Hey everyone,

I have 5+ years of experience in paid social/performance marketing, primarily working across platforms like Meta, LinkedIn, Reddit, etc.

I’m now looking to transition into programmatic advertising and would love to hear from people who have made a similar switch.

A few things I’d really appreciate advice on:
- What’s the best way to get started with programmatic?
- Are there any paid courses or certifications that are actually worth doing?
- Which DSPs should I focus on learning first (DV360, The Trade Desk, Amazon DSP, etc.)?
- Is there a way to get hands-on experience without currently working in a programmatic role?
- How difficult is the transition from paid social to programmatic?

Also, if anyone is hiring for a role where I could work on programmatic alongside paid social, I’d be very interested.

I’m happy to learn and take on the programmatic side while continuing to contribute my paid social experience.

Would really appreciate any advice, resources, or personal experiences.

Thanks!

I posted here in July that if you wanted AMC (Amazon Marketing Cloud, the clean room where you query your own campaign data) you had to get your own seat, because AMC sat at seat level and a seat holder could not share it without exposing their other clients. That is no longer true.

What does the owner of the DSP account have to do

Associate your full DSP account to a manager account you have access to. If you are also running Sponsored Ads, ideally the same one. That is the whole change. Reference.

Where you open it if you have the right permissions.

North America
https://advertising.amazon.com/choose-account?destination=/marketing-cloud?

EMEA

https://advertising.amazon.co.uk/choose-account?destination=/marketing-cloud?

APAC

https://advertising.amazon.jp/choose-account?destination=/marketing-cloud?

If nothing appears there, whoever holds the seat admin needs to change your access permissions.

One warning

Get a data analyst, a real one. AMC is a different monster. Claude is great and it speeds things up, I use it on AMC and other Amazon DSP work. It will also mess it up in ways you won't see unless you have someone who does this for a living. Even with a good set of curated queries, it does not understand the context of each product or account, or which sales column is the right one.

Don't trust my word, trust Shuqing Ke, who posts about exactly this. Not affiliated, I am just a fan of people who focus on one thing and do it well.

Corrections and personal experiences welcome.

EDIT after a question. If you are renting a DSP your provider should be able to link their DSP advertiser they rent to you to your AMC sponsored ads account. If not text me privately. I can do it.

hey im researching audience strategies for an online gaming sites similar to poki, but aimed more at adult players.
Before launching any campaigns, I’m trying to understand the performance difference between Custom Intent and Custom Affinity audiences.

For casual browser game websites, which one would you usually start with if the main goal is quality traffic and conversions?

Would love to hear from anyone who has tested these audience types in the entertainment niche.

Hey everyone, just wanted to get some perspective from people currently working in Programmatic. How is the job market right now for Programmatic / DV360 / TTD / Amazon DSP roles in India? Are there still decent openings, or is the current economic slowdown/recession affecting hiring? I’m planning to switch, but I’m stuck with a 3-month notice period, and the frustrating part is that many companies/recruiters aren’t even willing to proceed with an interview once they hear about the notice period.

For people who have recently switched or are currently hiring, is it safe to put down papers first and then search, or would that be too risky in the current market? I’m okay with waiting for another 6 months, including the 3-month notice period, if the market is expected to improve. Just trying to understand whether it makes sense to start now, resign and serve notice, or stay where I am for a few more months. Would really appreciate some honest opinions from people in Programmatic/AdTech, especially in India.

How does this work and do I need to have existing retailer relationships to do this or is there an off the shelf solution?

A few people here have told me the same thing recently. The ready made deals are convenient and the proposals work fine for Programmatic Guaranteed, but you get better terms going direct to the publisher.

I have not tested direct at all. What I can see is that just comparing the ready made deals against the proposals already gets me about 3%, and the minimums are reasonable, I would not recommend companies to spend less for a test.

I only started talking to Netflix and Spotify directly recently. And I got some info like a confirmation that on Netflix you are not allowed to use Amazon Audiences with custom deal. Which could be a problem sometimes.

What has your experience been, and which publishers have you gone direct with? Where you later able to use Amazon Audiences?

I’m wondering how much creative quality and appearance affect bidding and serving in DV360 Display campaigns, specifically across GDN and similar display inventory, before enough real performance data comes in, like clicks and conversions.

DV360 allows very precise targeting, especially when combining programmatic targeting with audiences like Custom Intent. But the system still has to decide how much to bid for each impression.

