The digital ad industry’s machinery is optimized for impressions and clicks, but a growing contingent argues that true performance requires a more considered, people-first approach.
That would mean moving beyond blunt metrics to focus on the quality of the interaction, respecting a user’s time and attention while ensuring brands show up in safe, suitable, and inclusive environments.
This concept of “kindness at scale” is central to the thinking of Tom Grant, EVP, precision, Spark Foundry, who believes the industry must fundamentally change its definition of performance to put empathy at the heart of programmatic execution.
“It’s about understanding the end users’ interaction with an ad and putting that at the center of all of our kind of automation and technology,” Grant said in this video interview with Beet.TV’s Lisa Granatstein.
Rethinking performance beyond the click
For Grant, a people-first strategy in programmatic requires a multi-faceted approach that prioritizes the integrity of the brand and the experience of the consumer. It starts with a commitment to better advertising practices across the board.
This involves deliberately avoiding what he termed “manipulative ad formats,” buying exclusively in trusted publisher environments, and actively supporting inclusive content and creative. “It’s about respecting a user’s attention, respecting the unique capabilities that a publisher might have, and also maintaining the integrity of the brand,” Grant said.
This focus on user experience aligns with broader market shifts, as the advertising industry adapts to a more privacy-conscious landscape. The ongoing deprecation of third-party cookies is forcing brands to rely more on first-party data and build more direct, consent-based relationships with consumers, making the quality of each interaction more critical than ever.
Making empathy a shared responsibility
To successfully implement this vision, accountability must extend beyond the media trading team, Grant argued. He stressed the need to get all internal and external partners aligned on the importance of these principles for driving overall campaign success.
“You make it a shared responsibility by having all the different stakeholders on the same page that it’s important for overall campaign performance,” Grant said. He noted that a wide array of players hold sway over how and where a brand’s advertising appears.
“I think everyone from creative, media, brands, even people like procurement and auditors, all have some kind of influence about where a brand’s media shows up,” he explained. This holistic buy-in is essential for ensuring that quality and kindness are not just afterthoughts.
The future of programmatic is premium
Now Grant is watching the migration of high-quality, premium inventory into programmatic channels. He believes this is where the combination of automation and a people-first mindset can unlock significant potential for brands.
He identified emerging opportunities in upfront media commitments and live sports as key areas of development. “They’re relatively new things to programmatic,” Grant said. “There’s tremendous potential, and right now we’re really just scratching the surface and starting to implement those.”
This reflects an industry-wide push toward premium environments, with forecasters at eMarketer predicting that programmatic ad spending will exceed $200 billion by 2026, driven largely by private marketplace deals.
For Grant, the next step is leveraging automation to tailor messages in these environments. He predicted that soon, brands will be able to “deliver much more personalized creative in those environments and deliver a different experience for people that they wouldn’t have seen before.”
