I'm a bit of a novice on the DSP side of things. I'm getting an average CPM, but I want to know how much I'm spending exactly and where. Can TTD give me that sort of granularity or are they only able to give me average CPM?

ETA (also added on one of the comments, thank you all by the way):

We’re being told they can’t provide SSP level clearing price detail because SSP billing is aggregated across clients. We can pull performance reports, but there’s no real way to reconcile those against invoice level clearing prices or verify what was actually paid to SSPs vs. billed through TTD.

Just trying to understand if this is standard practice or if others have gotten more granular transparency from them.

Everyone says “programmatic is booming” but let’s be honest, not every role in programmatic pays the same.

I’m currently working at a Big 6 agency, managing solid budgets and campaigns end-to-end. But the more exposure I get, the clearer it becomes: some areas are way more valuable (and future-proof) than others.

So I want real, no-BS answers from people in the industry: -Which area of programmatic actually makes you the most money (salary or freelance)?

CTV / OTT

DSP expertise (DV360, TTD, etc.)

Data / audience strategy

Ad ops / campaign execution

Yield / publisher monetization

Ad tech / product side

And why?

If you’ve switched roles or seen salary jumps, what made the biggest difference?

Trying to understand where to double down for the next 2–3 years and I’m sure a lot of others here are thinking the same.

Run a Small ctv channel 3000 or so active users roughly 500-700k watch hours monthly.haven’t implemented ads yet but what should I expect cpm wise for ctv inventory on google ads.

I’ve spent close to 10 years as an AE in the DSP space at StackAdapt, The Trade Desk.

Earlier in my career things were hard but made sense. I feel like the growth came from setting clear expectations with prospects, finding gaps in strategy, running test campaigns, and building from there. It wasn’t fast, but it led to strong retention and long term partnerships. I loved my job and I was excelling for years.

Over the last couple of years I’ve been at 2 different DSPs. I’ve interviewed everywhere and the whole industry feels different. There’s more pressure to bring in new logos with expectations of 3-4 million in revenue year 1 from what I’ve seen. With less focus on what it takes to keep clients the expectations are often stretched just to win new business and not build a book.

Being in the job market right now has been rough and eye opening. Almost every conversation circles back to “what clients can you bring with you?” even though everyone knows non solicitations are part of the deal. The same companies asking that would have you sign one on day one. So it’s greasy… and I never share that information but it’s wild how that’s a requirement for some companies to move forward in the interview process.

At this point, I don’t know if it’s me not being able to cut it anymore after 12 years, or if the role itself has changed. I’ve been thinking about stepping away from an AE role into client success or account management, or maybe stepping away from DSPs altogether.

I'm part of the growth team for a mid-market b2b company and I'm trying to get more immersed in incrementality without pretending we have Fortune 500 data density.

We’re spending across paid social, search, programmatic/CTV, and retargeting. The problem is that every channel can make a plausible case for impact, but once you strip out last-touch bias, branded search capture, retargeting overlap, and sales-assisted motion, the “incrementality” gets very blurry.

We can’t just pause major channels without creating real pipeline risk, and full MMM feels expensive/slow relative to how often we need to make budget decisions. Geo holdouts are also possible, but our market coverage and sales territories make clean reads hard.

For growth / demand gen / programmatic folks operating in the $5M-20M budget range, what does incrementality testing actually look like?

We’ve got CTV fully embedded in our mix at a ~$25–35M ARR B2B SaaS, and it’s doing what it’s supposed to do at the top of funnel; solid reach, strong completion rates, and clear downstream signals (branded search lift, higher direct traffic, better retargeting pools).

The issue: none of that cleanly translates to pipeline in a way that holds up in a demand gen review.

Our funnel is long (60–120 days), multi-touch, and heavily sales-assisted. By the time an opportunity is created, CTV’s influence is buried under search, SDR outreach, and remarketing. Even with Salesforce multi-touch + UTMs + some account-level enrichment, we’re still mostly inferring impact vs. proving it.

