Performance campaigns are bought on an outcome, such as a CPA, and the algorithm optimises for that. Reach and branding campaigns are bought on CPM. Without a quality signal, the algorithm simply looks for the cheapest impression. That often lands ads on AI slop and on channels mostly watched by children. Reports rarely show this. Performance campaigns, such as Performance Max, also increasingly deliver display placements that you have to exclude.
Draft Digital has therefore been actively steering on placement quality for some time, using its own auditing agents to flag deviations. Together with Spektre, the agency can now measure that quality and compare it per channel.
An ASPI score per channel
Spektre inspects where media budget actually ends up, on YouTube and the open web. With the ASPI (Advertiser Suitability and Performance Index), every placement gets a score that shows whether a channel suits the advertiser and contributes to the campaign goals.
Spektre looks at several factors, including the context of each impression, GARM standards for brand safety, the level of attention from the viewer, and the type of production. Based on these, Spektre sorts channels into tiers from S to D. Tier S contains the best, human-made channels with the highest attention. Tier D is avoided entirely, because it involves unsafe content, AI slop, or channels where children watch through adult accounts.
Draft Digital uses the ASPI as a steering tool. Every channel a campaign runs on gets a score. Tier D is removed straight away, and budget moves towards Tier S and A channels where possible. The question shifts from brand safety, where a brand must not appear, to brand suitability, where a brand should appear. Early analyses already show correlations between the ASPI score and sales KPIs.
Quality as input for AI agents
Draft Digital buys a growing share of its media through AdCP, an open standard that lets AI agents from advertisers and publishers negotiate and buy directly with each other. Both parties see the same risk: an agent that only optimises on price makes the same mistake as the algorithm, only faster.
That’s why Spektre makes its data available via MCP, as signals for agents. Draft Digital’s buyer agent can then include Spektre’s quality segments automatically in every purchase. Quality becomes a standard part of agentic buying, rather than a check after the fact.
“Advertisers think they’re buying reach, but a large part of it doesn’t exist or doesn’t belong with their brand,” says Tim Geenen, CEO of Spektre. “Now that agents are taking over buying, quality has to become a hard condition, not a report after the fact.”
“In performance, the algorithm is allowed to do the work, but whoever buys reach still has to be a marketer,” says Lars Postmus, co-founder of Draft Digital. “Humans stay in charge of quality, and the ASPI score gives us the signal to steer on.”
