Yahoo used to use a whitelist approach too; but with RTB (programmatic buying) it is no longer feasible to do that. And unfortunately, the whole world is moving to RTB... :-(
RTB and programmatic are not the same thing though, I agree that Real Time Bidding makes it hard to both let everyone play and enforce ad quality (I think it could be done if publishers took a stand).
However, RTB is just a kind of programmatic, I wouldn't be surprised if these ads were being served through the self-serve platform instead, which is probably still API-driven but doesn't need to be real time.
Advertisers shouldn't be using RTB exclusively, you could get better results when you play to the strengths of each different way of buying.
However, RTB is just a kind of programmatic, I wouldn't be surprised if these ads were being served through the self-serve platform instead, which is probably still API-driven but doesn't need to be real time.
Advertisers shouldn't be using RTB exclusively, you could get better results when you play to the strengths of each different way of buying.