By Thomas Ives, Co-founder, RAAS LAB
With UK ad spend projected to reach £45 bn this year, the stakes for marketers have never been higher. Yet, instead of maximising returns, the industry is funding its own decline. According to effectiveness expert Peter Field, the media ecosystem is undergoing a rapid process of ‘shittification’ – flooded with low-quality, low-attention inventory. Consequently, up to 40% of potential engagement is left on the table while brands funnel cash into slurry.
The answer to this crisis is not to cut spend, but to spend better. To reverse this trend, the industry must move beyond chasing cheap reach. Instead, it must build upon the vital foundation of attention and return to the true driver of outcomes: Relevance.
Why media quality needs redefining
Fixing this is not a question of slicing and dicing for media efficiency; it’s about media quality. Historically, this was measured using mechanical metrics – what customers do, time in view, completion rates, and scroll speed. The industry’s pivot to measuring ‘attentive seconds’ was a paradigm shift, successfully moving away from these hollow mechanics. But while attention gets a campaign in the door, it doesn’t necessarily close the deal.
Even the highest-attention environment cannot force a connection if the message doesn’t resonate. Exposure tells us a consumer is looking, but it does not ensure that a message is encoded in memory, nor does it meaningfully contribute to brand equity. If nothing within those seconds strengthens associations, reinforces positioning, or connects to consumer motivations, that hard-won attention is ultimately wasted.
Understanding and identifying true quality requires deploying a granular view of Relevance. When an ad aligns with the consumer’s context, needs and mindset, it transcends a viewable impression to become a meaningful exchange. Relevance transforms passive exposure into active reception. It shifts the metric from simple visibility to contextual resonance. This is where real impact is built. Not just by capturing attention, but by optimising the quality of the interaction created.
Scaling Relevance through intelligence and transparency
Catering to the moment is undeniably a challenge. How do you not just grab attention, but keep it? And how do you ensure you are looking for it in the right places?
The answer lies in scoring every possible engagement opportunity for content, creative and context before even a single ad is served. By tailoring the creative to intent, situation and media placement, brands can generate helpful, non-intrusive advertising that delivers on a business-specific outcome.
Furthermore, complete transparency is paramount. To understand how Relevance drives results, advertisers must know exactly where their ad ran, which variant was served, and what its placement score was. You can no longer afford to blindly trust the decisions made by programmatic black boxes.
Scoring contexts, tailoring creative in real-time, and maintaining complete transparency are impossible for a human planner to manage at scale. This is where the conversation must shift from media buying to AI.
Rather than forcing AI to rigidly follow legacy rules and static templates, modern AI systems are designed to interpret tone, sentiment, and contextual signals to maximise advertising Relevance. They play a central role in ensuring brand suitability at the highest standard, precisely aligning the message with the media environment.
AI also manages operational complexity: delivering contextually personalised ads across platforms, optimising and scaling campaigns in real time, automating creative production to generate virtually limitless variants, and continuously testing and iterating to achieve the strongest possible performance outcomes. This is all handled with human oversight and collaboration.
Quality is a strategic and moral choice
Reframing Relevance as the new standard for media quality will stop advertisers circling the drain. This shift represents something far bigger than campaign performance. It is about the kind of internet the advertising industry chooses to fund.
When brands blindly chase cheap, contextless reach, they bankroll the environments that degrade the consumer experience. When they prioritise Relevance, they naturally gravitate toward high-attention, premium environments. In doing so, advertisers create a sustainable commercial model for quality, independent journalism.
By moving away from black-box buying and using intelligent, transparent AI to embed Relevance into every impression, advertisers can finally escape the race to the bottom. They can build on the foundation of attention to drive deeper engagement and build genuine brand equity, all while actively funding the trusted publishers users rely on.
