As many within our industry will know, the demand side platform (DSP) is finally beginning to see the traction it deserves within the market. Google predicts that as little as 50 per cent of overall online budgets will be spent via DSPs in the next three years, so what do clients get as a result of this? Well, the answer is complete transparency, with the ability to pick and choose sites that best perform against the KPI's set by the client themselves.

One issue for advertisers raised by Adam Cahill on the Clickz blog is that we can now see how much useless inventory is being used to deliver impressions that will never create a conversion. However, content adjacent to your placement can still have a significant effect on how well it does. For example, an ad for good ISA interest rates next to an article about ISAs is a clear goal - but with a significant amount of low quality inventory/content across the internet, getting this kind of placement is becoming increasingly difficult.

MEC Opinion: DSPs have truly opened the eyes of many advertisers to a real problem. So, as transparency played a key role in 2010, maybe 2011 will see a greater focus on quality. It is this kind of advancement in technology that we as an agency will need to bear in mind, as continuing at a pace where the growth of low quality inventory outweighs the good quality, our placements could well suffer.

What may be required is the implementation of third party verification technologies. These sit across all campaigns monitoring and alerting the user to placements that appear in locations without approval - like Adexpose. It is certainly a longer process, but is something that is essential if display campaigns are to function at their best in quality inventory locations.