Why greed, not technology, blocks programmatic advertising reform

Two promoting know-how veterans debated the way forward for automated advert shopping for on LinkedIn throughout December 2025, exposing why protocols designed to repair programmatic promoting often fail earlier than attaining adoption. Pavel Medvedev, who builds programmatic in-housing options, and {industry} observers together with Christopher F. and Dr. Augustine Fou revealed elementary obstacles going through the Advert Context Protocol launched on October 15, 2025.

Based on Medvedev’s LinkedIn post, the promoting know-how ecosystem already possesses every part wanted to enhance transparency and cut back fraud. “Adtech does not want one other protocol, framework, or acronym to repair itself,” Medvedev wrote on December 2025. “It already has every part it wants. The rationale the ecosystem hasn’t really improved over time is not technical. It is human. It is greed.”

The put up generated 48 reactions and 6 substantive feedback from {industry} figures, crystallizing tensions that decide whether or not promoting automation succeeds or perpetuates current dysfunction. Firms spent roughly $700 billion globally on programmatic promoting in 2024, but persistent issues with transparency, fraud, and middleman charges counsel technical options alone can’t overcome misaligned enterprise incentives.

Hidden margins drive resistance

Medvedev recognized particular behaviors that protocols can’t eradicate by way of technical specs. Excessive platform margins conceal behind complexity. Charges stay unexplainable throughout the provision chain. Arbitrage masquerades as optimization. Stock will get resold to the identical sellers who initially created it.

Fraud persists regardless of {industry} claims of aggressive prevention efforts. Malware-infected creatives obtain cleansing with out attribution to their sources. These issues exist as a result of opacity generates income for intermediaries positioned between advertisers and publishers.

“That is why I preserve coming again to in-housing,” Medvedev said. “When manufacturers and publishers personal their stack, greed has nowhere to cover. You may’t quietly skim margins when the customer controls the pipes.” The argument positions know-how possession because the structural resolution that protocol standardization can’t present.

Christopher F., Director of Product Growth at Consideration Arc, expanded on enterprise obstacles going through protocol adoption in feedback on LinkedIn throughout December 2025. Platform adoption requires convincing chief know-how officers somewhat than chief advertising officers, he famous. Advertising executives may favor unified protocols that simplify workflows, however know-how leaders consider engineering prices and enterprise dangers in a different way.

“Does anybody genuinely consider Google will undertake a protocol that makes it simpler for dependent buying and selling desks and clients to maneuver spend to a competitor?” Christopher F. requested. His evaluation recognized three main promoting platforms dominating america open net market. These corporations possess minimal incentive to help protocols that cut back switching prices, require new know-how investments, and introduce dangers the place few at the moment exist.

Based on Christopher F.’s assessment, vendor lock-in frustrates clients in search of platform adjustments however stays undeniably helpful for enterprise operations. The more durable switching turns into, the much less probably clients migrate to alternate options. Protocol adoption prices cash, significantly for platforms processing tens of millions of transactions per second. Firms solely make such investments once they clearly clear up issues or show income progress potential.

Fraud exploits self-declaration

Dr. Augustine Fou, who investigates promoting fraud by way of FouAnalytics, raised considerations about safety vulnerabilities in his December 2025 LinkedIn response. “The protocol itself incorporates advantage in principle, much like many requirements that preceded it,” Dr. Fou wrote. “However what it does not take note of, like many requirements earlier than it, are assault eventualities the place fraudsters exploit it to commit MORE fraud.”

He cited adverts.txt as an instructive instance of how self-declaration programs fail towards decided adversaries. The IAB Tech Lab created adverts.txt in Could 2017 to fight unauthorized stock gross sales. Publishers place textual content information on their web sites itemizing corporations approved to promote their promoting area. Advertisers test these information to confirm professional sellers.

