This article was based on the interview with Infolinks CEO Bob Regular on getting ad tech to work better for brands by Greg Kihlström, AI and MarTech keynote speaker for The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström podcast. Listen to the original episode here:
There’s a prevailing narrative in the ad tech world, one that we as marketing leaders have all heard, absorbed, and likely acted upon. It’s the gospel of optimization, which preaches that the shortest path is the holiest. The concept of Supply Path Optimization (SPO) has become so ingrained in our strategic lexicon that questioning it feels like heresy. The logic is seductively simple: a more direct route from advertiser to publisher must be more efficient, transparent, and cost-effective. It’s an easy story to tell the CFO and a clear directive to give our media buying teams. But what if this relentless focus on trimming the supply chain is a strategic misdirection?
What if, in our zeal to create the most efficient path, we’ve forgotten to ask if it’s the most effective one? The digital media landscape is not a simple point-A-to-point-B journey. It’s a complex, dynamic ecosystem where value is created in nuance—in the data, the context, and the proprietary placements that don’t always lie on the most direct route. As leaders, our role is not just to follow the prescribed best practices but to build a media operating model that is resilient, intelligent, and aligned with long-term brand value. This requires moving beyond the simple mantra of “shorter” and embracing the more sophisticated pursuit of “smarter.” It’s time we challenge the conventional wisdom and explore how a more thoughtful approach to media paths can unlock competitive advantages the rest of the market is simply bypassing.
The Siren Song of the Shortest Path
The industry’s obsession with SPO is understandable. It emerged from a genuine need to clean up a murky and often bloated programmatic supply chain. The promise of reducing hidden fees and increasing working media dollars is one no responsible marketing leader can ignore. However, when a strategic concept calcifies into dogma, it risks becoming a blunt instrument rather than a precision tool. By issuing mandates to “cut off all the indirect paths,” brands may be inadvertently closing themselves off from valuable inventory and unique opportunities for engagement. Bob Regular, CEO of Infolinks Media, likens this to blindly following the shortest route on a navigation app without considering the actual experience of the drive.
“You go on Google Maps and you say, ‘I wanna go to a destination,’ and it’ll give you three options, and the shortest option is not necessarily the best experience, and it’s not necessarily the best outcome. It may bring you through a neighborhood with a lot of traffic stops and… a lot of stop signs and traffic lights, and you don’t like that. You’d prefer to take the highway, and, uh, it’s a much better experience and a better outcome.”
This analogy perfectly captures the nuance we’re missing. An indirect path might offer access to proprietary ad formats, better engagement signals, or more sophisticated contextual data that a direct buy simply cannot provide. When every competitor is fighting over the same direct-path inventory, the result is a crowded, commoditized auction where the only lever to pull is a higher bid. This creates a strategic echo chamber. As Regular points out, if everyone is executing the exact same lean-and-mean strategy, where is the competitive advantage? The truly agile brand leader understands that advantage is found not in following the herd, but in intelligently exploring the alternative routes that others have dismissed out of a philosophical, rather than data-driven, adherence to “efficiency.” The challenge is to shift the conversation from path length to path value, demanding to know not just if a path is direct, but if it is delivering superior outcomes.
Navigating the Post-Signal Era
The conversation around media paths is unfolding against the backdrop of a much larger industry shift: the steady erosion of deterministic signals. With the slow demise of the third-party cookie, combined with privacy regulations and changes in user behavior, the reliable signposts we’ve used for targeting are disappearing. This tectonic shift is forcing a return to fundamentals, but with a significant technological upgrade. Many organizations are still clinging to the hope that a new one-to-one identifier will emerge, but the reality is that the future of targeting is not deterministic, but predictive.
“Signal is deprecating. That’s what what’s happening. It is continually deprecating, and as a result, over time, there will just be less deterministic signal. And… we’re going to have to accept we’re moving greatly towards a predictive signal environment… you have to embrace predictive signal. And contextuality is one of those predictive signals that are… present, it’s everywhere, and it’s valuable.”
This is where the power of modern AI becomes a critical asset. The contextual targeting of today bears little resemblance to the blunt keyword-matching of the past. As Regular explains, it’s no longer about whether the word “mortgage” appears 25 times on a page. Advanced AI allows us to analyze the sentiment, the nuance, and the mood of the content to find environments that align with a brand’s message on a much deeper level. For a marketing leader, this means re-educating teams and re-tooling strategies. The focus must shift from chasing individual users across the web to identifying the moments and contexts where your audience is most receptive. This approach is not only more privacy-compliant but can also be more effective, creating a stronger connection by meeting customers in a relevant environment rather than simply following them around based on their browsing history. Embracing this predictive future requires a mindset shift from absolute certainty to intelligent probability, leveraging technology to make smarter bets on where your audience will be and what they’ll care about.
Building a Resilient, Future-Proofed Model
In an environment of constant change—deprecating signals, fracturing attention spans, and evolving consumer behavior—the ultimate goal is not to perfect an operating model for today, but to build one that is resilient enough for tomorrow. The principles of future-proofing a media strategy have less to do with specific technologies and more to do with foundational tenets of marketing that withstand the test of time. It starts with a relentless curiosity about your customer and a sober acknowledgment of the environment you’re operating in.
“Attention span is getting shorter, which means you have more noise, and when you have more noise, you need to break out… your message and your creative has to be memorable. When you have less time and less attention span, you have to do an extraordinary job with your message being crisp and clear, and it be memorable. If you do not make it memorable, then you will not make an impression. And if you think about what you spend your marketing dollars on, you’re buying impressions… Well, I ask every CEO, CMO, CFO, and then their agency, ‘Have you made an impression today?’”
This question cuts through all the industry jargon and technical complexity. It reframes the entire enterprise of media buying, from a quantitative exercise in delivering ad calls to a qualitative mission of creating impact. In a world of fleeting attention, a forgettable ad is not just a partially wasted dollar; it is a completely wasted one. No impression was made. Building a resilient model means internalizing this. It means fostering a culture where creative excellence is seen as just as crucial as media efficiency. It means constantly re-evaluating who your audience is right now, not who they were last quarter, and adjusting your contextual and targeting strategies accordingly. And it means communicating this value up the chain. The CEO and CFO may not understand the nuances of SPO, but they absolutely understand the concept of making a memorable impression that drives business growth. Translating our technical strategies into this language of fundamental business impact is perhaps the most critical skill for a modern marketing leader.
In our pursuit of agility and optimization, it’s easy to get lost in the mechanics of the digital supply chain. We chase acronyms and adopt industry-wide philosophies because they provide a sense of control and a clear, defensible logic. Yet, true leadership lies in the ability to look beyond the prevailing consensus and ask more profound questions. Is the most efficient path truly the most valuable one? Are we preparing for a future of predictive signals, or are we clinging to the deterministic past? And most importantly, in our quest to buy millions of impressions, are we actually making one?
The path forward requires a more balanced and sophisticated approach. It demands that we treat media buying not as a simple procurement function to be streamlined at all costs, but as a strategic capability for creating tangible business value. This involves rigorous testing, a willingness to explore less-traveled paths, and a deep integration of creative strategy with media execution. By shifting our focus from shorter paths to smarter ones, we can build a media operating model that is not only more effective today but is also inherently more agile and resilient for the inevitable changes of tomorrow. That is how we move beyond simply managing complexity and start turning it into a competitive advantage.
