Back to the future: How quality media can save advertising

Matt Rivitz, Chief Purpose Officer at NOBL, outlines where programmatic advertising went wrong, how advertisers woke up to its many problems, and how the future of adtech is in quality content.

Conscious media investment

This article is part of a series of articles from the WARC Guide to conscious media investment. Read more.

“Would you rather your child have feminism or cancer?”

If you asked any brand in 2016 whether they would like to advertise on a page with this headline, 0.00% would answer in the positive. And yet, thousands of the world’s largest advertisers did. Repeatedly. Even after trying their very best to avoid it.

In retrospect, this was the canary in the coal mine for both programmatic advertising and advertising on social media. Brands soon became painfully...

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