We’ve tried:

geo holdouts- directional, but noisy at our scale

post-demo surveys - helpful but biased

looking at influenced account velocity - promising, but not airtight

So for demand gen leads / growth folks who are actually accountable to pipeline: how are you tying CTV spend to pipeline creation in a way that’s decision-grade, not just “it lifts everything”?

I have been working in Programmatic advertising for the past 3 years on the campaign execution side as an Assistant Manager for an automotive client. The primary DSP I use on 90% of time is DV360. I also have experience in using other DSP’s such as Yahoo, Teads Ad Manager & Amazon. I was mainly involved in awareness campaigns & occasionally lower funnel campaigns using CRM lists. I also have somewhat experience on the planning side of things as to use what tactics to use, targeting audiences & so on.

I recently got a new job as a full on Programmatic Manger role. Meaning, I’m responsible for all the planning, execution & the post campaign reporting. I am dealing with 3 food clients, with having one of the client composing of independently owned franchises. While the other 2 are big fast food brands. Each client consists of their own planners who will decide on a budget, tactics, & the audiences. I thought that will make my job easier as it saves me trouble from doing all the planning.

Meeting with the planners they all had one thing to say. “The clients goal is to increase foot traffic in their stores. I was like that’s easy we can just implement FSA targeting so it’s only people close to store locations who get targeted. Majority of the campaigns are awareness based using primarily standard display & OOH ads. which is fine.

What is strange, when I asked them if they have done anything programmatic, the planners specifically told me “they like to buy direct from publishers, it’s much easier”. Also, none of the team members have any access to DSP’s.

During one of the campaign proposal meetings I made the proposal of using YouTube Shorts for vertical ads & to use Bumper 6s & 15s skippable on YouTube from couple of the mock ads which were created. To which the director & the planner are looking at me giving me that WTF! Impression. There was an awkward silence for about 10 seconds. The next question was, will this increase the foot traffic in stores. I told them with digital we an only calculate the digital metrics such as CTR, VCR, & VTR etc. Unless they have floodlights setup it’s will be difficult to calculate the in store foot traffic. One of my other coworkers, oh “We can contact this publisher & see if we can setup a programmatic deal with them.” To which the Director & Planner replied yeah let’s do that. I got shot down.

I met up with other programmatic managers & they all seem to tell me just do a PG deal or contact the publishers & see if they can run programmatic on your behalf, it will save you soo much work. Not sure if anyone has dealt with the same I’m feeling. I’m starting to feel like I may have made a mistake leaving my old job & doing everything programmatic guaranteed will devalue my skills & experience in the long run.

Am I overreacting into thinking that my team is clueless about running programmatic in house? Truthfully, speaking a part of me wants to go back to my old job as I’m not seeing the potential of long term growth towards becoming a Senior Programmtic Manager with in next 3 years.

What are your thoughts, any one faced issues like this?

Hi!

We started to work with DV360 and are looking for some help to scale our campaigns. More specifically:

1. Scaling Expertise: Deep understanding of budget configuration and identifying the best SSPs for our specific vertical.
2. Technical Configuration Knowledge: Advanced setup of S2S and Direct-to-MMP tracking (for apps), including postbacks for VTA.
3. Inventory Knowledge: Map the specific traffic types that actually perform on DV360 to avoid waste.
4. Audience building & custom bidding algorithms
5. Inventory sources (Open Auction, PG, PD deals)

We are looking for someone remotely (preferably in UTC-+3). Compensation is up to discussion and will definitely be fair.

Please send me a message if you are interested!

I have spent 9 figures+ on advertising across google, FB, and native over 15 years.

I have been 100% on direct platforms. Google. FB. Taboola. Outbrain. Tiktok.

Despite doing it for so long, I still don’t know what is the point of all this programmatic stuff or why it is even called programmatic. Isn’t this just advertising and finding cheap, relevant inventory that responds to your ad?

