Daily March 15

Any time a buyer has to sacrifice quality to meet a big-budget spending constraint, that buyer is in a lemon market and should exit until that hard reality trade-off can be overcome. It’s a critique often levied at the state of online advertising. But as long as ad tech vendors can deal with that inventory, media buyers don’t have to (i.e incorporate that trade-off cost into ROI) and the money keeps flowing. Read more below.

• The further out media buyers go into the online ad market to buy publisher inventory the more low-quality inventory they end up buying as a result.
• Rather than chasing a headline by having an NFT, brand marketers need to think about what that NFT can offer as well as if it makes sense for the brand’s purpose and audience. More in this Digiday+ Marketing Briefing.
• A year in, Overtime’s Elite basketball league secured several multi-million dollar sponsorship deals but is still searching for a white whale.
• The latest start-up from one of the godfathers of ad tech has struck a deal with Blockthrough to make low carbon ad inventory available via PMPs.

From our sister site, WorkLife:

• How Polish companies are transforming offices into refugee shelters for Ukrainians.
• With the rise in remote and hybrid work, the term “hybrid equity” is getting bandied around a lot more in management circles. But what does it mean, and why is it important?