# Can Content Drive Performance? > Source: > Published: 2026-07-09 14:27:24+00:00 Marketers may know who they are buying with programmatic. But where they are buying has remained elusive. Programmatic originally tuned in to audience, not content, in order to optimize performance. Finding the right people – no matter where they were – was the primary goal. But in recent years, there’s been increased focus on media environments, from the quality of the content to the attention created by content. On today’s podcast, we tie together two very different stories that speak to the same trend: optimizing content to improve performance. First up, buyers have a [new type of content to evade: AI slop](https://www.adexchanger.com/ai/mfa-ad-spend-is-increasing-is-ai-slop-to-blame/). Marketers and agencies have long tried to avoid buying against clickbait-y slideshows, and they’ve discovered that successfully avoiding this type of content improves their media performance. Now, with a prompt or two, it’s possible to churn out reams of low-quality content. We share how SSPs are heading off the rise of AI slop and what our listeners can do to steer clear. Then, for as long as AdExchanger has been covering connected TV, buyers have complained about the lack of show-level transparency on CTV. No one knows what performs better: the nightly news or “Love Island”? Seriously, the level of granularity that buyers have is often frustratingly general, and it hampers their ability to optimize spend. So what to do? Well, one buyer [cobbled together a unique solution](https://www.adexchanger.com/tv/ctv-buyers-are-getting-the-show-level-performance-optimization-theyve-always-wanted/) using multiple ad tech tools to figure out where they were buying ads. And here’s what happened: Performance improved. Our senior editor, Anthony Vargas, walks us through exactly how you can hack your way into show-level transparency and why it may be just a matter of time before this approach catches on more broadly.