Quality‑Led Advertisers Convert Nearly 57% of Programmatic Spend Into Benchmark‑Qualified Impressions

NEW YORK – Feb. 25, 2026 — The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) today released its Q4 2025 Programmatic Transparency Benchmark, confirming a decisive shift in programmatic advertising: media quality is now the primary driver of performance, not just cost efficiency.

 The latest data shows that advertisers enforcing disciplined quality governance converted 56.7% of programmatic spend into benchmark‑qualified programmatic impressions in Q4. Referred to in the ANA Benchmark as TrueAdSpend, this measure reflects the share of total programmatic investment that delivers impressions meeting preset quality criteria: fraud-free, measurable, viewable, and MFA-free. By comparison, lower‑performing advertisers converted just 37.5% of spend into benchmark‑qualified impressions. This widening gap signals a new phase of programmatic maturity, where execution quality determines outcomes.

While overall market performance softened amid rising delivery and viewability pressure, top performers improved quarter over quarter, demonstrating that quality‑led strategies outperform even in challenging market conditions.

“Programmatic has entered an accountability era,” said Bob Liodice, CEO of the ANA. “Transparency and efficiency are now table stakes. What separates winners is disciplined execution. Advertisers that actively govern quality are converting more of their budgets into benchmark‑qualified impressions, seeing measurably stronger results.”

Key Findings From Q4 2025:

• Quality Drives Performance
  For the first time, the Benchmark provides real‑world proof that improvements in media quality translate directly into stronger business outcomes. Advertiser case studies show that optimizing toward quality‑adjusted metrics, rather than CPM alone, delivered nearly 40% reductions in cost per conversion, even when nominal CPMs increased.
• The Quality Gap Widens
  Performance continues to polarize. While leading advertisers increased the share of spend converting into benchmark‑qualified impressions, the proportion of advertisers exceeding the 50% threshold declined from 50.0% in Q3 to 43.8% in Q4, concentrating gains among those actively managing quality.
• Delivery Quality, Not Transaction Costs, Is the Primary Constraint
  Transaction costs remained structurally controlled, particularly for top performers. However, losses driven by non‑viewable and non‑measurable delivery increased for many advertisers, confirming that cost control alone no longer delivers performance without quality governance.
• Curation Becomes the Operating Baseline
  Private marketplaces accounted for over 92% of median spend across environments and 100% of CTV transactions. At the same time, advertisers sharply reduced the breadth of supply accessed, consolidating investment toward trusted publishers. Open marketplace buying persisted, but became more selective, governed by inclusion lists and performance filters rather than scale‑driven reach.
• CTV Remains Central — With Measurement Trade‑Offs
  Connected TV represented approximately 40% of total programmatic spend in Q4, reinforcing its role as a core channel. While fraud remained minimal, structural measurement constraints tied to server‑side ad insertion and limited signal availability led to higher non‑viewable classifications. The data shows advertisers are accepting some measurement gaps in exchange for premium content and trusted environments, underscoring the need for CTV‑specific quality frameworks.
• User Experience Emerges as a Quality Multiplier
  For the first time, the ANA Benchmark expanded beyond transaction efficiency and verification to measure user and ad experience signals, including ad clutter, ads‑to‑content ratios, ads in view, and refresh behavior. These findings reveal hidden inefficiencies that low CPMs often mask, showing that technically compliant impressions can still undermine attention and outcomes. The data points to AI‑driven signal aggregation as the only scalable way to optimize quality without sacrificing reach.

The Bottom Line

The Q4 2025 findings confirm that programmatic advertising has entered a new maturity phase defined by curation, accountability, and outcome‑based optimization. Structural inefficiencies continue to decline, but performance is now determined by execution quality.

Advertisers that invest in log‑level transparency, multi‑signal quality frameworks, and disciplined governance convert more programmatic spend into benchmark‑qualified impressions — and achieve stronger results.

Quality is no longer a defensive control. It is the primary driver of programmatic performance.

About the ANA Programmatic Transparency Benchmark
Developed in partnership with TAG TrustNet and Fiducia, the ANA Programmatic Transparency Benchmark provides quarterly, impression‑level insights into programmatic media cost, quality, and performance. Built on log‑level data from leading advertisers and platforms, the Benchmark helps marketers identify waste, optimize quality, and improve outcomes across web, mobile, and CTV environments.

For more information or to participate in the Benchmark, visit ANA.net.

Press Contact
Jocelyn Weiss
[email protected]

About the ANA

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) is the definitive voice of the marketing industry. Since 1910, we have set and advanced the agenda for marketing transformation, connecting over 1,600 member companies to an influential global network, insights and resources that drive growth. Our members represent 20,000 brands and $400 billion in annual marketing investment. Through industry-leading research, the CMO Growth Council, and our proprietary Growth Agenda and Practices, the ANA empowers marketers to shape the future of marketing and create lasting impact for their organizations and the industry.

About TAG Trustnet
Launched by the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) and developed in partnership with Fiducia, TAG TrustNet is the industry’s always‑on utility for matching impression‑level log data at scale, enabling greater transparency, accountability, and efficiency across the programmatic supply chain.