Programmatic

Last year, Super Bowl LIX drew an estimated 191.1 million unique viewers, setting a new record in 2025. Once again, the NFL championship game proved that it remains the single largest television event in the United States, and every Super Bowl season brings the same question back into focus for advertisers: Are people still watching sports on traditional TV? The answer is yes – but not like they used to.

2025 will likely be remembered as the year when all the predictions, noise, and media shifts became too big to ignore. For years, advertisers heard about looming disruption – AI, streaming, creator economies, consolidation – but this past year is when those forces fully materialized. We’ve seen the integration of AI into virtually every workflow, dramatic shifts in how consumers discover and relate to brands, and the early warning signs of potential issues as mega-corporations continue to grow and consolidate their power.

As tools and technologies evolve, so too do the methods of bad actors looking to make a buck off advertiser’s honest work. Enter SIVT, or Sophisticated Invalid Traffic. This term describes the next generation of MFA and – as the name suggests – they can be complicated to detect and avoid. Let’s take a look at some examples of SIVT and discuss how Genius Monkey advertisers can beat the new Bots.

One of the many draws of programmatic advertising is the promise of efficiency, but there are plenty of examples of businesses taking “efficiency” too far. In this week’s blog from Genius Monkey, we’re taking a look at another way some advertisers cut out too many steps with the issue of programmatic “black boxes.” Let’s dive in! What is a Programmatic Black Box? A black box is a system where advertisers spend ad money with little control as to how, when, and where ads are placed.

The last year has seen many shake-ups to the advertising world; big platforms shutting down, Google losing multiple advertising-related court cases, and the ever-evolving machinations of MFA. One thing that doesn’t change is the Genius Monkey platform’s ability to reach your audience: any audience! Genius Monkey users represent a vast variety of verticals across multiple programmatic channels. We’re always talking about following the data; let’s see what the data has to say!

We at Genius Monkey have been riding this horse for some time, shouting “CTV is coming, CTV is coming!” For the last few years, audiences have been flocking to the cheaper versions of streaming services that include advertisements, propelling OTT/CTV to the fastest-growing programmatic medium. The best time to get a CTV strategy was 5 years ago, but the second-best time is right now. Join Genius Monkey as we dive into how to build a killer CTV campaign and jump on the wave of ad-supported streaming.

The tech industry is barreling toward a future powered by AI, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it at this point. What advertisers CAN do is make sure they’re using new technologies correctly and avoiding the pitfalls that can come with rapid adoption. Artificial intelligence has a lot of potential for good and ill, and Genius Monkey is here to explore a few of the possibilities the future is now offering.

Like any career, digital marketing has its highs and lows with meaningful payoffs and its fair share of annoyances. This week, Genius Monkey is taking a look at some of the most common complaints that marketers have shared about the process of creating and running digital marketing campaigns. We’re not just looking to commiserate; there are steps you can take alleviate or outright solve some of these issues, so let’s jump in:

As reported by AdWeek on May 8th, 2025 – just a week after emailing publishers asking them to adopt the new product – Amazon has killed their privacy program that would allow advertisers to better integrate with Google’s new Privacy Sandbox. This would have allowed advertisers using Amazon’s DSP to target users based on Google’s retargeting data. What does this mean for the future of cookie-less advertising and user data?

The Genius Monkey platform is all about efficiency, but what happens when the “optimization” does more harm than good? Just as cutting out the DSP step leads to long-term loss, removing programmatic channels like display, audio, OTT, or video might cost less in the short-term, but weakens the overall advertising strategy and inevitably cuts into the bottom line. Programmatic ads work best when they work together, allowing the strengths of each medium to overcome the drawbacks of the others.