Custom bidding, attention and sustainable media
WPP / GroupM · 2022 – 2025
Context
Programmatic buying across global advertisers, where default optimisation rewards low cost per impression regardless of whether anyone sees the ad.
The problem
Advertisers wanted media that was actually attended to, and increasingly wanted to reduce the carbon intensity of their delivery, but buying platforms optimise for what they can easily measure.
Approach
- Translated attention and carbon-intensity signals into scores a bidding algorithm could act on.
- Built and deployed custom bidding logic in the buying platforms rather than leaving it as analysis.
- Ran controlled comparisons against default optimisation before rolling changes out.
- Documented the method so trading teams could apply it across accounts.
Result
Buying shifted towards inventory selected on attention and sustainability criteria across participating accounts. Specific campaign results and award recognition are being confirmed before publication.
If a principle is not encoded in the thing that spends the money, it stays a slide. Getting a signal into the bid is where strategy becomes behaviour.