“The usual represented sound considering in principle, however from its first day of launch, fraudsters used it to commit extra fraud and supply higher cowl for his or her operations,” Dr. Fou said. Criminals created pretend writer web sites with adverts.txt information declaring fraudulent sellers as approved. In addition they compromised professional writer web sites so as to add unauthorized sellers to current adverts.txt information.

DoubleVerify identified more than 100 cases of ads.txt manipulation since the usual launched, highlighting escalating threats to digital promoting integrity. The corporate documented a major enhance in such schemes throughout latest years as criminals tailored to use {industry} safeguards.

The issue stems from how adverts.txt operates. The system depends on publishers declaring correct info with out offering unbiased verification that declarations are truthful. Fraudsters exploited this belief assumption systematically.

A February 2024 Pixalate report found that 25% of programmatic traffic with SupplyChain Object data failed validation checks. Site visitors that failed these validation checks had 64% larger invalid visitors charges in comparison with visitors that handed validation, in response to analysis inspecting This autumn 2023 information.

“AdCP depends on events to declare issues appropriately and actually,” Dr. Fou said. “As we all know from the final 15 yrs, that is not going to occur.” The Advert Context Protocol faces equivalent belief issues that enabled adverts.txt exploitation.

Provide-side platforms filter threats

Provide-side platforms developed past easy stock connections to offer verification providers defending the promoting ecosystem. These capabilities change into extra crucial as fraudsters develop refined assault strategies.

Business anti-fraud efforts saved advertisers $10.8 billion in 2023 in response to analysis from the Reliable Accountability Group, 4A’s, Affiliation of Nationwide Advertisers, and Interactive Promoting Bureau. The research discovered that with out anti-fraud packages, invalid visitors would have value america promoting {industry} $11.78 billion based mostly on a 9.96% invalid visitors price.

TAG’s Licensed Towards Fraud program maintains invalid visitors charges under 1% throughout licensed channels globally. This represents a 92% discount in comparison with what losses can be with out these safety programs.

Provide-side platforms take part on this fraud prevention ecosystem by way of a number of mechanisms. They implement pre-bid filtration that blocks fraudulent visitors earlier than auctions happen. They preserve post-serve verification that identifies fraud after adverts ship. They take part in risk intelligence sharing that helps the {industry} reply to rising assault patterns.

European anti-fraud programmes prevented €3.45 billion in losses throughout 2023, representing 69% discount in fraud-related prices, in response to a June 2025 TAG research. The analysis examined European video and show promoting channels price €48.3 billion.

Channels the place corporations achieved TAG certification accounted for 76% of this spending, experiencing fraud losses of simply €115 million at a 0.3% invalid visitors price. The remaining 24% of spending flowed by way of uncertified channels that sustained €1.19 billion in fraud losses, greater than ten occasions the relative degree in comparison with protected channels.

Advert Context Protocol incorporates safety concerns together with authorization verification and fraud prevention mechanisms, in response to technical documentation. Nonetheless, these rely totally on contributors declaring info precisely, much like the belief mannequin that fraudsters exploited with adverts.txt.

Transaction verification mechanics

Actual-time bidding auctions happen inside roughly 100 milliseconds as net pages load. A number of advertisers submit bids concurrently based mostly on obtainable viewers and contextual info. The very best bidder wins the suitable to show their commercial.

Provide-side platforms join publishers to those auctions, offering instruments for stock administration, yield optimization, and income reporting throughout digital properties. They mixture stock from a number of publishers, enabling advertisers to entry numerous advert placements by way of unified platforms.

The platforms additionally stop request duplication, the place the identical promoting alternative seems a number of occasions by way of completely different provide paths. Transaction identifiers allow demand-side platforms to acknowledge when completely different bid requests symbolize the identical advert area, stopping advertisers from bidding towards themselves.

Prebid.org removed this cross-exchange tracking capability on August 27, 2025, following writer calls for for provide path management. The change eradicated transparency instruments that helped advertisers detect duplicate bids. The IAB Know-how Laboratory declared the implementation violated OpenRTB specs.

