Adtech has become increasingly focused on impressions, identifiers and algorithms, but somewhere along the way, it risks forgetting the people behind the pixels. Dominick Miserandino, CEO and co-founder of RTM Nexus, argues that technology and automation should make the industry better at building relationships, not replace the human judgment, trust and understanding that drive real business results. Because ultimately, advertisers need customers, not just reports.

I’ve spent roughly three decades in digital media. I’ve watched the business go from selling advertising through conversations and relationships to trading billions of impressions through systems that most people outside the industry couldn’t begin to explain.

A lot of that progress has been good. Advertising is more accessible, campaigns can be measured faster, and publishers have more ways to earn revenue.

But somewhere along the way, we started talking about people as if they were pixels.

We discuss impressions, audiences, identifiers and conversion rates. We build increasingly sophisticated systems to reach a person at exactly the right moment. Then we sometimes forget to ask whether that person actually wants what we’re showing them.

An impression isn't a relationship

If you operate a media business, you learn pretty quickly that traffic and audience are two different things.

You can buy traffic. You can chase a trending headline or squeeze another pageview out of a visit. But getting someone to come back because they trust your publication is much harder.

That difference matters to advertisers, too. Ten thousand impressions from people who care about a subject may be worth more than a hundred thousand delivered to people who barely notice the ad.

The industry can measure viewability down to a decimal point. That doesn't mean we’ve measured whether we earned anyone's attention.

Relationships still drive the business

In my experience, the most useful advertising conversations rarely begin with a platform demo.

They begin with basic questions. Who are you trying to reach? What problem are you solving for them? What can you afford to spend to acquire a customer? Will that customer come back?

A publisher understands its community. A good agency understands its client. A good salesperson knows when a proposed campaign is a poor fit, even if it would bring in revenue this quarter.

Those people add value precisely because they are willing to use judgment instead of simply accepting what the dashboard says.

And when something goes wrong, the client doesn't want to hear that an algorithm made the decision. They want a person who understands the business, explains what happened and fixes it.

AI should help people do better work

AI can absolutely improve adtech. I can see the value in catching billing discrepancies, finding suspicious traffic, speeding up reporting and identifying where a campaign is wasting money.

Those are real improvements, especially in an industry where too much time is spent managing complicated systems.

But I worry when efficiency becomes the entire conversation. If technology saves five hours and the company uses none of that time to better understand the customer, what have we really gained?

Give a campaign manager better information. Give a publisher more time to work with advertisers. Give creative teams room to understand what people respond to instead of producing endless variations of the same message.

Use the machines for the work machines do well. Keep human judgment where it belongs.

Remember who pays the bills

Advertisers ultimately need customers, not reports. Publishers need readers, viewers and listeners who choose to return. Neither survives for long by treating those people as interchangeable data points.

The next generation of adtech will undoubtedly be faster and more automated. Fine. But speed doesn't make a bad message useful, and targeting doesn't create trust.

We should judge our technology by whether it helps businesses serve people better, build lasting relationships and make sound economic decisions.

Adtech needs to remember something simple: people are more important than pixels.