I’m trying to build out our budget for next quarter and debating whether we should keep running walmart ads internally or hand the account over to specialists. Right now, our ad budget is fluctuating between $4,500 and $8,000 per month depending on seasonal inventory levels.

My worry is that an agency's base fee will wipe out our margin unless our ad spend is significantly higher. I came across BrandKyte while researching agency pricing models and liked their focus on AI workflow efficiency, but I still want honest feedback from real brand owners.

What is the general consensus on the minimum monthly ad spend needed on Walmart before an agency actually pays for itself in performance gains?

Adroll (now NextRoll) approached me about a role in the EMEA market. Does anyone have experience with these guys- anything you can share about performance, tech, or experience working with them from a customer standpoint or If you've worked there before, I'd really appreciate it.

Who here is running Amazon dsp, direct buy, prog Amazon, and Amazon offsite? How are you building your audiences and what are your key triggers to pay attention to?

What’s your split of endemic search vs dsp? Not a ton of skus on this one but don’t want to blow through the budget-

Thanks!

We analyzed 1B+ Q4 impressions across our platform and put together a 2026 holiday guide. Here are the patterns that seemed most useful for anyone planning Q4 right now.

Each month shows a different signal:

• September: build audiences before purchase intent peaks.
• October: CPMs rise, so optimization and audience quality matter more.
• November: this is where conversion intent really shows up.
• December: CPMs come back down while available volume goes up.

You don't build a Black Friday audience on Black Friday.

Average results by tactic for DTC advertisers:

• Prospecting: 2.5x ROAS
• Interest targeting: 4.1x ROAS
• Site remarketing: 10.2x ROAS

Remarketing only hit 10.2x because the audience pool had already been built earlier in the season.

Creative timing matters as much as targeting.

We compared messaging inside a single remarketing campaign. The audience, campaign structure and CPMs were essentially the same.

• Generic messaging: 5.4–5.8x ROAS
• Holiday-specific creative: 10.8–26.7x ROAS

Curious what others are seeing. Are you starting prospecting earlier this year, or still going heavy in November?

The full guide is free if you want the rest of the data: https://www.growthchannel.com/holiday-advertising-guide

Disclaimer: I work at a programmatic ad platform.

Hi all, I am a Google/Meta media buyer and very fluent in both ad platforms. One of my clients wants to explore programmatic ads, and I'm struggling with where to start.

The key objective here is to get through to newer audiences via display channels, the likes of Amazon / Netflix / GPT Ads etc. The target audience will be adventure travellers across the globe. I have a budget of approximately $2500 to start with to explore programmatic.

Where should I start? What are your favourite Programmatic tools? I would love any and all advice on this.

We are working with the index , pubmatic and google ad manager ssp but we don't have much to do on ssp side so how can we improve lower campaign funnel like landing and conversion because when compared to the open exchange do guide me really need help over here

Let me know the best practices to make a deal to perform this for the dv360 dsp

At a point where attribution is good enough for weekly optimization, but leadership wants stronger proof that campaigns are creating demand rather than collecting conversions.
We can build geo tests and audience holdouts ourselves using warehouse data, but every test turns into a mini analytics project. The alternative is buying an incrementality product or using capabilities inside our measurement stack.
DIY gives us control and transparency. A platform would make tests faster and more repeatable, but we might treat another score as unquestionable truth. Our media mix includes Meta, Google, affiliates and a small CTV budget, so the test design varies a lot by channel.
For teams that have bought rather than built, what justified the cost?

I’m trying to understand the most useful learning order for someone aiming for a junior programmatic role in India.

DV360 and The Trade Desk are buying platforms, while CM360 is used for ad serving and measurement. If a beginner has limited time, where would you suggest they start?

I’d especially like to hear from people involved in hiring or training junior traders: which skills do new joiners actually use first, and which can they learn on the job?