This incident demonstrates ongoing tensions between writer yield optimization and advertiser transparency. Publishers wish to maximize income by promoting the identical stock by way of a number of channels. Advertisers wish to keep away from paying a number of occasions for a similar advert area.

Provide-side platforms navigate these tensions by way of provide path optimization methods. Advertisers consider platforms, advert exchanges, and writer connections to eradicate pointless know-how charges and latency. Match price losses between platforms sometimes vary from 40% to 70%, making direct provide path connections invaluable for sustaining information constancy.

Platform resistance patterns

Six corporations launched Advert Context Protocol on October 15, 2025: Scope3, Yahoo, PubMatic, Swivel, Triton Digital, and Optable. These organizations symbolize varied segments of promoting know-how together with supply-side platforms, carbon emissions measurement, media properties, concentrating on capabilities, audio promoting, and information collaboration.

Notably absent from this record: Google, Amazon, The Commerce Desk, and Microsoft. These corporations function the dominant demand-side platforms that course of the vast majority of programmatic promoting budgets.

Lindsay Rowntree, COO at ExchangeWire, famous throughout a podcast dialogue that main platforms together with Google, The Commerce Desk, and Amazon DSP haven’t signed up for latest agentic protocols. This doubtlessly creates extra fragmentation by way of new walled gardens somewhat than fixing current coordination issues.

Google operates the biggest promoting platform globally, processing billions of transactions every day. The corporate has minimal enterprise incentive to help protocols that make buyer migration simpler. Its promoting know-how stack integrates tightly throughout Google Advertisements, Show & Video 360, Google Advert Supervisor, and YouTube.

Amazon DSP expanded quickly all through 2024 and 2025, including supply-side platform partnerships with Disney in June 2025, Spotify in October 2025, and Netflix in This autumn 2025. Microsoft Monetize joined as a preferred partner in October 2025, creating new provide path connections earlier than Microsoft Make investments shutdown on February 28, 2026.

The Commerce Desk launched OpenAds platform on October 2, 2025, after Prebid.org eliminated transaction identifier performance. The platform goals to keep up transparency instruments that advertisers misplaced by way of the Prebid adjustments. This demonstrates The Commerce Desk’s technique of constructing proprietary options somewhat than adopting industry-wide protocols it doesn’t management.

Business criticism intensifies

Ari Paparo questioned Advert Context Protocol’s viability on November 3, 2025, whereas expressing help for artistic automation specs. He raised considerations about whether or not AI brokers can overcome elementary enterprise issues together with pricing transparency resistance, scale economics, and information fragmentation that prevented programmatic direct success traditionally.

“So once more, using brokers finally ends up being extra applicable for reinforcing the function of intermediaries, somewhat than enabling a breakthrough to empower consumers and sellers,” Paparo wrote in his analysis. Lengthy-tail publishers lack technical sophistication and information scale essential to differentiate themselves to advertisers with out aggregation.

The protocol should ship worth, however prone to completely different constituencies than meant. “It is simply that the worth will probably accrue to very massive publishers and cross-publisher advert networks, in a lot the identical means it has with programmatic extra usually,” Paparo said.

David Kohl warned that Advert Context Protocol represents “the tail wagging the canine” in an October 15, 2025, LinkedIn put up. He cautioned that dashing to construct agentic promoting infrastructure with out clear objectives dangers repeating errors that created at the moment’s dysfunctional programmatic provide chain.

Kohl argued that the programmatic provide chain developed with out foresight or a grasp plan, creating an ecosystem the place intermediaries prioritized income over advertiser and writer wants. He referred to as for shared objectives, structured innovation approaches, and measurable success metrics earlier than committing to particular technical implementations.

The criticism issues as a result of transparency points resulted in solely 36% of post-transaction programmatic budgets reaching legitimate, viewable, measurable impressions in response to 2023 analysis. The Affiliation of Nationwide Advertisers performed an identical investigation, inspecting metadata on 16.4 billion media impressions from seven main advertisers. The ANA discovered that on common, 42% of every programmatic greenback was spent on “nonworking media” which means it went towards tech or company charges.