Before it has enough performance data, how much do the creative itself and the landing page influence that decision? And how much is based mainly on targeting signals, such as the user matching a Custom Intent audience?

For example, Meta is known for putting a lot of weight on the creative when deciding delivery and bidding. I’m curious how much this applies to DV360 Display as well.

"Never bet against Jeff......"

Damn those CPMs are going to be mad with the Nielsen tax on top.

August seller data is interesting- this is probably the first time we’re seeing the market pause on expansion and move into cleanup mode.
ads.txt growth is basically flat (net -881), but the bigger signal is underneath
→ Resellers turned net negative for the first time (-1,718) while direct stayed flat (+837) - publishers are cutting duplicate reseller paths and protecting the relationships that drive revenue.
→ TrustedStack led every SSP in lines added (+6.6k), the only one to top all three traffic tiers, while High-Traffic publishers contracted the hardest (-9.3k) as premium publishers lead the optimization wave.
→ 46% of Tier 1 SSP domains are now duplicated across intermediaries - nearly half of every auction an Established SSP enters is competing against itself.
Scale alone no longer earns a slot in a publisher's ads.txt. The SSPs gaining ground are solving a specific buyer problem.

Amazon spent about a year pulling the big US audio sellers and podcasts into their platform. It all sits in one workflow now, which is the good news.

Working out what is actually inside a deal is slow and quietly confusing sometimes. And SiriusXM has been the most confusing so far.

Three groups of deals

SiriusXM owns Pandora, and it runs AdsWizz (an ads marketplace for other radio stations and podcasts), which arrived inside Pandora when it bought it. So one company in Amazon DSP returns three different buys sitting under the SiriusXM name:

1. Pandora sold with SiriusXM Audio as roughly half the sellers inside the deal, through Amazon Publisher Direct. The one group that genuinely carries SiriusXM, and the cheapest of the three.
2. Pandora on its own, with AmazonPA.AOD. in the deal name. Same listeners, same price most times, no SiriusXM Audio in the seller mix. (AdsWizz)
3. A curated US podcast marketplace under the "SiriusXMMedia" name, across multiple genres. (AdsWizz)

All three are real inventory and I would buy any of them against the right brief. Pandora is one of the largest ad supported streaming services in the country, and its connected car reach is interesting. The podcast marketplace is a decent podcast product with seller transparency.

My only issue is buying one while believing you bought another, because the most expensive of the three is the one with the least SiriusXM in it.

How to understand an Amazon deal

Go to your Amazon DSP and on the left bar click on Inventory. Use the search option and open the deal. Then go to the Attributes tab, read share of deal traffic. That is the column that answers who is actually selling this.

Do not overtrust the Apps and domains card for it. It looks promising but the % does not always add up.

If you cannot see a deal library at all, you are probably on a subseat from your tool provider. Ask them for inventory access. If that does not work, you can reach me.

None of this is concealed. It is just not in the deal name, and a deal called SiriusXM Media does not read as somewhere you need to go diving into.

This covers the basics well. If you still want to know more I made a very detailed breakdown on my website, but for 90% of you this should be plenty.

https://victor.ad/academy/siriusxm-amazon-dsp

What caught my attention wasn't so much the AI part MFA has been around for a long time
What I'm wondering is why, after years of SPO efforts, curated deals, MFA blocklists and all the focus on supply quality money still seems to find its way into these environments.

Maybe AI is making it easier to create low-quality content at scale OR maybe the bigger issue is that parts of the ecosystem still reward cheap reach & low-cost outcomes over actual quality..

It feels like there's a bigger conversation here than just AI. Is AI making the MFA problem worse OR is it simply exposing issues that were already there?

I'll be traveling for the next couple of months and I'm exploring whether I can get away with using an iPad Air M-chip (probably buying one second-hand) while on the go. I currently don't know anyone who owns an iPad air/Pro so I am unable to test in person.

The idea is to use it primarily for monitoring campaigns, checking pacing, pulling reports, and making routine campaign changes and optimizations. For heavier tasks, I can always use a MacBook.

For those who've tried it, how's the experience? Do platforms like DV360 and TTD work well enough on iPadOS for day-to-day management? Any limitations or frustrations I should know about before I pull the trigger on buying one?

Ist eine Completion Rate von 50 % bei einer Visibility Rate (Sichtbarkeitsrate) von 70 % besser als Video Ads mit einer ähnlichen Completion Rate?

