Programmatic advertising has long promised scale, precision, and transparency. The open market, in particular, embodies that promise, a space where advertisers can reach audiences instantly and publishers can access global demand at speed. Agencies, in turn, can activate complex, data-driven strategies across multiple channels with a few clicks.
The challenge is not the open market itself. The challenge is entering it without structure, accountability, or critical thinking. When budgets flow freely through unverified supply paths, the same openness that fuels innovation also enables waste, fraud, and misplaced trust.
Why Fraud Thrives in the Open Market
The open marketplace connects thousands of publishers and buyers in milliseconds. This vastness is what makes it powerful, and it is also what makes it vulnerable. Alongside premium publishers sit MFA (Made-for-Advertising) sites, click farms, and impression factories that exist solely to capture ad budgets rather than user attention.
Analysts estimate that between 10 and 20 percent of programmatic spend vanishes into low-quality or fraudulent inventory. Fraudsters evolve quickly, shifting from domain spoofing and pixel stuffing to sophisticated AI-driven bots that mimic human behavior with uncanny precision.
The financial cost is obvious, yet the deeper impact lies in perception. Ads placed on MFA environments dilute brand integrity and distort performance metrics. Campaigns appear to overperform on clicks and impressions while underdelivering on genuine outcomes.
Why Advertisers Keep Feeding MFA Inventory
Many advertisers already know that part of their media budget lands in MFA environments, yet the pattern continues.
High click-through rates create the illusion of effectiveness. MFA sites are optimized for interaction, not relevance.
Low CPMs look attractive on spreadsheets. Cheap inventory can appear efficient even when it delivers zero business value.
Algorithmic optimization often reinforces the problem. Automated bidding systems prioritize engagement signals rather than brand safety, meaning that the system itself unknowingly rewards the very environments it should avoid.
The result is a cycle of false performance and wasted opportunity — campaigns that look productive on paper yet fail to generate real-world impact.
Guidelines for a Smarter Open Market
The open market does not need to be abandoned; it needs to be governed intelligently. The goal should not be exclusion, rather curation and accountability. Agencies and advertisers can retain the scale and flexibility of the open exchange by introducing structure and discipline.
-
Private Marketplaces (PMPs) offer direct access to verified publishers and minimize exposure to fraudulent traffic.
-
Curated Marketplaces from trusted SSPs create deal IDs that automatically exclude low-quality supply.
-
Supply Path Optimization (SPO) reduces complexity and strengthens transparency by consolidating spend through fewer, trusted SSP partners.
-
Verification and Pre-Bid Tools provide real-time scoring of inventory quality before a single bid is placed.
When these tools and principles are combined, the open market becomes not a liability but an asset, a competitive space with clear rules and measurable outcomes.
Open Market ≠ Open Chaos
The open market is not the enemy. The absence of standards, scrutiny, and responsibility is. Every euro spent in MFA ecosystems is a euro not invested in quality journalism, diverse storytelling, and sustainable publisher growth.
A structured open market can deliver the best of both worlds, scale and safety, reach and reliability. It can empower buyers to make informed decisions while rewarding publishers that create real value.
Final Takeaway
Ad fraud is not a problem confined to bad actors; it is a symptom of uncritical participation. The path forward is not retreat but reform.
-
Keep the open market open, yet guided by transparent frameworks.
-
Combine curated and private deals with verified supply paths.
-
Treat every impression as an investment, not a statistic.
The open exchange will always be the heartbeat of programmatic advertising. Its success depends not on restriction but on responsibility, on advertisers and agencies who choose to enter it with eyes open and standards high.
At ConnectAd, we live by these principles. By vetting our supply partners carefully, by investigating IVT (Invalid Traffic) whenever it occurs, and by enforcing strict content guidelines across our network, we ensure our inventory remains trustworthy and transparent. Through full adherence to IAB Tech Lab standards, we can proudly say that our supply is as brand-safe, premium, and fraud-free as programmatic advertising gets.