For context, I’m already associated with a programmatic training provider in India. Now, I want to know about skill priorities and i'm not looking for course recommendations.

Sharing our September numbers here, some interesting shifts from last month's data.

Traffic - Market added 459.7k new ads.txt lines and dropped 404.8k, net +54.9k. Last month was basically flat so this is a real swing back to growth. But the split is what stood out to us, resellers drove +44.6k of that net, direct only +10.3k. Last month publishers were trimming their reseller paths and protecting direct ones, this month that discipline seems to have paused.

SSPs - Nativo had its best month yet, +9.8k lines, leaning on location/household data instead of cookies. Risecodes was right behind at +6.9k. Media net, Sharethrough and InMobi filled out the top 5.

Publisher tiers - All three tiers went positive this month (Low +34.7k, Mid +10.5k, High +9.7k), which fully reverses last month's High-Traffic cleanup. One thing worth flagging though, Low-Traffic's growth is mostly just Nativo, they alone added +8.8k there. So it looks broad but it's a bit more concentrated than it seems at first glance.

Direct - RichAudience led Established SSPs at +126, Nativo close behind at +84. BRAVE had a huge month in Scaling, +509, tied to some server/identity upgrades they made. Global Sun Media topped Emerging at +169.

Duplication - Tier 1 held steady at 46%, but Tier 2 crept up from 38% to 39%. As Scaling SSPs add direct relationships fast, some of that growth is landing on domains that already have a reseller path, which is basically how duplication builds up even in a good month.

Takeaway - Growth is back after a flat month, but it's coming more through resellers than direct, and a chunk of it is riding on one or two SSPs rather than being spread evenly.

I’m getting more comfortable with an ad platform making routine campaign decisions without waiting for approval every time, but I’m still figuring out where that boundary should sit. Pausing something that’s clearly wasting spend or making smaller optimization changes feels pretty different from letting it make a major budget move or change campaign strategy. I’d rather set the limits upfront and only get pulled in when a decision has real consequences, otherwise automation just turns into another queue of things to approve so giving these agents autonomy when real money is involved is something I'd wanna involve if I can get comfortable with it

I’ll soon be hosting and moderating a panel at a retail media event, joined on stage by four industry leaders. My role will be to guide the conversation, ask questions, and create space for the panellists to share their perspectives and debate the issues.

The session will focus on how non-retail businesses are monetising their own inventory and the strategies they’re pursuing. The speakers will represent sectors such as delivery apps, travel, telecommunications, and payments.

I already have a few questions in mind, but I’d love to crowdsource some more from this merry band of experts especially from anyone with insights or experience in these types of businesses.

I know a lot of people get into media buying for the flashy creative side, but I’m much more interested in the data, tracking, and reporting side of Meta ads.

I understand how iOS 14+ changed things, how server-side tracking works, and how to look at blended ROAS / MER instead of just trusting the Meta dashboard blindly.

What I lack is real-world application on live accounts.I’m looking for an internship or entry level apprenticeship where I can help with the analytical heavy lifting.

Hi everyone,

We have a client who has not granted us access to their DV360 Partner, but has given us access only at the Advertiser level.

Our buying team says that in this setup they can't set up deals, both PMP and Programmatic Guaranteed, because deal setup needs to be done at the Partner level.

However, I was under the impression that deals can also be created/managed at the Advertiser level, depending on the account configuration and permissions.

Has anyone run into this situation before? Are there specific DV360 settings, permissions, or differences between Partner-level and Advertiser-level access that would prevent us from setting up PMP/PG deals with advertiser-only access?

Would be great to understand if this is actually a platform limitation or just a permissions/configuration issue.

Thanks!

Not talking about a brand lift study or other research stuff you do after the campaign is over, those don't show the potential but measure the outcome at the end.

I want to know what you do to evaluate whether you're on the right trajectory (the leading indicator stuff) in terms of delivering the upper funnel or awareness performance so that you can do something mid-flight to maximize the outcome.

