Connected TV keeps attracting more ad dollars—and more scrutiny. As programmatic CTV scales, advertisers are increasingly uneasy about opaque supply chains, inconsistent inventory quality, and limited insight into where ads actually run. Marketing Architects says it has a fix.

The all-inclusive TV agency has announced a partnership with Jounce Media aimed squarely at one of CTV’s most persistent pain points: supply-side transparency. The collaboration integrates Jounce’s programmatic supply chain intelligence directly into Annika®, Marketing Architects’ proprietary media-buying AI, giving advertisers clearer visibility into inventory quality and supply paths—and more control over where their budgets land.

In an ecosystem often criticized for black boxes and guesswork, the move signals a push toward more accountable, outcome-driven CTV buying.

Why CTV transparency is suddenly mission-critical

Programmatic CTV has matured quickly, but not always cleanly. Advertisers routinely struggle to answer basic questions: Which apps carried their ads? Were impressions sourced directly or through multiple intermediaries? And how much performance was lost to inefficient or low-quality supply paths?

Those concerns have grown louder as CTV budgets expand. Unlike linear TV, programmatic CTV’s complexity makes it easy for inefficiencies to hide in plain sight. Verification tools help, but they often operate after the fact—and don’t always reveal how supply decisions affect outcomes.

Marketing Architects’ partnership with Jounce Media is designed to address those gaps earlier in the process, before dollars are spent.

What Jounce Media brings to the table

Jounce Media has built a reputation as one of the industry’s most detailed observers of the programmatic supply chain. By aggregating and analyzing bidstream data at scale, the company classifies inventory quality, maps direct and indirect supply paths, and evaluates seller behavior across CTV and digital video.

Rather than focusing solely on impressions or domains, Jounce applies a seller-oriented lens—helping advertisers understand who they are buying from and how inventory reaches them.

By integrating Jounce’s data into Annika, Marketing Architects is embedding that intelligence directly into campaign planning and execution, not layering it on as a post-buy diagnostic.

“Partnering with Jounce Media lets us apply a data-enriched lens to every campaign,” said Marrika Zapiler, Director of Advanced TV at Marketing Architects. “We're building a foundation for more effective, transparent CTV buys that better serve our clients’ goals.”

How Annika’s update changes CTV buying

Annika already plays a central role in how Marketing Architects identifies and buys high-performing media. The Jounce integration significantly expands that capability by reshaping how supply is evaluated in the first place.

With access to Jounce’s taxonomy and app-level supply data, Annika can now:

• Unify premium inventory across the supply ecosystem

• Identify and deprioritize opaque or inefficient supply paths

• Favor high-quality, direct inventory across CTV environments

• Reduce reliance on manual research or assumptions about inventory quality

The result is a more intentional planning process—one that treats supply path decisioning as a performance lever, not an afterthought.

Instead of relying on black-box verification tools to flag issues later, Annika uses supply intelligence upfront to guide smarter campaign setup.

A shift toward seller-aware planning

The partnership also reflects a broader shift in how sophisticated advertisers approach programmatic buying. Rather than optimizing solely around CPMs or reach, there’s growing emphasis on seller transparency and accountability.

“Jounce exists to help advertisers understand what they’re buying and where it comes from,” said Chris Kane, founder of Jounce Media. “By taking a seller-oriented approach to media planning, execution, and measurement, Marketing Architects is embracing the industry’s movement toward a more trusted and accountable programmatic supply chain.”

This seller-aware mindset aligns with ongoing efforts across the ad tech ecosystem to reduce arbitrage, minimize redundant intermediaries, and improve working media efficiency—especially in CTV, where margins can erode quickly.

Why this matters for advertisers

For advertisers, the implications are practical rather than theoretical. Better supply intelligence means:

• More confidence that ads appear in premium, brand-safe environments

• Fewer wasted impressions tied to indirect or low-quality supply paths

• Stronger alignment between media quality and business outcomes

As CTV increasingly competes with retail media, paid social, and search for performance budgets, transparency becomes a competitive differentiator—not just a hygiene factor.

Marketing Architects argues that enriching Annika with supply-level data allows its AI to focus on what actually drives results, rather than optimizing around noisy or incomplete signals.

Raising the bar for outcome-driven CTV

The company positions the partnership as more than a feature update. Combined with Annika’s existing performance modeling, the integration represents what Marketing Architects calls a new standard for optimized, outcome-driven CTV campaigns—one less dependent on trust-me claims and more grounded in verifiable supply data.

In a market where advertisers are demanding clearer answers about where their money goes, this move puts pressure on the rest of the CTV ecosystem to follow suit.

As programmatic CTV continues its rapid growth, transparency is no longer optional. Marketing Architects’ collaboration with Jounce Media suggests that the next phase of CTV buying won’t be defined just by scale or automation—but by how intelligently, and transparently, that automation operates.

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