Pros and Cons of Programmatic Advertising
In this clip from a Streaming Media Connect 2025 debate, Will Programmatic Advertising Overtake Brand/Direct in 2025?, Philo Head of Advertising Partnerships Aulden Kaye Yi discusses the future of programmatic advertising, emphasizing that it is an activation method rather than a type of advertising. Invited to make the case for programmatic by moderator Alan Wolk of TVREV, in spite of frequently raised concerns like brand safety, Yi says, “We've built the entire Philo ads business on programmatic. We make all of our inventory available programmatically. We've made it 100 percent addressable and easy to access because we heard from the market that they wanted to be able to scale campaigns and reach their relevant audiences across the CTV ecosystem."
When It Comes to Programmatic and Brand Advertising, It’s Yes and, Not Either/Or
Yi goes on to argue that the premise of the debate—that programmatic is engaged in some sort of pitched battle with brand for CTV advertising supremacy—“presents a fundamental misunderstanding of what programmatic means.” Yi clarifies that programmatic and performance are not interchangeable, and both brand and direct buys can be executed programmatically based on campaign goals. What’s more, programmatic advertising allows for holistic campaign management and measurement, offering flexibility and scalability across the CTV ecosystem.
"Programmatic is an activation method," she says. "It's not a type of advertising. Programmatic and performance are not interchangeable terms. I don't think brand and direct are interchangeable terms. You can execute both types of buys programmatically, and the setup will be determined by the campaign goals."
As a result, she continues, "you're going to choose measurement vendors that align with your campaign goals. And maybe that's brand surveys or A/B geo testing with brand awareness, and maybe that's lower-funnel, different types of measurement for those types of KPIs. Even funneling PG [programmatic guarantee] campaigns—based on direct I/Os—through programmatic platforms has the benefit of holistic campaign management and measurement."
Yi also addresses misconceptions about programmatic being automatic, highlighting the importance of relationships and brand safety measures. “Just because you're executing a campaign programmatically does not mean that you are hands-off. There are still a ton of relationships that are driving the business. Most TV is transacting via deals, not the open exchange. So it doesn't have to be the wild west. You can set up one-to-one PMPs with the publishers you know you want to be working with—publishers who have authenticated audiences—leverage tools like Ads.txt to make sure that you're buying along approved paths from a brand safety perspective, and really understand where your dollars are going. And then the third big point I would make is that programmatic TV advertising is TV advertising. So when you're talking about the concept of effectiveness, audiences don't know when they're watching an ad, whether it was bought programmatically or not.”
Insisting that “advertising on CTV is advertising on CTV,” and that it reaches the viewer the same way and succeeds or fails on its own merits, regardless of how it was purchased, Yi concludes, "Programmatic is really about reaching audiences in the most effective way, scaling that across fragmented premium publisher landscape, being able to target your relevant audiences, measure holistically, make changes, and optimize a campaign in a more flexible way. So broadly, I think that we have seen the market shifting towards programmatic. We are going to continue to see that shift as buyers are seeking that greater ease of scaling and the transparency and the optimization and the flexibility.”
Is It Safe?
Vevo VP, US Sales Melissa Sofo chimes in to press Yi on the brand safety issue that is the persistent knock on the programmatic approach. “From a transparency perspective, when you bind and bundle content for an advertiser who don't know exactly what they’re aligning with, I understand that there are measures that you take for brand safety, but can you just elaborate a little bit on how you can become more accountable to that brand safety and to identifying where an advertiser's ad is running and what they’re aligning against?”
“Because we are a distributor,” Yi responds, “there are some limitations to what we can share. We're not sharing show-level data. We're selling against an audience, not a particular piece of content. With that said, there is a lot of data that we can share around the genre, around the rating. So if there are certain categories of content that an advertiser doesn't want to be near news, for example, there are ways for us to implement that where you can guarantee that they're not going to air next to the type of content they want without needing to be quite as specific as, ‘You’re going to be in this show and this show, and not that show,' but certainly [we can tell them you'll be] putting yourself in an environment where it is relevant and appropriate content for whoever that advertiser is and what their needs are.”
Fremantle SVP Global FAST Channels Laura Florence counters for Team Brand/Direct with a question on "the amount of content that is bundled into these genre and rating offerings. Let's take the musicals category as an example. So you've got Wicked--premium, new, awesome--and we can't tell them that it's there. And then you've got Cats, which is like 2% on Rotten Tomatoes, and then you've got Showgirls. How does an advertiser know what's premium and not when you're selling against genres and audiences?
Yi argues that what kind of ratings the content has received, and any perceived quality gap based on that differential between Rotten Tomatoes scores doesn’t matter, because premium content is defined by audience engagement rather than ratings.
"First of all, we're a virtual MVPD, so the content is all content that advertisers are familiar with and probably buying in a linear way. It's Warner Brothers Discovery, it's Paramount, it's A+E, it's AMC, it's Hallmark. I would argue that all of that is premium. The other thing that I would say is premium is really about what the audience wants to be watching. Maybe it got 2% on Rotten Tomatoes, but if someone wants to watch Cats and they're engaged in that content and you can serve them an ad in that environment and there's not a brand safety concern, is there a concern then that it didn't get two thumbs up or the best Rotten Tomatoes score? 'Premium' is about hitting people in the moment where they're watching the content that they want to be watching and are receptive to your message."
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