# The Race to the Bottom: Media Quality, Attention, and Why Cheap Reach Is Costing Brands More Than They Think

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/signal-noise-7426109/the-race-to-the-bottom-media-quality-attention-and-why-cheap-reach-is-costing-brands-more-than-they-think
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/signal-noise-7426109/the-race-to-the-bottom-media-quality-attention-and-why-cheap-reach-is-costing-brands-more-than-they-think.md
Podcast: [Signal & Noise](https://stenobird.com/podcast/signal-noise-7426109)
Published: 2026-07-13T11:30:00+00:00
Episode link: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/signal--noise3/episodes/The-Race-to-the-Bottom-Media-Quality--Attention--and-Why-Cheap-Reach-Is-Costing-Brands-More-Than-They-Think-e3lnovo
Audio file: https://anchor.fm/s/103996624/podcast/play/122462648/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-6-6%2F427458566-44100-2-6b217fe31356.mp3
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Duration seconds: 5706

## Resource

For nearly two decades, digital advertising has optimized around one primary objective: finding the cheapest possible way to reach the right person. Programmatic buying, identity signals, attribution, and performance marketing have created extraordinary efficiency—but they may also have trained the industry to systematically undervalue one of the most important variables in advertising effectiveness: the quality of the media itself. In this episode of Signal & Noise , Rio Longacre and Brett House welcome back friend of the podcast Erez Levin for his third appearance and his second full-length conversation. Erez is one of the industry's most respected voices on media quality, attention, and advertising effectiveness. A former Google executive and now Founder of Emet Advisory Advisory, he recently co-authored CIMM's landmark report, Quality Matters: Navigating Quality in Media Buying and Measurement , an effort to establish a common industry framework for evaluating media quality. The conversation explores a simple but powerful premise: Not all impressions are created equal. While the industry has become exceptionally good at optimizing for identity, CPMs, and short-term outcomes, it has largely ignored the environments where advertising actually appears. As deterministic identity signals become less reliable and privacy regulations reshape digital advertising, Erez argues that marketers must begin treating media quality as a first-class buying signal—not merely a brand safety filter. Topics include: Why optimizing exclusively for ROAS and CPMs can quietly destroy long-term brand growth How the industry's obsession with attribution created a "race to the bottom" in media buying Why attention alone is an incomplete measurement framework The difference betwee…

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