Programmatic shouldn’t feel like déjà vu. Yet for many planners, every campaign starts from scratch — rebuilding audiences, reselecting inventory, and repeating the same steps with no memory of what worked before. This isn’t inefficiency. It’s structural.

Out of work but not out of value. Anne replies to a veteran of adland navigating what’s next, and introduces a new path forward.

A planner writes to Anne, our resident pub-loving agony aunt, asking if fixed CPMs and Time-as-a-Service are really worth it. Anne pulls no punches, just transparency, fewer emails, and more time for a Hobnob.

Anne, the Agony Aardvark, replies to her first letter from a frustrated publisher.

Welcome to Letters to Anne: Our new initiative where industry folks can submit their programmatic pain points, existential media-buying crises, and general adtech grievances to our in-house agony aunt; Anne the Aardvark.