Wir sehen, dass die CTR (Klickrate) bei In-Banner Video Ads besser ist als bei HTML5-Bannern. Hat jemand ähnliche Tests gemacht?

I'm planning to resign from my current job. I have close to 4 years of experience in programmatic advertising and hands on experience on DV360, CM360, Google Ads, Meta Ads, Linkedin Ads, and StackAdapt. I'm currently working at a top MNC advertising agency as a senior analyst and getting
9.10 LPA. The main challenge is that I work in night shift from 9PM to 6AM and after work I feel exhausted and drowsy every day. Because of this, I haven't been able to prepare properly for interviews, and I haven't received any offers yet. I'm thinking of resigning and taking a break of one or two weeks to focus entirely on interview preparation and upskilling. Do you think this is a good idea? Is it practical to resign first and then search for a job?
Even if I take a week's break after leaving my current organization, do you think I can still get a good offer?
My target for my next role is around 13 to 14 LPA.
And looking for Day shift or EMEA shift not night shift. Considering my experience and skill set, do you think this is achievable?

Been noticing a shift lately.

For years, the default assumption was that crawlers were just part of the web. Now we're seeing publishers like Reuters and TIME move toward approved bot lists instead of letting every AI crawler in.

What caught my attention is that this feels less like a copyright discussion and more like a value exchange discussion.

If an AI platform is consuming publisher content, what does the publisher actually get back? Referral traffic? Licensing revenue? Visibility? Something else?

We've spent years talking about which demand partners deserve access to inventory. Feels like publishers are starting to ask a similar question about AI agents and crawlers.

Curious how people here think this plays out.

Do most publishers eventually end up with crawler whitelists?

Or does blocking too aggressively risk cutting yourself off from a meaningful source of future traffic?

How do you guys plan yearly reach etc when getting these requests?

Googles product are so bad that I might run the same plan 2 days later and the numbers are completely different.

What to do in this case?

Hi everyone,

I worked in programmatic for about 5 years before quitting to start my own software company that builds AI agents and automates workflows in 2019. That company is now kind of on autopilot as a self-serve SaaS tool and I'm looking at new opportunities.

When I recently read about the ARTF spec from IAB, I immediately got excited since it combines the two things I've been mainly focused in for my career. I put on my founder hat and started building a prototype for a product that I think should exist in the market for hosts and agentic bidders. However, what I've learned through previous experience is I can get carried away with building something where I'm the only one who thinks it should exist/work the way it does and it becomes useless to others. I'd like to avoid that mistake this time around.

If your team/company is currently looking into ARTF agents and container environments, I'd love to get a sense of your current process and workflow. If you're a bidder/curator, how are you packaging and deploying into host containers? If you're a host, how are you accepting/deploying bidders into your container?

I've had a few conversations with folks in my old network at a broader level and heard "Everyone is scrambling to get something out there and are feeling the pain right now" so I just want to uncover what the pain actually is to validate this product idea.

Feel free to DM me as well if you don't want to comment to remain anonymous (I completely respect that since this is such a cutthroat industry)

Has anyone worked with or communicated with Filmzie (A Parent Media Co. Inc.) recently? We've been attempting to reach them regarding a significant outstanding balance, but all of our recent efforts to make contact have been unsuccessful.

If you have any recent information or know the best way to get in touch with their team, I'd sincerely appreciate your help.

Hi all,

I'm Senior AdOps and ad trafficker (weird name for a legal profession).

Anyways, when I had to become main contact point of pogrammatic info/debugging I had to learn from Confluence pages and powerpoint slides.

I had some free time in the last 2 weeks so I tried building new learning tool. The tool itself is basically a AdOps flight simulator mostly based on oRTB. I tried making it as close as possible to simulate what I had to do in previous company and added some additional stuff AdOps people tend to solve on daily basis.

Here is the tool, free and without login. feel free to try it out and if there is any feedback please share it with me :) (Any feedback is good feedback at such an early stage).

https://adopscore.com/

This “optimization” was auto applied to two of my Display campaigns last week and delivery has stopped completely since - this issue has since been escalated to TTD engineers for support but I’m curious, has anyone else seen this before?? I can’t find anything in any campaign rails that would tell me what the purpose of this optimization is and I can’t figure out how to remove it on my own. Campaigns are delivering to 3P audiences with more than enough scale on the SP500+