Ad Tech Briefing: The Programmatic Governance Council is a bid to reset power dynamics

Documentation reviewed by Digiday shows that the underlying business issues, especially around bid density, duplication, and sky-high operational costs, amount to billions in wasted spend annually. The council’s formation marks the latest attempt to formally bridge these divides before yet another standards fight erupts.

What the council is — and isn’t

The council’s first meeting will gather 25 to 30 companies, spanning agencies, publishers, demand- and supply-side platforms, and companies representing smaller publishers, although no brand representation is planned as yet. However, that could be intentional as brand-side teams typically aren’t the ones grappling with auction mechanics, identity conflicts, or supply-path anomalies.

IAB Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur said the driving principle is straightforward: the industry has been trying to solve a business problem primarily through technical levers. “There are discussions that need to happen up here between buyers and sellers,” he said, adding that tech should facilitate — not dictate — those requirements. 

This reflects a broader frustration that emerged during an October town hall held to facilitate the ongoing debate over GPID/TID, which took place after October’s Prebid Summit. Several attendees told Digiday this debate centered heavily on technical specifications while the business foundations beneath them remained unaligned. However, with popular estimates placing the “ad tech tax” at approximately 30%, with bid-request duplication often reaching 40x (relative to real inventory), the impetus to bridge this gap is clear.

Why now: the grand bargain context

The upcoming council sits firmly against the backdrop of what some are calling the “Grand Bargain” — a proposed reciprocal agreement intended to break the impasse over TID and GPID. As laid out in documentation reviewed by Digiday, the bargain proposes that DSPs adopt multi-bid responses (returning the top five bids rather than a single winner), while publishers implement TID/GPID as intended and abandon per-advertiser price floors. The underlying goal is to cut duplicative traffic, preserve publisher yield, and drastically reduce operational overhead — a delicate alchemy to achieve.

The logic is rooted in bid density. Modeling suggests publisher yield climbs meaningfully until bid density reaches roughly eight valid bids per auction. But because DSPs rarely send more than one bid, publishers have resorted to duplicating bid requests to compensate, inflating supply to get more demand.

The result is a costly equilibrium that documentation reviewed by Digiday estimates wastes $5 billion globally every year. However, sell-side sources often highlight how “we [publishers] don’t get rewarded when we do the right thing” when this impact is put to them.

Speaking with Digiday, Katsur didn’t explicitly endorse the “Grand Bargain” but echoed its spirit, i.e., define the business rules first, then let technology adjust. The council will not be asked to rubber-stamp that proposal, but those themes — reciprocity, incentives, accountability — will sit at the core of the December discussion.

Addressing cynicism about yet another council

The industry’s skepticism is hard-earned. Standards bodies and working groups often struggle to produce enforceable change, and the recent months-long dispute over TID highlighted how quickly consensus can collapse once commercial incentives misalign.

Katsur acknowledged the concern of the latest efforts being widely considered as just another talking shop, adding, “We don’t know yet… there’s not enough meat on the bone.” However, this time around, he stressed, what really matters is follow-through — whether the group leaves the room with commitments that can be acted upon rather than debated indefinitely. 

That’s also why the composition of the group is designed to prioritize the industry’s primary constituents: buyers (agencies in this case) and publishers. In Katsur’s view, the presence of platforms like Google, Amazon or The Trade Desk is less likely to dominate the conversation if their customers — the people who rely on their ad tech — are actively setting expectations.

Guarding against Big Tech dominance

Still, concerns of platform dominance are real. Tech Lab membership includes the largest demand and supply platforms, any of which could steer conversations toward their preferred technical paths.

Katsur countered such assertions, adding that agencies and publishers (as the principals in every programmatic transaction) will anchor the council’s work. “Their customers are in there,” he said of the dominant platforms. Per the Tech Lab CEO, the dynamic changes when the conversation starts with what agencies need to buy and what publishers need to sell, rather than what intermediaries prefer to build. 

Sources consulted by Digiday, many of whom requested anonymity to maintain relationships, stated that many of the underlying inefficiencies — from bid-request duplication to ambiguous identity signals — stem from misaligned incentives among intermediaries, not a lack of technological capability. If the principals set the rules, proponents argue, the tech layer must follow.

Will there be a transparency charter?

Some in the market have suggested a formal transparency charter as a ground rule for signal sharing and price-floor practices, i.e., the “grand bargain.”

However, rather than a formalized charter, Katsur spoke of a more pragmatic model whereby agencies and publishers hold their own partners accountable. For example, if a DSP agrees to honor a set of signals or business practices, the burden is on the agency to ensure it does. Subsequently, if an SSP agrees to avoid certain types of duplication, the publisher must enforce it.

Will the council become a standing body?

Dec. 10 is explicitly not a one-off session, although Katsur told Digiday he expects subsequent meetings — possibly monthly — depending on how quickly alignment forms. Whether it becomes a permanent governance entity within the Tech Lab is still undecided, but Katsur signaled that regular cadence would be “healthy,” especially given the frequency with which misunderstandings and misaligned incentives derail progress. 

Hence, the industry’s search for a more rational programmatic marketplace, one where business rules precede technical specs, costs fall, and transparency improves, continues even at the onset of the AI era.

At worst, it becomes another forum unable to bridge systemic economic divides. But for now, the December kickoff represents something the industry insists it wants: agencies and publishers setting the tone — and the rules — for how digital media should be bought and sold.

What we’ve heard

“Meta makes more money from scam ads than all news outlets make from digital and print advertising. This means last year, scammers paid more money to Meta than legitimate advertisers paid to all digital and print news outlets.”

— Internal documents from late 2024 stated that that year Meta was projected to earn about 10% of its overall annual revenue — about $16 billion — from illicit advertising. One industry observer contextualized that finding startlingly.

Numbers to know

• 1,800: The number of engineers Amazon fired in its recent RIF, according to reports citing WARN information in New York, California, New Jersey, and Washington.
• 4,000: The number of job losses, or “synergies” to be gleaned from the IPG-Omnicom merger. 
• 10%: The annual organic net revenue drop forecast by S4 Capital last week, its shares fell more than 6% in the immediate aftermath.
• 50%: The number of advertisers that plan budget increases, despite economic uncertainty, in 2026, per Ebiquity.

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