Advertising executive says programmatic buying "feels very broken"

Cameron Armstrong joined VCCP three months ago as Addressable Director to build out the agency's programmatic offering. In a September 17, 2025 conversation with ExchangeWire, Armstrong outlined his perspective on fundamental problems plaguing digital advertising and proposed solutions centered on valuing individual impressions rather than chasing audience segments.

Armstrong described the current state of programmatic advertising as "very broken," pointing to what he characterizes as a collapsed value exchange between advertisers, publishers, and consumers. Digital spending now accounts for approximately 65% of total advertising budgets. Of that digital spend, roughly 70% flows to Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Meta, according to Armstrong's assessment.

This concentration has created what Armstrong calls a "race to the bottom." Publishers struggle financially, leading them to place more advertisements on their pages. Consumers face an onslaught of ads that frequently obscure content. Advertisers question whether their spending generates meaningful results or simply enriches platforms without driving business outcomes.

The industry has prioritized efficiency metrics over actual effectiveness, Armstrong argued. "We've kind of been chasing efficiency rather than effectiveness," he said. This approach manifests in programmatic advertising through reliance on audience segments and identifiers that Armstrong considers inaccurate. Common targeting methods define consumers as "car buyers" for six months after a purchase or show running shoe advertisements to people who recently completed that transaction.

Armstrong proposed shifting focus from audience segments to evaluating each impression individually. "How valuable is that impression for my brand?" he asked, framing this as the central question advertisers should ask. His methodology involves building custom relevance scores for brands using AI tools, web scraping capabilities, attention proxies, and quality metrics.

The broken model extends beyond display advertising into search and e-commerce platforms, Armstrong noted. Google and Amazon operate what he described as "black boxes of efficiency" that claim to drive conversions without transparency about whether those conversions are incremental or would have occurred anyway. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg represents an extreme version of this approach, Armstrong suggested, with proposals to automate creative processes entirely and let AI systems handle campaign execution.

Complete automation creates a "sea of sameness" that eliminates brand differentiation, Armstrong warned. He believes creativity remains the essential distinguishing factor in advertising effectiveness.

Armstrong's role at VCCP brings together creative and media functions that typically operate separately at different agencies. VCCP, the largest creative agency in the UK, has produced campaigns including Compare the Market's Meerkat character. The agency's leadership, including CEO James Murphy and CSO Will Gallagher, joined VCCP 18 months before Armstrong with the premise that advertising suffers from the disconnect between creative development and media planning.

The current CPM pricing model creates misaligned incentives, Armstrong explained. A strategy of "fewer ads but better ads" cannot function within traditional CPM frameworks because reduced ad volume means lower publisher revenue even if individual placements become more effective. Armstrong referenced Goodhart's Law—the principle that measured targets cease to be useful when they become targets themselves—as applicable to CPM metrics.

Quality CPM or attention-weighted CPM models represent improvements over standard CPM pricing, Armstrong suggested. These approaches attempt to value ad placements based on factors beyond simple impression counts.

Armstrong expects AI and automation tools to make optimal media buying "table stakes" within approximately three years. Once these capabilities become widely accessible, creative quality will emerge as the primary lever for advertising effectiveness, he predicted. VCCP's programmatic strategy reflects an understanding that technical buying capabilities will eventually become commoditized.

Social media platforms now offer creative testing environments that Armstrong finds valuable. TikTok's algorithm evaluates content quality independently of follower counts, making the platform useful for testing which messages resonate with audiences. Armstrong and a friend built an app and discovered through TikTok posting that high-effort content sometimes generates minimal views while low-effort posts perform well, demonstrating the platform's utility for creative validation.

VCCP has begun implementing creative testing frameworks with integrated accounts that examine both media performance and creative effectiveness. Armstrong anticipates developing case studies demonstrating this approach over the coming year.

The agency is working to extend high-quality creative work beyond television into digital channels. Armstrong sees this as necessary given digital's dominance in advertising budgets, but acknowledges the transition requires changing established workflows and mindsets.

Armstrong compared the current situation unfavorably to television advertising from 30 years ago, when ads were "some of the playground talk and people loved them." That era featured a straightforward value exchange: advertisers paid agencies a 15% commission, agencies placed ads on quality programming, and consumers received entertaining creative content in exchange for their attention.

Recreating that balanced exchange in digital environments requires participation from all stakeholders—publishers, advertisers, and agencies—Armstrong stated. No single entity can fix the system independently.

Local news websites exemplify the problem. Sites load pages with numerous advertisements, pop-ups, and endless scroll formats that degrade user experience while failing to provide adequate revenue to publishers. This degradation occurs despite—or because of—publishers' desperate attempts to generate income as their business models erode.

The advertising technology ecosystem's complexity compounds these challenges. Multiple intermediaries extract value between advertisers and publishers. AI developments further pressure publishers' economic models. These forces combine to push publishers toward placing more ads in more intrusive formats, which alienates consumers and reduces advertising effectiveness.

Armstrong's three-month tenure at VCCP positions him early in implementing his vision. The agency's integrated structure—combining creative excellence with media planning under one roof—provides a foundation for testing whether Armstrong's approach to programmatic buying can deliver improved outcomes for advertisers, publishers, and consumers simultaneously.

The broader industry faces questions about whether Armstrong's proposed solutions can scale beyond individual agencies or clients. Structural incentives in digital advertising currently reward volume and efficiency. Shifting those incentives toward quality and effectiveness requires coordination across fragmented industry participants with competing interests.

Timeline

• 18 months ago - VCCP CEO James Murphy and CSO Will Gallagher joined the agency
• 3 months ago - Cameron Armstrong joined VCCP as Addressable Director
• September 17, 2025 - Armstrong discussed programmatic challenges with ExchangeWire

Related coverage:

• The challenges facing programmatic advertising in 2025
• How creative agencies are integrating media buying
• Publisher revenue models under pressure

5 Ws Summary

Who: Cameron Armstrong, Addressable Director at VCCP, a major UK creative agency

What: Armstrong characterizes programmatic advertising as fundamentally broken, with misaligned incentives creating poor outcomes for advertisers, publishers, and consumers. He proposes valuing individual impressions using AI-powered quality and relevance scoring rather than relying on audience segments

When: Armstrong joined VCCP three months before his September 17, 2025 interview with ExchangeWire to build the agency's programmatic capabilities

Where: The problems Armstrong describes affect digital advertising broadly, with approximately 65% of advertising budgets now allocated to digital channels and 70% of that digital spend flowing to Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Meta

Why: Concentration of spending among major platforms, proliferation of ad tech intermediaries, pressure on publisher business models, and industry focus on efficiency over effectiveness have created what Armstrong calls a "race to the bottom" that serves no stakeholder well