/ PROGRAMMATIC ·Part of the Paid Engine

One audience.
Every premium surface.

Programmatic isn’t banners on junk sites — it’s the audience-first buying system that places one campaign across CTV, audio, and premium display. We layer first-party signal with curated inventory and block MFA domains before a single impression serves. Done right, it’s the most efficient awareness channel in paid media.

/ DSP CONSOLE · LIVE · Q4 LUXURY VELVET · 47D LEFT
BUDGET
$87.4K
OF $150K
PACING
ON TRACK
CPM AVG
$18.40
BLENDED
/ AUDIENCE ACTIVATION · LAYERED SIGNAL STACK
1st-Party CDP Audience
~2.4M users · CRM + site behavior
HIGHEST INTENT
Lookalike — 1% (Premium)
~12.8M users · derived from 1st-party seed
STRONG INTENT
Contextual — Modern Home Interiors
~6.1M impressions/day · page-level context
MID INTENT
3rd-Party — Premium Home Furnishings Buyers
~3.4M users · 3rd-party data
TEST BUDGET ONLY
94%Avg Viewability Across Active Campaigns
+412%Avg Brand Lift From Premium Inventory Curation
~247MFA Domains Blocked Per Engagement
/ The Programmatic Reality

Half of programmatic spend
never reaches a real person.

The dirty secret of programmatic isn’t fraud — it’s MFA. “Made-For-Advertising” sites, low-viewability inventory, and bot-style traffic absorb the budget that brands think is buying audience reach. The brands that win programmatic aren’t spending more — they’re curating better inventory and refusing to buy the rest.

Generic Programmatic · Most Agencies52% VIEWABILITY
Premium Inventory · 22%
Standard Inventory · 37%
MFA & Low-Quality · 41%
Curated Programmatic · Act Bold94% VIEWABILITY
Premium Inventory · 78%
Standard Inventory · 22%

The difference between 52% viewability and 94% viewability is a 1.8× effective CPM — without changing the campaign budget.

$67B
Estimated annual programmatic spend lost to MFA inventory.
Adalytics MFA Inventory Study · 2024
44%
of programmatic ad spend reaches Made-For-Advertising sites by default.
ANA Cross-Industry MFA Report · 2024
1.8×
Effective CPM improvement when inventory curation is run from day one.
Act Bold Multi-Campaign Curation Data · 2025
94%
Viewability average across Act Bold programmatic campaigns.
Act Bold Multi-DSP Performance Data · 2025
/ The Programmatic Stack

Four operations.
One programmatic engine.

Programmatic isn’t a single decision — it’s four overlapping operations executed inside DV360. Bid logic, audience activation, creative deployment, and supply path optimization run as a coordinated program — not as four siloed campaigns handed off to separate teams.

01

Real-Time Bidding

The auction infrastructure underneath every impression. Pacing logic, bid landscape curves, viewable-CPM targeting, outcome-based bidding — tuned inside DV360 Bid Manager to win the impressions that actually convert without overpaying for the ones that don't.

  • DV360 Bid Manager · pacing, bid landscape, viewable CPM targeting
  • Outcome-based bidding (CPA / ROAS goals replacing static CPM caps)
  • Bid multipliers by audience, daypart, device, geo, supply path
  • Latency-aware bidding — sub-100ms response to win premium inventory
02

Audience Targeting

The data layer that turns programmatic from spray-and-pray into precision media. First-party data onboarded through Floodlight, lookalike modeling at multiple expansion tiers, Google Audience Center segments, and contextual targeting — composed into a unified addressable audience inside DV360.

  • Floodlight tags + first-party CDP onboarding into DV360
  • Lookalike modeling at LAL 1% / 3% / 5% expansion tiers
  • Google Audience Center — in-market + affinity + life-events
  • Contextual targeting · page-level keyword and category match
03

Creative Formats

Every programmatic surface demands a different creative shape. Standard display, rich media HTML5, video pre-roll, native modules, audio spots, connected TV — produced through Creative Studio integration with brand safety controls enforced at the inventory level.

