Jason Wiese has a way of making uncomfortable numbers feel like necessary medicine. Thirteen years into his tenure as EVP of Insights and Measurement at the VAB, where he produces 50 to 60 research and insight pieces annually, Wiese does not, as he puts it, "deal in non-hard numbers." A conversation with him is a master class in knowing what you should be measuring and why it matters.
Fresh off moderating a panel at Possible 2026 called "Streaming Won. Now What?" he took the guest seat himself on an Insider Interviews episode captured during the Miami conference, to explain how ad-supported streaming, specifically, won.
Ad-supported streaming won. Full stop.
The ad-free era is effectively over, he says. More than half of new streaming subscriptions are to ad-supported tiers. And free ad-supported television (FAST), such as platforms like Pluto, Tubi, and Roku, is growing and increasingly the consumer go-to, especially with sports and news now appearing regularly on streaming platforms. Even viewers paying for ostensibly ad-free tiers are seeing ads if they're watching live sports. Today, 95% of CTV viewers see ads on their home screen before they even select content.
"It's not even necessarily about the platform. ...There's a lot of thirst for content, and the content that they want to see,” he says. “People want to be able to pick their content diet and that obviously lends itself to a lot more advertising inventory."
To maximize the effectiveness of that inventory, Wiese welcomes the industry's shift away from demographic-based buying and toward data-driven, audience-based, programmatic approaches. First-party data and quality third-party sources offer “a good benchmark to understand impressions and who you're reaching.”
That part is going in the right direction. But two things can be true. Wiese then brought up a phrase he uses that stopped the conversation cold: "crisis of reality."
The Illusions of the Internet
The reality check is the framing behind a recent VAB report, The Illusions of the Internet, which identifies 20 hard truths across four components of the digital ecosystem: audiences, advertising inventory, products and services, and content.
The numbers from the audience component alone warrant attention. Fifty-one percent of internet traffic is non-human. Of that, 37% is malicious bots engaged in website spoofing, device spoofing, fake clicks, and fraudulent apps. "And in the age of AI," Wiese notes, "that number is only going to go higher."
Socially speaking, according to Wiese, who is a savant for saving numbers in his head, one in ten Instagram profiles is fake. In 2024, Facebook banned 4.3 billion accounts -- more than its entire active monthly user base of three billion. And because Facebook operates on not a “three strikes, but an 8-to-32-strikes” policy before banning an account, the real number of problematic accounts is likely considerably higher.
On the advertising inventory side: global ad fraud reached an estimated $111 billion last year, representing roughly 22% of total digital ad spend. That figure is projected to climb to $172 billion by 2028. Mobile is particularly exposed, with ad fraud estimated at approximately 30% of mobile ad spend.
Then there is the transparency question. Wiese points to Alphabet's 10-K filing, which includes $45 billion in what he characterizes as "undefined platforms" -- a figure larger than the global ad spend for print, out-of-home, or radio combined. It encompasses Google Network partnerships that offer buyers no visibility into where their ads actually run, as well as revenue categorized under "search and other." "This comes back to a lack of transparency with buyers," Wiese says plainly.
The Case for Premium Video
The antidote to opacity, in Wiese's framework, is premium video, which he is precise in defining by VAB standards, because vagueness has historically allowed it to mean very little. Their five-pillar definition requires premium be: professionally produced long-form content, emotional engagement and high attention, a brand-safe environment, cross-platform accessibility, and transparent ad placements.
Short-form video can meet the bar, but everything must ladder up to performance, transparency, and brand safety. "If you're not delivering that, we don't consider you premium video."
Back to making good and bad impressions, quite literally, the practical implication for media buyers is equally direct: not all impressions are equal, and some are worse than neutral. "A bad ad environment can devalue a brand," Wiese says. "It's not even a flat-line thing. It devalues a brand." The value of an impression comes down to content, context, viewer experience, and the quality of the ad environment -- a framework that holds whether you're evaluating a 30-second spot or a short-form placement.
A Note on AI
Wiese is not anti-AI. The two-letter acronym “should never be a four-letter word," he says. "At its best, it makes life efficient and allows you to do a lot more strategic work." But he raises a concern that deserves wider attention in media planning circles: AI tools and large language models have an inherent bias toward digital platforms, simply because digital data is more visible and more abundant in the models. Traditional media, including video, is underrepresented.
The implication for marketers using AI to develop media allocations and recommendations is significant. An AI-generated media plan may not be wrong, but it may be systematically skewed -- and a planner who accepts it without applying their own knowledge, their client's objectives, and a healthy dose of skepticism is leaving real value on the table. "Use it as a starting point, a guide, a benchmark," Wiese advises. "But bring in your own experience and intelligence to fully shape what the allocation should really be."
The through-line across the entire conversation is the same: the numbers matter, but only if they're real, transparent, and measuring the right things. In a media environment where 51% of traffic isn't human and $45 billion sits in an undefined column of a major platform's annual report, that standard is worth holding.
Jason Wiese's research and insights are available at thevab.com. This conversation was recorded as part of the POV: Possible mini-series of Insider Interviews, captured at POSSIBLE 2026 in Miami.
Posted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership self-publishing platform.
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