The Age of Quality: hear from the speakers of inventory talks 2025

Digital advertising has reached a breaking point. Ad waste is soaring. MFAs are polluting the ecosystem. Transparency is still more buzzword than practice. And the industry’s most go-to metric - the CTR - has never been more questioned in its effectiveness for optimising actual outcomes. 

For brands, this chaos has consequences: wasted budgets, declining trust and campaigns that underperform despite delivering all the “right” numbers on paper. For publishers, it means cluttered sites and frustrated audiences. For users, it’s a wall of noise.

Something has to give.

Our upcoming event, Inventory Talks exists because the current system no longer works and it’s time to act now. Inventory quality is collapsing under the weight of bad metrics and broken incentives. If 2024 proved anything, it’s that the old ways of buying and optimising do very little for your bottom line so 2025 has to be the turning point. 
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The Age of Quality

Inventory quality is now the #1 concern for buyers and planners  but ask ten people what “quality” means, and you’ll get ten different answers.

For Jim Michaels, Strategy Manager at OpenX, it’s about confidence and “being able to confidently deliver in environments where users are engaged and where content is verifiably human-made.” Whilst Olive Adu, Programmatic Innovation Director at OMD EMEA, takes a broader view, noting that quality is “relevance, attention, sustainable measurable downstream value - which is delivered efficiently and transparently.”

For Thomas Ives, Co-Founder of RAAS Lab, quality:

“...starts with premium, viewable, brand-safe environments that earn attention and trust, and continues with transparent supply, sensible frequency, and creative that’s contextually relevant to the page and moment.”

What we all now know is that quality isn’t one-size-fits-all. Yet what unites all of our definitions is the need to move beyond poor quality inventory, cheap reach and shallow metrics, because they do not lead to reliable outcomes. 

As Richard Ottoy, VP of Sales at Picnic explains: “The ultimate purpose of advertising is to change behaviour and this is considerably harder if your ad is seen alongside poor-quality content and a high volume of competing ads.”
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The Death of CTR (and the Metrics That Matter)

CTR has always been a well used metric: quick to calculate and easy to report. But in 2025, it’s a misleading distraction from real business value.

Richard Ottoy, VP of Sales at Picnic, puts it bluntly: “The industry is finally waking up to the fact that even poor-quality sites can get their ads to be seen and clicked on but too many marketers still measure success based on CTRs and impression-level metrics.”

The fact is, clicks do not equal outcomes. Instead, misclicks inflate results, bots distort benchmarks yet brands are left wondering why their “successful” campaigns fail to shift behaviour.

The next era of measurement will be about attention, relevance and user experience -  metrics that actually lead to meaningful outcomes, not vanity numbers.
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Breaking the Cycle of Waste

So why does low quality inventory buying persist? Because the incentives are broken. Erika Cellai, Senior Product Designer at the Financial Times, captures the root cause: “We still optimise for clicks and volume, not outcomes that respect readers and brands.” 

Whereas, Jim Michaels, Strategy Manager at OpenX, points to how spend is directed: 

“DSP bidders are biased to deliver against high-volume, low-cost inventory because they are optimising toward an expected-CPM for a given KPI. Generally… this translates into lots of delivery on noisy, low-recognition sites that are relatively low-traffic, high in ad density, and almost certainly command lower user attention.”

The result is overfrequency, intrusive ad loads, a lack of user attention and overall, budgets sunk into placements that add little value. Until incentives change, the cycle of waste continues.

So what’s the alternative? Flip the model! Instead, buy less - but buy better. Curate your supply chains and prioritise premium, transparent environments. Thomas Ives, Co-Founder of RAAS Lab, explains that the result is that “attention converts into outcomes - lower CPA, stronger brand lift, and less waste. Quality isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s the operating system for effective advertising.”

Together, these perspectives paint a clear picture of an industry hooked on cheap reach and shallow metrics, fuelling cluttered sites, wasted spend and poor user experiences. Until we move beyond this, true quality advertising remains out of reach.

Why 2025 is the Turning Point

The good news: the tools to fix this now exist.

Advances in AI, attention research, and inventory intelligence mean quality can now be defined, scored and enforced at scale. Planning and performance can finally align - without defaulting to clicks or clutter.

The question is no longer about whether we can measure quality. It’s whether the industry will.

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Want to join in on the action?

On Thursday 25th September, Picnic is hosting a fast, focused morning of debate from 9-11am at Glaziers Hall, London Bridge. Expect bold takes, zero fluff, and practical insights from leaders across media, research and technology.

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Tickets are limited. Request yours here.