What is programmatic and how does it differ from all the typical direct source ad platforms? What is the real value?

Have you ever apllied brand safety filters on meta?

What about publisher blocklist?

Do you have any experience or evidence on how to improve brand sutability on meta?

Been in programmatic for over 5 years, mainly managing various e-commerce accounts ranging from $5k to $50k in monthly spend on TTD, StackAdapt and DV360.

I recently stepped into a new role, and we have started to onboard a lot more lead gen clients (home improvement, legal services, B2B etc.). Things seem to be falling apart as we're seeing a lot more churn and DSP ultimately not being in line with the client's performance expectations.

From your experience, are there any nuances I should be aware of when setting up campaigns of this nature? I'm feeling very discouraged with overall performance and have a gut feeling my role will likely be affected if I don't start flipping performance around. Any insight on targeting, optimizations would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

One pitfall we’ve seen lately is teams treating ChatGPT ads like a performance channel way too early. Right now, the reality is ~$200K minimum spends, reporting limited to weekly CSVs (no real‑time dashboards), and infrastructure that’s still pretty barebones. In that setup, expecting ROAS is premature. At present, LLM ads should be treated as a learning investment for a way to understand how agentic workflows & AI‑driven placements are behaving.

Also, maybe a weird observation- A lot of this feels like AI talking to AI. Not even sure how much of the ad is actually landing with a human vs getting filtered/reshaped along the way. What do y’all think?

I’ve been working on a typing practice website ⌨️👀

Here’s the links 👇
https://www.typinglearn.com/practice
https://www.typinglearn.com/games
https://www.typinglearn.com/map
https://www.typinglearn.com/community

I’m especially looking for feedback on:

• UI/UX (is it intuitive or confusing anywhere?)
• where it can be improved
• Features you wish typing sites had
• Performance / need to make it more responsive responsiveness
• Anything that feels unnecessary or missing

Also should i add a custom keyboard for the games or Phone keyboard is okay

Hey guys,

I’m currently working in programmatic at a Big 6 agency, and lately I’ve been thinking a lot about moving into contract/freelance work.

To be honest, I don’t personally know anyone doing this, so I’m trying to understand how it actually works in real life.

A bit about my experience I’m currently managing around $300K in monthly ad spend, handling awareness campaigns across display, audio, and video. I’ve worked on direct and programmatic guaranteed deals as well, across multiple DSPs.

If you’re someone who’s doing contract work:

- How did you land your first opportunity?

- Was it through networking, outreach, or something else?

- What helped build enough trust with clients?

Also, is the income consistent or more project-based and unpredictable?

And one more thing ,if your company is open to contract-based roles, I’d genuinely appreciate a referral or even a direction on where to apply.

Just trying to learn and explore this path honestly. Would really value any insights.

Thanks a lot 🙏

Does anyone know if you can buy Shoppable ads on 3rd party inventory in open exchange? Seems risky but I am curious about actual scale outside of prime video which I've heard mixed things about performance wise outside of their home cooking. Probably dont have the juice to spend with Netflix or Disney of the world.

We run mainly paid social and search, and will be expanding to programmatic (DV360, Amazon DSP, TTD). We have a very experienced programmatic team, well versed across the 3 DSPs, so that’s not an issue. I have 10 years experience in programmattic, but have always been siloed off from the bigger picture (i.e. how all channels work together).

I’ve been tasked with building a playbook / narrative / use case for why brands should invest in programmatic on top of social / search. In other words, how can programmatic bring incremental performance or reach.
So what are the main use cases you pitch to clients?

The branding play looks quite obvious (CTV, YouTube, audio), but seems quite disconnected from social media/ search. How do you tie it together?

For performance I thought of retargeting landing page visitors via floodlights (we have CM360). But this seems like quite a limited value add (tell me if I’m wrong) that will end up raising questions (mostly post-view conversion in prog vs post-click on social/search).

Any other tactics or overall strategy I’m missing?