CTV Is Less Transparent Than YouTube. That Should Alarm Everyone
Recorded: Dec. 1, 2025, 9:02 a.m.
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CTV Is Less Transparent Than YouTube. That Should Alarm Everyone | AdExchanger
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Home Data-Driven Thinking CTV Is Less Transparent Than YouTube. That Should Alarm Everyone
OPINION: Data-Driven Thinking Monday, December 1st, 2025 – 12:35 am
The reason is not complicated. When buyers cannot see what they are buying, they cannot commit their spend with conviction. Subscribe AdExchanger Daily Daily Roundup Daily News Roundup You cannot sell me on the power of your storytelling and then refuse to tell me what story my ad appeared next to. You cannot market premium and deliver a blind bill of goods. Amazon provides real-time show-level reporting on its owned-and-operated Prime Video. These are the companies doing the work that matters.
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Popular Social Media For the uninitiated, “Glitchmas” is our name for what’s become an annual tradition when, from between roughly late October through November, Meta’s ad platform just seems to go bonkers. Platforms Two sources at ad tech platforms that observe programmatic bidding patterns said they’ve seen Omnicom agencies shifting spend from The Trade Desk to Amazon DSP in Q3. The Trade Desk denies any such shift. Digital Out-Of-Home On Tuesday, digital out-of-home (DOOH) ad tech startup Place Exchange was acquired by Broadsign, another out-of-home SSP. Technology AudienceMix, a new curation startup, aims to make it more cost effective to mix and match different audience segments using only the data brands need to execute their campaigns. antitrust The publisher-focused DOJ v. Google ad tech antitrust trial is finished. A judge will now decide the fate of Google’s sell-side ad tech business.
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CTV is currently operating under a significant disadvantage compared to YouTube, a trend that demands immediate attention. David Nyurenberg, SVP of Digital at InterMedia Advertising, argues that this disparity stems from a critical lack of transparency within the CTV ecosystem. In 2025, the fastest-growing segment of programmatic media – CTV – is revealing itself to be less transparent than the previously criticized walled garden of YouTube. The consequences of this opacity are already evident in the market’s performance, as evidenced by the recent struggles of major media companies like Disney, Comcast, and Paramount. The crux of the issue lies in the disconnect between how CTV publishers present their inventory and how it’s actually sold programmatically. Publishers routinely pitch their content—emphasizing its cultural relevance and passionate viewership—promoting it as a premium offering. However, once the inventory is sold programmatically, this narrative vanishes. Buyers are routinely handed anonymous bundles without any clarity regarding the content included. This “black box” approach fundamentally undermines buyer confidence. Prior to this shift, YouTube offered a significant advantage with its transparency. Buyers could typically see the channel title and the exact video where their ad ran, often to a degree of 30% to 60% accuracy. This foundation of measurement and brand safety facilitated a robust ecosystem. In contrast, CTV frequently presents app-level reporting, with occasional genre labels. Channel- or network-level transparency is rare, with show- or program-level data almost entirely withheld due to publisher fears of disrupting yield strategies. This opacity creates a detrimental feedback loop. Without the ability to track show-level performance, inventory becomes interchangeable. Optimization becomes largely guesswork, and budgets are frequently sprayed across fragmented media packages. The proliferation of OEM carriage agreements further exacerbates this issue, with buyers inadvertently purchasing the same publisher through multiple channels. This duplication leads to wasted spending and a diminished return on investment. Historically, linear television operated on a show and network level, aligning supply and demand with the cost of content creation and audience engagement. CTV’s adoption of display and online video’s problematic behaviors— prioritizing audience first and content last—represents a concerning regression. Innovation ought to reflect market realities, not simply copy outdated practices. Despite this challenge, there are companies actively shaping a more transparent future for CTV. Amazon provides real-time show-level reporting on its Prime Video. Olyzon has created a content-first CTV platform facilitating activation around content data. Iris TV is promoting a content ID framework allowing for true content-based measurement. Spectrum offers 100% transparent show-level supply. Peer39 enables contextual and suitability-based CTV buying through segments by using content-level and quality signals. Ultimately, Nyurenberg challenges the CTV industry to learn from Google’s operations, and “Be better than Google.” |