• by Shirley Marschall , Featured Contributor, February 24, 2025

Ad tech's biggest failures keep making headlines: brand safety scandals, broken frequency capping, wasted media spend, lack of transparency, and measurement chaos. Each time, the response is the same: another tool, another framework, another promise to “fix” the problem.

But ad tech isn't broken. It's working exactly as it was built to, because it follows the wrong incentives.

At the root of every failure is a reality few want to acknowledge: misaligned marketing KPIs. The very metrics designed to measure success are fueling inefficiencies, short-term thinking, and a cycle of never-ending complexity.

Why Ad Tech Keeps Repeating the Same Mistakes

Marketing exists to drive sales. Sales teams judge marketing on immediate revenue impact. As a result, the easiest thing to measure becomes the most important KPI, even if it doesn't reflect true effectiveness.

When performance is measured in clicks, impressions, and ROAS, the system optimizes for those numbers, at the expense of everything else. That's why:

• Brand safety fails. If low-quality inventory delivers a lower cost per acquisition, brand reputation takes a backseat.
• Frequency capping remains broken. If success is measured in impressions, there's no reason to stop bombarding the same user.
• Measurement stays fragmented. If every platform reports its own success, why push for a unified standard?
• Ad tech vendors keep adding complexity. More tools, more integrations, more fees -- but not necessarily better results.

Even when advertisers push for change, every major player along the ad tech ecosystem profits from keeping inefficiencies alive. Fixing KPIs isn't just about better measurement, it’s about challenging an entire business model built on waste.

The Double-Edged Sword of Digital Measurement

For years, marketing leaders have referenced the famous quote: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half.“

Digital advertising was supposed to solve this problem. Instead, it made it easier to shift blame. The measurability of digital has forced CMOs to chase short-term metrics, proving immediate ROI rather than investing in long-term growth. Meanwhile, sales teams don't care about the mechanics of advertising, only whether the numbers add up.

The result? A system that continues to reward inefficiencies because it's easier to optimize for them than to change how success is measured.

There are plenty of ways to fix these problems -- better measurement frameworks, more collaboration, alternative targeting models -- but there's little demand to implement them. The system is delivering exactly what its KPIs reward.

What Needs to Change?

Fixing ad tech's biggest problems -- frequency capping, brand safety, and media inefficiencies -- doesn’t start with another tool. It starts with fixing the way brands measure success.

That means:

Redefining KPIs. Marketers need to shift focus from immediate performance metrics to long-term brand health.

Aligning incentives. Agencies and media buyers should be rewarded based on true outcomes, not just platform-reported success.

Moving beyond vanity metrics. Click-through rates and impressions don't drive business growth. incrementality, reach, and engagement do.

Ad tech isn't failing because it lacks solutions. It's failing because it isn't incentivized to implement them. The real problem isn't cookies, AI, or signal loss, it’s that the industry keeps optimizing for KPIs that were never designed for long-term success.

Fix the KPIs, and we fix the system.