Index Exchange vs Jounce Media

Intelligence, Meet Impression: What Sell-Side Decisioning Means for Programmatic Advertising

New blog post from Index Exchange discussing sell-side decisioning in programmatic advertising, published Oct 23, 2026.

Ad industry tallies early losses from Apple Safari tracking block

Apple's latest Safari update has blocked tracking technologies used by major ad tech vendors, causing early revenue losses for publishers. Aditude reported a 10.5% drop in eCPMs among updated users, with Safari accounting for 11.7% of ad impressions and 11.4% of ad revenue for its clients. The impact is currently limited as only 8% of users have updated, but fears grow ahead of Q4. Some publishers with subscription models are less affected, while others worry about dependencies on blocked vendors. Apple's lack of communication and perceived favoritism towards its own ad network have drawn criticism. Index Exchange remains unaffected but calls the move an overreach. The Trade Desk's ad server was blocked but temporarily restored in a test version after a bug report.

• Apple's Safari update blocked tracking technologies used by major ad tech companies.
• Aditude reported eCPMs fell 10.5% among users with the update, impacting publishers' revenue.
• Safari accounts for 11.7% of ad impressions and 11.4% of ad revenue for Aditude's clients.

Index Exchange CEO: Sell-Side Innovation, CTV Transparency, AI Agents

In an interview with ADZINE, Andrew Casale, CEO of Index Exchange, discusses the evolution of programmatic advertising. He argues that sell-side innovation, including modeling and containerization, is increasing complexity but also value. Buyers can now run their own models on the sell-side, democratizing decision-making. Casale addresses the black box concern, noting that while the internal logic of buyer models is opaque, the platform observes their actions. He highlights the shift towards modular infrastructure, with Index enabling data providers and DSPs to run modules on its cloud. Regarding CTV, Casale emphasizes the need for more transparency, noting that while genre data is increasingly available, show and episode data remain limited due to legal and distribution issues. He discusses the evolution of pod serving and the role of agentic advertising, distinguishing between workflow automation and impression-level decisioning, which remains the domain of mathematical models. Casale sees AI agents as useful for automating manual tasks but not as a revolution that will shift power from walled gardens.

• Andrew Casale, CEO of Index Exchange, discussed sell-side innovation, CTV transparency, and AI agents in an interview.
• Index Exchange processes around 20 million requests per second.
• Most of Index Exchange's CTV supply includes genre data; show and episode data are often kept for direct deals.

Jamloop Launches Verified Supply for CTV Transparency

Jamloop, a performance CTV advertising platform, announced the launch of Jamloop Verified Supply, a new standard for sourcing, evaluating, and reporting streaming TV inventory. The initiative combines direct publisher relationships, granular campaign delivery data, and independent validation by Jounce Media. Verified Supply provides advertisers with channel-level reporting, show-level detail, impression timing, frequency, and geographic delivery data, along with access to log-level data for deeper analysis. Independent analysis by Jounce Media found that 98% of audited spend across Jamloop's supply partners was classified as premium direct. The offering applies across managed, co-managed, self-service, and white-label buying modes, with additional controls like allowlists, blocklists, and third-party IVT monitoring available.

• Jamloop launched Jamloop Verified Supply, a new CTV inventory standard.
• The standard combines direct supply, transparent delivery, and independent validation.
• Jounce Media independently validated 98% of audited Jamloop spend as premium direct.

IAB Tech Lab Defends ads.txt Against adagents.json Proposal

IAB Tech Lab's Senior Director of Programmatic, Hillary Slattery, published a rebuttal to a proposed 'adagents.json' standard, arguing that the existing ads.txt, sellers.json, and Supply Chain Object specifications already provide comprehensive supply path validation. She refutes claims that ads.txt lacks property identification, country-level authorization, and direct path marking, noting these are supported via OWNERDOMAIN, sub-domains, and DIRECT/RESELLER fields. Slattery warns that a new unverified standard could disrupt the ecosystem and emphasizes the importance of dual-verification for DSPs to block unauthorized sellers. She encourages industry collaboration through the Programmatic Supply Chain Working Group and highlights Jounce Media's research showing 98% of bid streams enable independent validation of directness.

• adagents.json has been proposed as a new standard to replace ads.txt, but IAB Tech Lab argues it is unnecessary and inaccurate.
• ads.txt supports property identification via the OWNERDOMAIN field and sub-domain structure for country-level authorization.
• The Supply Chain Object provides an audit trail of bid request paths, complementing ads.txt and sellers.json.

More Ads Don't Mean More Revenue — Frequency

Frequency's Head of Monetization, James Smith, argues on a State of Streaming podcast that increasing ad load (more ads per pod) often reduces revenue and viewer effectiveness. He cites rising FAST channel supply and low discovery driving fill-rate problems, and points to Jounce Media research showing fewer ads can raise conversion and CPMs. Frequency's in-scene ad product uses AI video introspection to place contextual ads inside content, and the company says its upstream position at channel origination and server-side ad insertion improves supply-path cleanliness. The episode also previews an 'ad balancer' that pairs pod reduction with in-scene units and real-time, geography-aware dynamic creative.

• James Smith leads monetization at Frequency.
• Frequency promotes an in-scene advertising product that uses AI video introspection to place contextual ad moments during content.
• Article cites Jounce Media research claiming fewer ads increase conversion rates and premium CPMs.