  • Standard display + rich media (HTML5, expandable, in-banner video)
  • Video pre-roll, mid-roll, 6s bumper, 15s + 30s skippable
  • Native sponsored modules + audio spots (15s + 30s)
  • Brand safety + suitability controls (IAS / DoubleVerify integrated)
04

Supply Path Optimization

The inventory hygiene that separates a $4 CPM that converts from a $4 CPM that gets binned by ad fraud. PMP deals with premium publishers, Authorized Buyers / ads.txt verification, traffic source quality scoring, supply path duplication detection — every impression we buy has been audited for path quality.

  • PMP (Private Marketplace) deals with premium publishers
  • Authorized Buyers + ads.txt + sellers.json verification
  • Open exchange filtered by traffic source quality + fraud score
  • Supply path duplication detection — one impression, one auction
/ Inventory Quality Dashboard

Premium inventory.
Curated. Verified. Measured.

The single highest-leverage decision in programmatic is which inventory you’re willing to buy. Most agencies optimize for cheap CPMs. We optimize for inventory that actually reaches humans on premium surfaces. Here’s the curation framework in production.

/ INVENTORY CURATION · LIVE · 12-WEEK ROLLING10 SOURCES MONITORED
Inventory SourceViewabilityCompletionBrand SafetyCPMStatus
YouTube CTV — Premium Channels98%92%99$24.40PREMIUMTOP TIER
Roku — Top 50 Apps96%89%98$21.80PREMIUMTOP TIER
Apple TV — Curated99%94%99$28.60PREMIUMTOP TIER
Hulu — Long-Form95%87%98$19.20PREMIUMPRIORITY
Spotify Audio — Premium100%*91%99$14.80PREMIUMPRIORITY
Podcast Networks — Tier 1100%*88%97$16.40PREMIUMPRIORITY
NYT + Premium Display89%n/a98$12.20STANDARDWHITELIST
Tier-2 Publisher Display67%n/a78$4.80TEST BUDGETMONITOR
Programmatic Mobile In-App72%n/a81$6.40TEST BUDGETMONITOR
MFA Display Network28%n/a42$1.20EXCLUDEDBLOCKED
* Audio is measured listen-through, not viewability.

The work of programmatic isn’t bidding. It’s curation. Premium inventory costs more per impression — and pays more per dollar.

94%
Avg Viewability Across Active Campaigns
247
MFA Domains Blocked Per Engagement (Avg)
78%
% Spend on Premium-Tier Inventory
1.8×
Effective CPM Lift From Curation
/ Programmatic Case Studies

Three brands.
Three different surface stacks.

From CTV-led brand reach to multi-surface integrated programmatic — three brands that turned programmatic from a black box into a measurable revenue channel.

CTV + DISPLAY · ENTERPRISE TECH

Lenovo Brazil

/ CTV-Led Brand Lift Program
+412%
Brand Lift Across Tracked Markets
96%
Avg Viewability Across Campaigns
$22 CPM
Premium CTV Avg · 32% Below Linear TV

CTV programmatic gave us linear-TV-quality reach with digital-channel precision. The brand lift numbers spoke for themselves.

See Case Study →
Lenovo Brazil — client photography
CTV + AUDIO · HOSPITALITY

MGM Grand

/ Multi-Surface Awareness + Conversion Program
+187%
Property-Visit Attribution From Programmatic
+64%
Booking Conversion From Audio Touchpoints
$14 CPM
Audio Programmatic Floor · 38% Below Display

CTV built the consideration set. Audio closed the booking. Programmatic is the only channel that runs both with one audience.

See Case Study →
MGM Grand — client photography
FULL STACK · AUTOMOTIVE ELECTRONICS

Cobra

/ Full-Surface Programmatic Stack
4.3×
Blended Programmatic ROAS Across All Surfaces
+58%
ROAS Lift After Surface Reallocation (Q2 → Q4)
78%
% Spend Concentrated In Premium-Tier Inventory

Running all four surface classes as one stack — with budget moving where the ROAS lives — is the single biggest unlock we've had on programmatic.

