Media buying

The report defines top performers as marketers reporting significantly stronger year-over-year performance compared to peers, highlighting a widening gap between leaders and laggards as programmatic matures.

As advertisers seek greater control within increasingly fragmented TV environments, Adform and RTL AdAlliance are combining television’s traditional reach with the level of digital precision now expected.

Together, Untapped Growth and FreeWheel are working to bring equitable access to media and transparent pricing to independent agencies and mid-sized brands.

Conversion API and first-party data are becoming the foundation of smarter ad strategies, with AI optimisation enabling media buyers to improve targeting, efficiency, and ROI.

New programmatic linear solution, available with FreeWheel’s Buyer Cloud, gives advertisers the opportunity to buy and optimise premium traditional TV inventory alongside their digital media spend.

The acquisition will help evolve the media buying process for advertisers and improve Spectrum Reach’s delivery of innovative marketing solutions to its clients across the United States.

With Programmatic Guaranteed, Vistar’s marketplace supports all major programmatic transaction types—open exchange, private marketplace (PMP), and guaranteed—allowing campaigns to align with a wide range of objectives.

Unlike traditional tools built for large, resourced teams, Aimy is purpose-built for small and mid-sized businesses, but scalable enough to support larger organisations and enterprise use cases as well.

The study also confirms that CTV performance scales with investment. Advertisers that committed larger budgets to CTV saw disproportionately higher returns, while those underinvesting may be missing out.

Automation in paid media offers efficiency and scalability, but over-reliance on AI-driven ad platforms can lead to hidden costs, lack of transparency, and reduced strategic control. Are marketers sacrificing long-term strategy for short-term convenience?