The Online Ad Industry Is Undergoing Self-Reflection. That’s Good News.

On the one hand, there are some clear problems with how programmatic ads are placed. The industry is rife with complexity. This type of advertising is also quite new, so a lot of the machinery that runs the ad market is still in the works. But these problems are also fixable and should not obscure a larger truth:

Even though they are far from perfect, in many ways programmatic ads are creating a more efficient advertising market. And given that advertising pays for nearly the entirety of what we see and do online, the upside of all the hand-wringing is that we are now examining how all of that money gets spent — a process that should lead to better ads, and better media, too.