See Case Study →
Cobra — client photography
/ Investment

Programmatic scales with spend tier.

Strategy fee · $5,000/mo or 10% of ad spend, whichever is greater.

Same formula as all Paid Media channels. But programmatic has higher minimum spend thresholds than search or social — DSP minimums, learning-phase requirements, and surface diversification all push the floor up. Here’s what spend levels actually unlock.

/ TIER 01
$30–50K / month
Single-Surface Focus

CTV-only OR Audio-only. Concentrated on a single high-quality surface with first-party + lookalike audience activation. Floor where programmatic starts being competitive vs. paid search/social.

/ TIER 02
$75–150K / month
Multi-Surface Stack

CTV + Audio + Display, with audience continuity across surfaces. Cross-device frequency capping, surface-level reallocation, and meaningful brand lift measurement become possible at this spend tier.

/ TIER 03
$200K+ / month
Premium Full Stack

Full programmatic stack with premium inventory curation, dedicated audience engineering, custom DSP setup, brand-lift studies, and CTV + Audio + Display + Native + Mobile In-App running in integrated coordination.

Month-to-Month · 30-Day Cancel · 10% Annual Discount · Media Spend Billed Separately · Zero Markup on Ad Spend
Talk to us →See Full Paid Media Pricing →
/ Programmatic Questions

Five questions worth a real answer.

Pricing structure, minimum spend, MFA curation, CTV platform coverage, and how we measure programmatic performance beyond the DSP’s own reporting.

$5,000/month flat OR 10% of ad spend, whichever is greater — the same formula we use for Paid Search and Paid Social engagements. Zero markup on media spend. Every dollar to the DSP or publisher goes there directly. We take a fee for the strategy, audience engineering, inventory curation, and reporting — we don’t profit on your ad spend.

Roughly $30,000/month is the threshold below which programmatic stops being competitive against paid search and paid social. Below that, the DSP minimums eat your effective working media, the audience signals don't have enough volume to optimize against, and the surface diversification options shrink to "just one surface" — at which point you're better off concentrating spend in search or social. Above $75K/month is where multi-surface stacks become meaningful, and above $200K/month is where premium full-stack programmatic earns its keep.

Curation, not optimization. We start every engagement with a 247-domain MFA exclusion list (which grows per-engagement as new MFA sites are identified), a brand-unsafe category exclusion, and a premium-inventory whitelist scoped to your category. We run third-party verification (DoubleVerify or IAS) on every campaign for viewability + brand safety + invalid traffic. We refuse to buy programmatic inventory that doesn't pass quality thresholds — even if it's cheap. Most agencies optimize for low CPMs; we optimize for inventory that reaches humans.

Yes — CTV is the fastest-growing surface in our programmatic stack and where the majority of CTV-heavy budgets land. We buy CTV inventory across YouTube TV, Roku, Apple TV, Hulu, Peacock, Pluto TV, Tubi, and Disney Hotstar Ads — programmatically via DSPs (The Trade Desk, DV360, etc.) and via Programmatic Guaranteed (PG) deals where direct relationships are available. CTV is where digital programmatic genuinely competes with linear TV reach at substantially better targeting precision and CPMs.

Three measurement layers stacked: (1) standard delivery metrics (impressions, viewability, completion rate, frequency, reach) for media-plan accuracy, (2) audience-level metrics (1st-party CDP conversion attribution, lookalike performance, contextual lift) for targeting precision, (3) business outcome metrics (brand lift via third-party studies for awareness campaigns; conversion attribution + incrementality testing for direct-response campaigns). We report all three so you see both what the campaign delivered and what the campaign actually drove.

/ Let's Talk · Programmatic

Ready to curate the buy?

Tell Act Bold about your current programmatic stack, your inventory concerns, and where you suspect budget is leaking into MFA or low-quality surfaces. We’ll send back a no-fluff inventory audit covering CTV + Audio + Display surface quality, MFA exposure, and a 90-day premium curation plan — within 48 hours.

info@actbold.comactbold.com30-Day Cancel · Month-to-Month