In digital advertising, staying ahead means more than maintaining standards, it means evolving them. As Magnite expands its omnichannel reach across CTV, video, display, mobile, and audio its commitment to marketplace quality and security remains uncompromising.

That commitment is built on deep trust, strategic foresight, and continuous collaboration with partners like Confiant. Together, we've established a feedback loop that strengthens quality coverage and helps both teams anticipate emerging challenges before they impact the ecosystem.

We asked Brian Buttray, Sr. Director of Marketplace Quality at Magnite, to share how his team is helping push industry standards forward while balancing innovation, security, and operational discipline.

What's one thing your platform will never back down on when it comes to ad security?

Complacency is not an option. In advertising security, you quite literally can't afford a 'set it and forget it' approach. Threat actors are constantly evolving, and so are the brand guidelines and expectations of our publishing partners. That's why we're committed to evolving alongside them—collaborating with trusted experts like Confiant to stay ahead of emerging threats, and listening closely to our clients to ensure they have the demand filtering tools that meet their specific needs.

What's the biggest challenge in maintaining that standard, and how do you address it?

Ultimately, it comes down to having a shared vision among good people—working together to push the standard forward while staying one step ahead. One of the biggest challenges in maintaining a high standard is keeping pace with the evolving nature of malvertising. Threat actors are becoming increasingly clever in their attack methodologies, which means we can't just react—we have to anticipate.

As our business scales and more bid activity flows through our systems, the risk naturally increases, so staying ahead requires both strategic foresight and operational discipline. That starts with finding the right external partners, like Confiant, who help us look beyond what's happening today and prepare for what's coming next.

Internally, it's just as critical to align with the right people—those who can help build and implement processes that support and strengthen our Brand Protection offering. We conduct quarterly audits to evaluate, plan, and, when necessary, adjust the course of our product and research efforts.

If you could establish a new industry-wide standard that everyone would adopt, what would it be?

It would be great to see the industry, especially on the buy side, rally behind transparency initiatives in a meaningful way. With standards like Sellers.json and Ads.txt already transforming sell-side transparency, there's an exciting opportunity for the buy side to help shape the future of a more open, accountable, and trustworthy advertising ecosystem with things such as Buyers.json and Demand Chain.