What OpenSincera Means for Media Buyers…And What It Doesn’t

A Step Forward For Transparency in Programmatic 

Earlier this year, The Trade Desk acquired Sincera, a data provider focused on surfacing quality signals across the open web. That acquisition laid the foundation for OpenSincera: a new framework designed to give buyers more visibility into inventory quality across The Trade Desk platform and the industry as a whole.

OpenSincera is a positive move. It reflects a growing shift in how quality is being defined in programmatic advertising, and it validates what we’ve believed at Picnic from the start: better buying starts with better data. But while visibility is a step forward, transparency without independence can still leave buyers with blind spots.

In this blog, we’ll break down what OpenSincera delivers, where the limitations lie, and what media buyers still need if they’re serious about taking control of quality. We also sat down with our founder, Matthew Goldhill, for his perspective on what this launch means for the future of media planning. 

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What OpenSincera Delivers

At its core, OpenSincera offers directional, domain-level signals designed to help buyers assess quality. This includes signals such as ads-in-view per page, ads-to-content ratio and refresh rates. It’s a welcome starting point and a long-overdue acknowledgement that buyers need more clarity around where their ads are actually being delivered.

For buyers used to the opacity of programmatic supply paths, OpenSincera provides a baseline. It gives valuable visibility into whether your media is being delivered in quality environments. 

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Limitations of OpenSincera

It’s a positive step that OpenSincera is making some quality signals available to the public. Metrics like ads-in-view per page and ads-to-content ratio will provide buyers a useful baseline for assessing inventory at the domain level, as well as pushing the industry closer to more transparent buying. However, it’s worth noting that The Trade Desk still retains many of the more advanced signals within its own platform. That means anyone not using The Trade Desk or Kokai looking to dig deeper or differentiate their buying approach, can’t rely on OpenSincera’s free signals alone. 

Some businesses might look to build on top of OpenSincera’s data, but it raises two important strategic questions: 

1. Do you feel comfortable relying on a free dataset that could potentially change, disappear or cost in future?
2. And if you're a DSP or SSP, how comfortable are you relying on a competitor’s data to power your products? And how is your product differentiated from The Trade Desk?

This is where independent tools that have the ability help buyers interpret, compare and apply those signals to their actual media planning and buying decisions. Other Inventory Intelligence tools, like the PIQ Platform, are specifically built to provide a neutral, buyer-first view. Rather than just surfacing a few raw signals, PIQ turns over 100 signals, based on Ad Experience and Publisher Profile, into a clear, actionable score. This single score helps buyers to make better quality decisions at scale and define their own interpretation of quality based on their own objectives or risk tolerance, separate from the DSP.

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“OpenSincera is a clear signal that the market is waking up to what we’ve believed for years: inventory quality really matters and programmatic buyers need better ways to define and assess it. This move by the Trade Desk validates the entire category of Inventory Intelligence, but while it’s a step forward for transparency, it’s also a reminder of the risk in letting a single platform define the standard. Signals alone don’t drive performance, but how you apply them does. At Picnic, we’ve built PIQ to give buyers more than just data, we help buyers apply it, shape it to their own definitions of quality and use it to make better buying decisions.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                             -Matthew Goldhill, Founder of Picnic

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What Buyers Should Be Asking Their Platforms Right Now

If you're reviewing OpenSincera or considering how your DSP defines quality, these questions can help to guide you:

1. How do I build my sitelist?
2. Is there data to back up how I build my sitelist on top of a list of quality domains?
3. What are the raw signals and can I customise criteria to fit my campaign goals?
4. Do I get page-level scoring or just domain-level summaries?
5. How does the inventory quality score compare to the CPM?

These are the kinds of questions that separate a visibility tool from a strategic planning system.

More Signals, More Control, Better Performance

OpenSincera is a welcome step forward and a strong signal to the industry that quality matters. It introduces quality signals and gets buyers thinking more critically about where their ads run, but it’s not a complete solution. Inventory Intelligence from Picnic goes beyond the signals, giving you the power to score, curate and activate quality inventory based on your unique objectives, all with full independence from the sell-side.

Because better quality should not just be visible, it should be actionable.
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Want to take control of your media buying?

Download the PIQ Guide to see how Inventory Intelligence can power smarter campaign planning, enhance quality curation and lead to better brand outcomes. 

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