In 1720s London, gin was cheaper than bread.

And it nearly destroyed the city.

Back then, gin wasn't the refined spirit we know today. It was rotgut alcohol, unregulated and deadly. The government had deregulated distilling to boost grain prices, and suddenly, anyone with a bathtub could make "gin."

The result was pure chaos.

By 1730, the average Londoner was drinking 14 gallons of gin per year. That's not a typo.

Mothers were sedating babies with it. Workers were drunk by noon. The phrase "drunk for a penny, dead drunk for two" wasn't marketing – it was reality.

Crime soared. Birth rates plummeted. Death rates exploded.

The parallels to today's programmatic advertising are uncanny.

Just like 1720s gin, programmatic started with good intentions: democratise access, increase efficiency, let the market regulate itself.

But without proper oversight, we ended up with the digital equivalent of bathtub gin.

Fake websites spinning up overnight. Bot traffic masquerading as humans. Ad fraud siphoning billions from legitimate publishers.

The "Gin Craze" only ended when Parliament finally stepped in with the Gin Act of 1751 – introducing licenses, quality standards, and accountability.

Sound familiar?

Today's programmatic market needs its own Gin Act moment.

Here's what you can do right now:

1. Demand Supply Path Optimisation (SPO) Cut out the middlemen. Just like gin needed licensed distillers, programmatic needs verified supply paths. Work directly with publishers or use DSPs that offer full transparency.

2. Invest in Verification, Not Just Viewability. Viewability is the bare minimum. Real verification means validating impression quality - was it seen by a human, in a trusted context, with the potential for attention? If your verification partner can’t measure that full chain, you’re still drinking bathtub gin.

3. The ANA’s Transparency Study found that roughly just one in three programmatic dollars reaches real audiences. Demand access to log-level data from every partner. If you can’t trace your media dollar, it’s probably being diluted in someone else’s bathtub.

Programmatic doesn't need to be the Wild West.

But it needs people who care enough to clean it up.

Because, unlike 1720s London, we already know how this story ends if we don't act.