What a Supply Path Review, a rebuilt supply path, and weekly Vi-Agent monitoring are designed to change for a national snack brand. Every figure is modeled on the ANA Programmatic Transparency Benchmark for Q2 2026.
Picture a national snack brand spending $3M a year on programmatic display, video, and CTV through an agency trading desk on a major DSP. Monthly reports show low CPMs and steady delivery. Nobody has traced the money from the budget to the impression, so nobody can say how much of it reaches a real consumer.
Reported CPM for the benchmark’s lower-performing advertisers. The dashboard looks efficient.
Their true cost per quality impression, once non-measurable, non-viewable, and invalid impressions come out.
Share of their spend lost to inventory that cannot be measured at all.
We trace every dollar from budget to impression: each intermediary and what it takes, reseller hops, placement-level quality including made-for-advertising sites, how conversions are counted, and what the contracts say about rebates, data ownership, and audit rights. The brand gets a written report and a working session with our leadership.
We consolidate spend onto direct paths and remove resale hops. CTV and premium video move to direct supply on the exchange our group runs, with 50+ direct supply relationships. Non-measurable and made-for-advertising inventory is blocked, floors and frequency caps are reset, and every fee is agreed in writing.
Every week, Vi-Agent ranks what changed across paths, inventory, and outcomes, and proposes the fix with the evidence behind it. A ViSTARS trader approves each change before it runs, and every decision is logged for the brand to review.
Supply paths drift. Publishers add resellers, floors move, new apps slip into the mix. Vi-Agent watches the paths, the inventory, and the outcomes between reviews, so the gains from the review do not erode in the next quarter.
Every route from the DSP to the publisher, with the fee on each.
Viewability, measurability, and made-for-advertising flags.
How conversions are counted, and what incrementality tests show.
Sample data in the layout of a real Vi-Agent brief. Real briefs stay inside the brand’s workspace.
We apply the benchmark’s bottom-tier and top-tier rates to the brand’s $3M. Nothing else changes: same budget, same channels, same agency fee. The difference is where the money goes.
| Measure | Bottom tier | Top tier | On a $3M budget |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spend that reaches a quality impression | 31.1% | 52.3% | $933K to $1,569K (+$636K) |
| Spend lost to non-measurable inventory | 22.7% | 10.4% | $681K to $312K (−$369K) |
| True cost per thousand quality impressions | $13.80 | $11.94 | −13.5% |
This is the benchmark’s range, not a promise. Top performers already show the gap can close: in the same benchmark cycle, Kimberly-Clark reported cutting its TrueCPM by 31.4% and improving true impressions per dollar by 45.7% (ANA, August 2026). A Supply Path Review gives the brand its own baseline before anyone commits to a target.
Each case names the measure that matters to the brand, such as quality share, true CPM, or sales lift.
Who measured it: the brand’s own data, a verification vendor, or an incrementality test.
Before and after windows of equal length, with the dates.
Modeled scenarios say so at the top. Client names appear only with written approval.
A Supply Path Review gives you your own numbers, independently of who runs your media today.
About this scenario. The brand is illustrative and the results are modeled, not achieved by a ViSTARS client. Benchmark rates come from the ANA Programmatic Transparency Benchmark, Q2 2026 (released August 6, 2026, developed with TAG TrustNet and Fiducia), applied to a $3,000,000 annual programmatic budget. The Vi-Agent brief shows sample data.