The End Of Spray And Pray: Programmatic Traders Trade Reach For Brand Fit

Five years ago, programmatic traders chased the cheapest impression on the open web and called it strategy. The desk looks different now. Buyers dissect who actually sees the screen, what surrounds the ad, and whether the impression moved anything the brand can measure.

Shivam Sharma spent the last three years running campaigns in that environment at Publicis Global Delivery. Previously a Media Performance Analyst and programmatic trader on accounts for Pfizer, Disney, and Kimberly-Clark inside a holding-company ecosystem where multi-hundred-million-dollar accounts move on service quality, he worked across Google DV360, CM360, and The Trade Desk while finishing an MSc in Digital Marketing and Analytics at the University of Liverpool. The agency's recent capture of Microsoft's global media business from Dentsu is the latest example. His read is that the dollar a brand hands over now has to come back with an answer about where it landed and what it did when it got there.

"Programmatic is an ever-evolving industry. Initially, people were trying to get as much as possible while spending as little money as possible. They were not specifically targeting quality leads or quality impressions. It was more like spray and pray," Sharma says.

Where the math breaks

Buyers used to spend the absolute minimum to chase the absolute maximum, and the source of the impression was somebody else's problem. That math worked until clients started measuring what they were getting back.

For large brands footing the bill, the volume game stopped working. Programmatic advertising requires massive budgets, and clients expect their ads to appear in premium, brand-safe environments. If an agency cuts corners and buys low-quality inventory, the client notices quickly.

"If an agency isn't putting detail into this element of programmatic and just goes for cheap options, they might sustain the account for three to six months," Sharma says. "But a point will come when the brand sees that competitors are doing better because they secured the quality audience they were expecting. Obviously, the brand will move away."

The stakes are bigger than the performance dashboard. For large advertisers, every placement is a reputational decision, and transparency now sits on the board agenda in the largest spending categories. "Value for money and return on ad spend are two of the most important things in digital marketing. If a brand is trusting you with their total image and control of what they want to be seen as when a person opens their phone, obviously, they'll want their product and image portrayed most positively," Sharma says. "Curation is the need of the hour, in my opinion."

Guaranteed deals replace open-exchange guesswork

The fix for the quality problem starts with how buyers access inventory in the first place. Many teams now combine cross-channel programmatic strategies with invite-only ecosystems to lock in inventory in advance.

Sharma sees the change clearly on his own accounts. "I personally have worked for a big pharma brand in the UK, a very big Fortune 500 company," he says. "When it came to large regions or countries where they wanted to invest heavily, they specifically asked for programmatic guaranteed deals or programmatic marketplace deals. These kinds of deals guarantee impressions and quality inventory."

Industry forecasts have been calling for a shift in power from DSPs to SSPs for the past two years. Sharma, who spends his days inside DV360 and The Trade Desk, sees a much more stable reality. Buyers are finding better ways to use the tools they already have.

"In the current scenario, when it comes to a shifting of power, I don't think that is highly possible right now," he says. "Even if something were to happen that caused a shift in power dynamics towards the SSP, in my opinion, it would cause a chain reaction. It would indirectly affect how all the brands operate, how they promote, and how they publish content on the DSPs. At this point, everything is well balanced."

Brand suitability replaces the block list

Inside that stable infrastructure, brand safety is being redefined. Block lists are the floor every campaign starts on, and the work happens above them.

"While setting up a campaign, we obviously have the option to choose block lists and restricted sites so our ads will not be shown on those particular webpages," Sharma says. "I have seen the industry moving from the concept of block lists to brand suitability. What this means is people have started using AI to move beyond block lists, actively targeting sites that are suitable for the brand's image."

Teams hunt for environments that fit a brand's image, using verification tools and AI-driven approaches to balance scale and quality. The application is hands-on. "Unless we get highly specific instructions from our offshore points of contact detailing the exact inventory or the specific people they want to reach, we rely on this approach," Sharma says. "Before setting up campaigns, I personally use AI platforms to figure out how I can make the campaign better and what I should keep in mind."

Conversion and curation

Even perfectly targeted impressions only matter if they move business outcomes. During a recent product launch across a key international market, Sharma's team started by distributing budgets across multiple regions and locking in precise demographics. The conversation with the client moved past media metrics and straight to the conversion gap.

"When we went on calls with the points of contact handling the offshore business, they specifically said that even though we were getting quality impressions, the conversion rate was not where it needed to be, so we needed to focus more on that aspect," Sharma says. "The POCs name what they specifically want at every point in time. I think that is the most appropriate approach."

The signal from the client is why Sharma uses AI to close the loop faster. Interpreting what comes back is human work. Brands run on their own tempos, and the agency that survives is the one that learns to match each one.

Operational rhythm decides who keeps the account

"Before I worked for the pharma company, I was working for a major global streaming brand," Sharma says. "They used to operate on a day-to-day basis when it came to adjusting bids. For the pharma brand, it wasn't that frequent; it was on a weekly and monthly basis. So, curating how we work with each brand and figuring out the most suitable approach is what helps me when moving to a new team."

Most of the discipline is upstream of the actual buying. Before the trader touches a bid, they have to know what the client expects from the campaign, in the client's own language.

"If I'm moving to a new account, I would try to get a hold of what the product is, what is happening, and what the offshore POCs want," Sharma says. "If we don't know what they want and there is a lack of communication, it will reflect on the campaign's performance. Knowing your brand, knowing your team, knowing what the client wants, and knowing your audience are the four main things I make sure to get a hold of as soon as I move to a new team."

Every shift in the trade is rewarding the agency that knows the brand before it spends a dollar of the brand's money. The curation era will belong to the teams who treat that knowing as the product.