Spektre, an Amsterdam-based SaaS startup, has completed a comprehensive data analysis demonstrating significant quality disparities in programmatic advertising placements. The study, conducted in partnership with Dutch garden-furniture retailer Kees Smit, analysed 2,092 domains where the retailer’s advertisements appeared and uncovered a striking finding: high-quality website placements convert up to 40 times better than low-quality ones.
Uncovering Programmatic Advertising Inefficiencies
The research highlights a fundamental disconnect in how digital advertising budgets are currently allocated and measured. Rather than focusing on traditional metrics such as reach or cost-per-impression, the analysis demonstrates that the true determinant of advertising effectiveness lies in the contextual quality of the websites hosting those advertisements.
According to Tim Geenen, “In programmatic advertising the line between budget that yields and budget that disappears is not about reach or price, but about the quality of the website where the ad appears.” This observation underscores a critical gap in how the industry evaluates media buying performance and suggests that substantial portions of advertising spend may be generating negligible returns.
The Kees Smit case study provides concrete evidence of these inefficiencies. By examining performance data across nearly 2,100 different domains, Spektre identified clear patterns distinguishing high-performing placements from those that fail to drive meaningful conversions. This granular analysis reveals opportunities for advertisers to substantially improve their return on ad spend through more strategic placement decisions.
Building a New Industry Standard
Rather than treating these findings as isolated insights, Spektre plans to leverage the dataset to establish a new key performance indicator specifically designed to measure media quality. The startup intends to offer this framework to both advertisers and media agencies, potentially reshaping how the industry evaluates and purchases programmatic advertising inventory.
This approach addresses a long-standing challenge in digital marketing: the difficulty of standardising quality metrics across diverse websites and publisher networks. By creating a more objective measure of placement quality, Spektre aims to reduce the opacity that currently characterises programmatic buying and enable more efficient allocation of advertising budgets.
Broader Implications for European Adtech
The research comes at a time when European advertisers face increasing pressure to demonstrate marketing efficiency and accountability. With privacy regulations such as GDPR limiting traditional tracking methods, the ability to optimise based on contextual factors—such as website quality—becomes increasingly valuable.
Spektre’s findings suggest that the programmatic advertising ecosystem may be significantly underperforming due to structural inefficiencies rather than fundamental limitations in the channel itself. For European agencies and advertisers seeking to improve campaign performance without expanding budgets, identifying and prioritising higher-quality placements could represent a meaningful opportunity for improvement.