Defining quality in digital media.

Picnic's first annual report on how quality is defined and measured across the open web: the challenges fuelling ad waste, the PIQ methodology, and the UK's ten highest-quality domains.

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0% of UK domains are classified ‘high-risk’ by PIQ.

0% fall below a PIQ Score of 30, Picnic's threshold for quality.

0% of high-quality domains are missing from typical inclusion lists.

£0bn lost to programmatic ad waste every year.

Inside the report

1 Today's quality landscape Three findings on the state of UK media quality, from high-risk domains to the gaps hiding in advertiser inclusion lists.

2 2024 industry challenges The three issues driving ad waste: misaligned metrics, MFA “solutions” and the trade-off taboo, with expert commentary.

3 The PIQ10 2024 The UK's ten highest-scoring open-web domains, ranked by PIQ (no paywalls, UK traffic only).

4 PIQ & methodology What PIQ is, the 100+ signals it measures, and the three indexes: Experience, Media Opportunity and Risk Profile.

5 Goodstuff × Clearpay brand uplift study Proof that media quality, not vanity metrics, drives brand consideration, with identical creatives across both environments.

2024 industry challenges

Three forces driving ad waste.

The industry has struggled with these for over a decade. Together, they push nearly a quarter of programmatic spend into waste.

Challenge 1

Misaligned metrics

Vanity metrics like viewability and CTR are cheap to track, so brands lean on them, buyers are held to them, and publishers chase them. This normalises intrusive, click-focused ad experiences that erode trust.

94% of digital display ad spend now runs programmatically, yet trust is arguably at its lowest.

Challenge 2

MFA “solutions”

Made-for-advertising sites slip through broad ad buys with poor content and excessive placements. Blunt block lists give a false sense of safety, and MFA operators cycle through domain names in days.

7yrs how long a Forbes MFA subdomain went undetected across the entire supply chain.

Challenge 3

The trade-off taboo

Every buyer balances cost, quality and scale differently, but nobody admits the trade-off. Opaque, one-size-fits-all decisions stop buyers from ever reaching their own optimal blend.

$20bn nearly a quarter of programmatic spend, lost to ad waste each year.

The PIQ10 · 2024

The UK's ten highest-quality domains.

PIQ breaks quality into 100+ signals, grouped into three indexes (Experience, Media Opportunity and Risk Profile) and combines them into a single score from 1–100. Picnic's threshold for quality is 30.

0 Below Threshold MFA traits: high ad density, fast refresh, click-bait headlines. Under PIQ's quality threshold of 30.

0 High Quality Non-disruptive ad experience, strong domain authority, reputable publisher profile.

Rank Domain PIQ Score

1yahoo.com86.89

2nature.com83.40

3engadget.com82.15

4wired.com77.89

5techcrunch.com77.15

6healthline.com75.30

7lonelyplanet.com72.17

8msn.com71.21

9newscientist.com70.79

10drugs.com70.23

Selection includes domains with no paywall and UK traffic only, aggregated across desktop and mobile. PIQ scores range from 1 (low) to 100 (high). The full PIQ10 and methodology are in the report.

Banish poor-quality inventory.

The Media Quality Report shows how the industry lost its grip on quality, and how PIQ takes the subjectivity out of it, so your programmatic spend finally drives real outcomes.

Download the report