

But we're in a vicious cycle.

Due to various factors, publishers are increasingly struggling. As a result, are putting more ads on pages to increase short-term revenue.

Consumers then become increasingly irritated as they’re bombarded by ads on sites with poor user experiences and followed around the web.

As a result, ads become increasingly ineffective.

We need to build a new ecosystem where advertisers, publishers and consumers are all better off.

One where consumers aren’t actively paying hundreds of millions with ad blockers each year to block the work we do as an industry.

It involves fewer ads, but better ones.

This ultimately changes the economics of the industry. As of right now, the entire supply chain relies on as many impressions as possible to be processed and served for revenue.

We need to be willing to pay more for ads which look at media quality and also value the user experience.

We need to be able to find ways to show success outside of proxy metrics with no correlation to business outcomes.

The modern ad landscape is complex and ever-changing, and the reality is, that we can't fix a billion-dollar problem overnight.

But as an industry, we can all push for a better future.

One that demands advertisers, agencies, publishers, and ad tech to come together and redefine what effective advertising looks like.

Advertising has the power to connect, inspire, and create lasting relationships... it shouldn't just be a piece of digital spam.

It can be so much more.