As an ad buyer who has done so both at agencies and client-side, I'll say that this is true to an extent, but that maximizing lift isn't always the priority. F

As an ad buyer who has done so both at agencies and client-side, I'll say that this is true to an extent, but that maximizing lift isn't always the priority. For example, I may be able to eek out a small incremental gain in performance on some tiny network or via a deeply-integrated direct buy, but how much time would that suck up? What would I need to do from a tracking perspective? How much would it cost to get all of the necessary creative? What about reporting? Does the data get pulled into my existing reporting automatically, or will I need to perpetually marry up some extra data set in Excel and dramatically increase reporting time? What about time for ongoing management that happens outside of my existing tools? These are all important considerations. Actual channel performance is one of them, but far from the only or even the most important depending on circumstances.