Protocol proliferation downside

A number of agentic AI protocols emerged throughout fall 2025. LiveRamp donated the Universal Context Protocol to IAB Tech Lab on November 3, 2025. IAB Tech Lab introduced its Agentic RTB Framework v1.0 for public comment on November 13, 2025.

Every new protocol generates {industry} dialogue about whether or not promoting wants extra requirements earlier than addressing elementary issues. The proliferation itself creates coordination challenges as corporations consider which frameworks to help with restricted engineering sources.

Microsoft introduced on Could 14, 2025, that it could discontinue Microsoft Make investments efficient February 28, 2026. The corporate cited incompatibility between conventional demand-side platform fashions and their imaginative and prescient for “conversational, personalised, and agentic” promoting futures, in response to Microsoft Promoting Company Vice President Kya Sainsbury-Carter.

Amazon merged its DSP and Ads Console into unified Campaign Manager at the company’s annual unBoxed conference on November 10, 2025. An agentic mode referred to as Full-Funnel Campaigns units up and adjusts multi-format campaigns throughout Sponsored Merchandise, Sponsored Manufacturers, show, and streaming tv from a single immediate.

These developments counsel main platforms are constructing agentic capabilities inside their very own ecosystems somewhat than adopting cross-platform protocols. This strategy maintains the seller lock-in dynamics that Christopher F. recognized as obstacles to Advert Context Protocol adoption.

In-housing as different

Medvedev’s LinkedIn post positioned in-housing because the structural resolution that protocol standardization can’t present. “In-housing does not magically make everybody moral, however it removes the incentives that reward dangerous habits,” he wrote.

When manufacturers and publishers personal their promoting know-how stacks, opacity-driven revenue extraction turns into harder. Clear decision-making replaces obscured margins when the logic lives inside infrastructure that the proprietor truly understands.

“The way forward for adtech is shopping for media smarter with clear guidelines, accountable programs, and transparency that is in-built, not promised in a slide deck,” Medvedev said. The {industry} will in all probability preserve inventing new acronyms and protocols, he acknowledged. Nonetheless, the elemental shift already occurs beneath: possession over comfort, readability over complexity, high quality over quantity.

Florian Schadauer, who focuses on making model alignment drive progress for publishers, responded to Medvedev’s put up noting that the promoting {industry} sees important Goodhart’s Regulation in follow. As a extremely metric-driven sector, it takes ethically behaving leaders to keep away from exploiting skewed incentives throughout the worth chain.

Max Kalehoff, CEO at Adverteyes, offered probably the most complete response. “The open net adtech neighborhood would do itself a favor by caring extra about advertiser and client worth, much less the preservation and effectivity of workflow established 20 years in the past, and which continues to cede relevance to walled gardens,” Kalehoff wrote.

He urged the reply exists in observing how youthful generations work together with know-how. They now not kind “www” to get solutions or make purchases. The ecosystem established 20 years in the past more and more fails to serve present person habits patterns.

David Kohl recognized two important components of the issue. Grasping people symbolize one element. FOFO executives (worry of discovering out) represent the opposite. Too many individuals who spend cash on programmatic promoting favor not paying shut consideration to particulars, making exploitation simpler.

Fraud detection experience

Christopher F. brings direct expertise with these challenges by way of his work constructing promoting platforms and fraud detection programs. As Director of Product Growth at Consideration Arc and Head of Media Product at Cheil Worldwide, he architected A+, described as an enterprise-grade company buying and selling platform.

The system makes use of Golang programming language operating on Ubuntu Linux with devoted microservices for information assortment and anomaly detection. These parts work collectively to establish fraudulent visitors patterns earlier than they impression promoting campaigns.

Previous to his present function, Christopher F. based Spartan Advert in April 2021, constructing an enterprise-level advert fraud prevention platform. The system additionally makes use of Golang with the Gin-Gonic framework, deployed on scalable Linux-based infrastructure.

