In 2017, Chase Bank’s marketing team noticed rising concerns over brand safety and ad fraud as their display ads appeared on hundreds of thousands of websites.
A performance audit revealed that while Chase’s ads ran on 400,000+ websites, their key brand and conversion metrics weren’t improving proportionally.
Suspecting wasted impressions, Chase made a bold move: they cut programmatic placements down to just 5,000 carefully selected sites a 99% reduction.
The result? No measurable drop in reach, click-through rates, or brand lift. In fact,
Chase maintained the same audience engagement with dramatically fewer placements, proving the vast majority of their long-tail programmatic inventory was ineffective.
This shift not only improved brand safety, avoiding placements on questionable sites, but also streamlined spend and increased confidence in their digital investments.
