SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Live engagement signals that capture actual audience presence and activity provide superior value compared to modeled data that becomes stale over weeks of appending and processing.
“The beautiful thing about us working directly with our publishers is we’re able to identify real-time intent, we’re able to identify real-time engagement signals,” Bob Regular, CEO of Infolinks Media, told Beet.TV. “The ability to understand whether the audience is really present, are they really engaged, are they being active, really matters to the outcome.”
This distinction proves critical for television advertising where viewers might temporarily leave their screens, making presence verification essential for inventory valuation.
SPO evolves beyond intermediary elimination
Supply path optimization (SPO) has advanced beyond generic intermediary removal toward specific pathway identification that delivers most efficient routes to desired inventory, while curation analyzes inventory quality for buy-side interests.
“SPO is now moving beyond curation because it’s becoming very specific to the ability for the buyer to find their pathway, the best, most efficient pathway to the inventory,” Regular said. “SPO is the pathway to getting to the inventory. Curation is analyzing the inventory that’s specifically interesting to the buy side.”
These concepts complement each other effectively when properly integrated rather than treated as separate functions.
Transparency means effective outcomes
When advertisers demand transparency, they fundamentally seek the most effective pathways and quality inventory to achieve optimal outcomes rather than transparency as an end goal.
“What advertisers are really saying when they want transparency is they want the most effective pathway and quality of inventory to get the best outcomes,” Regular said. “They want transparency because they want to be able to make clear decisions on how to do that.”
Supply path optimization provides methodology for identifying what transparently works and delivers successful results.
Proprietary supply enables curation
Infolinks Media’s premium proprietary placements collect high-value inventory from massive advertising request volumes, simplifying buyer decisions by aggregating quality opportunities rather than forcing searches through vast supply.
“There’s trillions of ad requests, there’s billions of ads. It’s a massive haystack. You’re looking for needles in a haystack,” Regular said. “The premium proprietary placement basically collects the needles and collects the needles in such a way that you get the best outcomes.”
This approach makes transparency and effectiveness more accessible for buyers seeking quality inventory.
Quality over intermediation focus
Advanced supply path optimization requires moving beyond simplistic intermediary categorization toward nuanced evaluation of media quality and delivery results.
“The first generation of SPO is just to eliminate intermediaries, but there’s always nuance. Not all intermediaries are bad,” Regular said. “The nuance is picking the quality media transparently that’s working for you, getting the value, creating the quality that you need.”
Real-time engagement signals provide immediate feedback about audience behavior compared to weeks-old modeled data that lacks current relevance.
“Those real-time live engagement signals are precious compared to signals that have essentially been appended over weeks and weeks and are being modeled from,” Regular said. “That data is stale as opposed to the live engagement signals. They’re very raw and real right now.”
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