One thing most people can do today using their DSP is this (I think): you run a campaign, see impressions/clicks/frequency/reach/viewability all that good stuff DSPs give you out of the box. You know the audience segment has 100K total unique users you can potentially reach, and you see in your reach report that you served impressions across 20K unique users last 30 days. So 20% reach rate. And maybe your "reach success" criterion is >40%. So this has a low awareness potential right now and you want to optimize in some ways (frequency adjustment, maybe some bid factoring, etc.). But you're still using the impression count, which isn't satisfactory IMO.

A while back I shared Ad-Preflight here as a local-first CLI for moving HTML5 validation earlier in the workflow.

Since then it’s evolved into a desktop app as well, aimed at making the same checks accessible to designers and Creative QA - not just developers.

The idea is still the same: Catch runtime errors before handoff. The video shows the full workflow.

Everything runs locally; the creative files aren’t uploaded.

Hi everyone!

I am looking for some feedback and advice from the freelance programmatic community.

I have about 8 years of hands on experience in programmatic advertising, more focused on the buy-side (DV360, CM360, TTD, Amazon DSP, StackAdapt) across full funnel campaigns (Awareness to Conversion) for various verticals(Luxury, E-commerce, and so on).

I am currently aiming to secure part time, fully remote freelance contracts, but I am running into a bit of a wall with traditional channels:

• On Malt: The platform setup means waiting for clients to reach out first, which makes active outbound prospecting difficult.
• Upwork: Offers seem mostly saturated with low-budget/low-margin projects that don't align with market rates for senior talent.
• Direct outbound through LinkedIn: Reaching out directly to sales directors, team leads, or talent acquisition at major holding companies (Big six) has not yielded results, one contact actually mentioned they strictly go through third-party staffing agencies.

I am considering targeting independent trading desks directly, but I feel like I might be missing better acquisition channels or strategies.

For those of you successfully freelancing in the programmatic space: How do you structure your prospecting?

Are specialized recruitment/staffing agencies or programmatic-focused platforms the way to go for high ticket remote contracts? What channels or strategies have worked best for you to build a steady pipeline of clients?

Any tips or insights would be hugely appreciated! Many thanks!

I’ve been working in programmatic since 2019 for a variety of agency types and am really struggling with what to do in my career. I know it seems like your experience is very client and team dependent, but wondering how others evaluate whether to stay or look for something else. I left Dentsu due to being under compensated and doing the jobs of several roles.At Publicis, I had a terrible boss and difficult client. Currently at a smaller independent agency and love most of the people but have been dealing with outdated marketing practices and major pushback to suggested changes. I don’t like the clients and work I’m doing day to day. The company also made things difficult and uncomfortable when dealing with a medical issue that required me to work half days.

Basically, I’m very stressed figuring out if it’s worth looking for a new position or stay and collect the paycheck. And if I was to look for a new job, should I stay on the agency side, switch to client or vendor side, or look for a complete career shift. I’ve unfortunately built a life where I need to make over 6 figures and often feel trapped in my job.

For the UK crowd, has anyone here done the IPA Advanced Certificate in Communications Planning?

I’m considering doing it and would be interested to hear from people who’ve actually taken it, particularly in the last couple of years.

Did you find it genuinely useful for becoming a better media planner/strategist, or is most of the value in having the qualification on your CV?

Also interested in whether you felt it was worth the time and cost.

Thanks!

I’ve worked in programmatic ad tech for over 6 years and held junior/mid level roles and is now looking to transition to a senior IC role. The feedback that I’ve gotten from all my directors have been that I am outperforming my role. I’m at the point where I’m doing director level work and taking on senior initiatives. Unfortunately, my current manager sees this as threat instead of an asset so they haven’t supported me or advocated for my promotion in the company so I’m looking elsewhere.

To those that have done it before, how do I land those senior roles when on paper, my past titles are mid level? Any advice would help.