Programmatic doesn't need more rules. It needs fewer problems.

In just a few weeks, the industry has produced a small library of fixes.

On 16 September, the IAB Tech Lab published its Programmatic Standard Practices. These aren't a new technical standard, but more so guidance on how the standards we already have should actually be used. Six days later came AAMP 3.0, introducing OpenProposal, a framework for how buyer and seller agents can exchange and evaluate proposals before any spend is committed. Meanwhile, the remedies in the Google adtech case are pushing towards greater interoperability between Google's stack and competing technology, including integration with Prebid.

Different developments, different motivations, different authors. Read side by side, though, they tell a pretty consistent story: programmatic has become so overly complicated that we're building an increasingly elaborate layer of rules and standards to manage it.

And that's not a criticism of the people doing the work by the way. The council behind the new practices brings together agencies, platforms and publishers, which is exactly who should be in the room. But my thoughts are a reflection of just how much the industry is now being asked to fix it.

My question to you is: are we fixing the underlying problem, or just getting better at navigating it? Because these problems aren't new; they are just documented more frequently than before.

Take duplication, for example. Earlier this year, DataBeat measured a 46% duplicated-domain rate among Tier 1 SSPs. The same opportunity can be offered through multiple paths, with each one adding its own layer - and therefore adding more cost and complexity.

Take efficiency. The ANA's latest Programmatic Transparency Benchmark shows the share of spend reaching measurable, viewable, fraud-free, non-MFA impressions hit a record 45.1% in Q2. That's genuine progress. But it also means that more than half of programmatic investment still isn't reaching an impression that meets that definition of quality.

And then there's trust. Nine in ten marketers say their top concern with principal media is whether it's genuinely serving their best interests.

Put all of those things together with opaque fees, stacked intermediaries and conflicts of interest, and you get a supply chain that's increasingly difficult to compare on anything beyond price. When buyers can't easily see quality or value, price becomes the easiest lever to pull. And that's not a particularly healthy place for an industry to end up.

Rules simply manage complexity. They don't remove it.

More standards and interoperability can, of course, help. Better governance is vital. But a rulebook describes how a system should behave; it doesn't necessarily change the shape of the system itself. Especially one that has been stuck in old ways of working for so long.

Plus, while the Google remedies are a good example, they're also targeted at one company's position in the market. Guidance like the new standard practices is valuable, but its impact ultimately depends on how the industry adopts it. How the rest of us adapt to it.

And agentic buying makes the question even more interesting. OpenProposal is a sensible step towards making proposals easier for machines to understand and evaluate, but if an agent is negotiating across a supply chain where the same impression can appear through multiple paths, it won't make that supply chain simpler. It will just navigate it faster.

Automation doesn't fix a complicated system. It scales whatever it's given. 

So, what am I proposing then?

Instead of adding another layer on top, what if we started with the outcome the brand actually needs and worked backwards?

That means understanding the quality and relevance of every impression before the bid, rather than trying to assess it in a post-campaign report. It means making the value of each part of the supply chain visible, so buyers can see exactly what they're paying for. And ultimately, it means giving them a result they can explain and defend, not just another set of delivery metrics.

• It means we need to retrain our brains from years of working in a specific way: building from the outcome backwards rather than squishing clarity onto a system designed for volume. 

• It's the difference between untangling the supply chain after the fact and making sure it doesn't get tangled in the first place. 

• It’s the classic ‘square peg, round hole’ scenario that we need to change. 

The rulebook and the rethink

The comment windows are open until 16 October for the Programmatic Standard Practices and 22 October for AAMP 3.0. Buyers and sellers should use them. Better rules are worth having.

But we should also be honest about what rules can and can't do.

The more interesting questions we need to ask ourselves are whether we're ready to rethink the system the rules are trying to fix. And who is brave enough to challenge the status quo?