His patent portfolio consists of “Fraud Prevention in Programmatic Promoting,” filed September 10, 2019, patent quantity 11,521,231. The patent describes machine learning-based programs and strategies for stopping fraud in programmatic promoting environments.

Constructing these programs requires understanding how fraudsters assault programmatic infrastructure. Invalid visitors takes many types, from easy bots that click on on adverts to stylish operations that spoof premium writer stock.

Dr. Augustine Fou has documented promoting fraud patterns since founding FouAnalytics, marketed as an alternative choice to mainstream analytics for verifying digital promoting campaigns. His background features a PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Know-how in Supplies Science and Engineering, accomplished at age 23.

He beforehand labored at McKinsey & Firm earlier than serving as Group Chief Digital Officer at Omnicom’s Healthcare Consultancy Group, a $100 million group with eight businesses serving pharmaceutical, medical machine, and healthcare purchasers.

His fraud investigation work includes helping authorities and regulatory our bodies whereas serving to business purchasers strengthen cybersecurity and mitigate threats. FouAnalytics operates as a free platform for small companies to confirm digital advert campaigns and clicks from varied paid on-line sources.

Dr. Fou taught digital technique and built-in advertising at Rutgers College and NYU’s College of Persevering with and Skilled Research. His technical background informs his fraud evaluation strategy. He understands how advanced programs work and the way adversaries exploit weaknesses of their design assumptions.

Structural incentive misalignment

The LinkedIn dialogue between {industry} practitioners crystallized tensions that may decide how promoting automation develops. Protocols want widespread adoption to operate. Adoption requires convincing know-how executives that enterprise advantages justify engineering funding and danger.

Concurrently, protocols should account for fraud exploitation eventualities. Techniques counting on self-declaration with out unbiased verification change into targets for criminals. The stability between simplicity that allows adoption and complexity that allows verification stays unsolved.

Provide-side platforms occupy crucial positions on this ecosystem. They confirm transactions, filter fraud, optimize yield for publishers, and supply transparency instruments for advertisers. Whether or not AI brokers can replicate these capabilities with out concentrated intermediaries stays unsure.

Medvedev’s closing argument emphasised structural options over technical ones. “If we wish a cleaner ecosystem, the trail is clear. Management beats greed each time.” The assertion positions possession and accountability as stipulations for significant enchancment.

The talk issues for advertising professionals allocating programmatic promoting budgets. Know-how protocols can’t eradicate enterprise incentives that reward opacity and intermediation. Platform consolidation continues as main gamers construct proprietary agentic capabilities somewhat than adopting open requirements.

Fraud continues evolving alongside detection capabilities. DoubleVerify reported on September 25, 2025, a considerable escalation in fraudulent cell purposes using synthetic intelligence applied sciences to perpetrate advert fraud. The safety intelligence agency’s evaluation reveals how automated programs are being weaponized to compromise digital promoting integrity throughout cell platforms.

What appears clear from the December 2025 debate: Advert Context Protocol faces important obstacles from each enterprise incentives and safety necessities that its design doesn’t adequately tackle. The way forward for programmatic promoting could rely much less on technical standardization and extra on elementary restructuring of possession and accountability all through the provision chain.

