Digital Ads Can Find the Audience. Can Brands Trust the Placement?
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Book Matt to Speak →Precision is powerful. An advertiser also needs confidence about where the ad appears. On CNBC, Matt Britton examines digital advertising’s growth and the accountability questions facing Google, Facebook and major brands.
The discussion cites projected U.S. digital ad spending of $83 billion, compared with $70 billion for television. As budgets moved online, advertisers wanted clearer measurement and stronger protection against unsuitable placements.
Matt questions the assumption that television inherently offered better accountability. Digital platforms could identify more specific audiences, track engagement and adjust campaigns, while television often relied on broad demographic estimates.
The scale of online content created a different problem. With hundreds of hours uploaded to YouTube every minute, brands could find themselves alongside extremist or inappropriate material.
Matt calls for transparency, a zero-tolerance approach to harmful content and third-party audits in the near term. He sees content-recognition technology and AI-assisted moderation as part of the longer-term response.
He also considers the audience. Younger consumers were watching mobile and social content, often from independent creators. Brands had to work through the tension between precise targeting and control over context.
The interview looks ahead to more programmatic, addressable television, with connected sets behaving more like large tablets. It captures a moment when the media plan was becoming more measurable and the question of trust was becoming harder to delegate.