Timeline

• Could 2017: IAB Tech Lab created adverts.txt to fight unauthorized stock gross sales
• September 10, 2019: Christopher F. filed patent for fraud prevention in programmatic promoting
• April 2021: Christopher F. based Spartan Advert, enterprise-level advert fraud prevention platform
• This autumn 2023: 25% of programmatic traffic with SupplyChain Object failed validation checks, with 64% higher invalid traffic rates
• 2023: Business anti-fraud efforts saved advertisers $10.8 billion by way of 92% discount in invalid visitors losses
• 2023: European anti-fraud programmes prevented €3.45 billion in losses, representing 69% discount in fraud prices
• February 24, 2024: Pixalate published report on programmatic traffic validation failures
• Could 14, 2025: Microsoft announced discontinuation of Microsoft Invest effective February 28, 2026
• Could 29, 2025: DoubleVerify identified over 100 cases of ads.txt manipulation since 2017
• August 27, 2025: Prebid.org removed cross-exchange transaction identifier functionality
• September 25, 2025: DoubleVerify disclosed findings on substantial escalation in fraudulent mobile applications
• October 2, 2025: The Commerce Desk launched OpenAds platform to keep up transparency after transaction identifier adjustments
• October 15, 2025: Six companies launched Ad Context Protocol for advertising automation
• October 15, 2025: David Kohl posted LinkedIn criticism warning AdCP is “the tail wagging the canine”
• November 3, 2025: LiveRamp donated Universal Context Protocol to IAB Tech Lab
• November 3, 2025: Ari Paparo published analysis questioning AdCP media buying protocol viability
• November 10, 2025: Amazon merged DSP and Ads Console into unified Campaign Manager with AI agents
• November 13, 2025: IAB Tech Lab introduced Agentic RTB Framework v1.0 for public comment
• December 2025: Pavel Medvedev, Christopher F., and Dr. Augustine Fou debated AdCP viability on LinkedIn

Abstract

Who: Pavel Medvedev, who builds programmatic in-housing options, Christopher F., Director of Product Growth at Consideration Arc, and Dr. Augustine Fou, promoting fraud investigator with FouAnalytics, debated promoting know-how protocols on LinkedIn. Six corporations launched AdCP: Scope3, Yahoo, PubMatic, Swivel, Triton Digital, and Optable. Business specialists together with Ari Paparo and David Kohl additionally criticized the protocol.

What: The talk centered on whether or not the Advert Context Protocol can enhance programmatic promoting when elementary issues stem from enterprise incentives somewhat than technical limitations. Medvedev argued that greed, not know-how gaps, prevents ecosystem enchancment. Excessive platform margins conceal behind complexity. Charges stay unexplainable. Arbitrage masquerades as optimization. Fraud persists regardless of prevention claims. Christopher F. defined that main platforms lack enterprise incentive to undertake protocols that cut back vendor lock-in. Dr. Fou warned that AdCP depends on self-declaration that fraudsters will exploit, much like how adverts.txt was subverted from its first day.

When: The LinkedIn dialogue occurred in December 2025, following AdCP’s October 15, 2025, launch. The talk emerged as a number of agentic AI protocols launched throughout fall 2025, together with Common Context Protocol on November 3 and Agentic RTB Framework on November 13. Microsoft plans to close down Microsoft Make investments on February 28, 2026, citing incompatibility with agentic promoting visions.

The place: The dialogue occurred on LinkedIn however addressed the worldwide programmatic promoting ecosystem price roughly $700 billion in 2024. Provide-side platforms course of billions of transactions every day throughout show, video, cell, and linked tv environments. The talk impacts advertisers, publishers, and know-how platforms working throughout the open net market.

Why: The talk issues as a result of it reveals elementary obstacles going through promoting automation. AdCP proponents declare protocols cut back customized improvement prices and vendor lock-in. Critics argue dominant platforms profit from buyer switching prices and can resist adoption. In the meantime, fraud prevention programs maintained by supply-side platforms saved advertisers $10.8 billion in 2023 by way of invalid visitors filtration. Protocols counting on self-declaration with out verification create new fraud assault vectors, as demonstrated by adverts.txt exploitation. Solely 36% of programmatic budgets attain legitimate, viewable, measurable impressions in response to 2023 analysis. The Affiliation of Nationwide Advertisers discovered that 42% of every programmatic greenback goes to tech or company charges somewhat than media. Structural incentive misalignment means technical options alone can’t eradicate opacity-driven revenue extraction. In-housing represents an alternate strategy the place manufacturers and publishers personal their know-how stacks, eradicating incentives that reward dangerous habits by way of clear decision-making and accountable programs.