As agencies seek to win over clients in procurement-driven pitches, certain agency models have increased their reliance on principal media in order to lower their costs. And while proprietary inventory has its advantages when used in moderation, Max Kelvin, Director of Media at independent agency Guerillascope, warns that this model is not necessarily sustainable.
In this edition of the Buy-Side View, Kelvin argues that agencies, brands and broadcasters need to be brave in their approaches to the shifts reshaping media and advertising.
What is your biggest bugbear when it comes to video and CTV advertising?
My main concern is the flattening of quality. Programmatic is very good at making things look comparable in terms of completion metrics and CPMs, but this ignores content quality, brand safety, ad load and so on. Thinkbox has done a lot of work on context and why exposure conditions matter, and demonstrated which categories of video are the strongest drivers of impact from a cultural standpoint.
I’m not arguing for a nostalgic premium on anything labelled ‘TV’, but I am calling for evidence-based differentiation. We should know what content surrounded the ad, whether the supply path was direct, whether the impression was actually on a TV set, and whether frequency was properly controlled across publishers. When quality signals disappear from the buying decision, cheap inventory can become expensive waste.
How do you think the role of the agency has changed over the past ten years?
Ten years ago, a large part of an agency’s value came from access; access to rates, inventory, systems and specialist buying knowledge. Those things still matter, but technology has made media easier to transact and much harder to understand. The modern agency earns its place through judgement, deciding what not to buy, and translating complexity into a coherent growth plan. Clients can increasingly obtain a DSP seat or buy inventory directly, but they can’t so easily produce an independent view across the whole market. So the agency has moved from being a buying house to being an operating system for marketing decisions. And AI will make that shift even more pronounced.
I think the core question that clients expect agencies to answer has also changed. It used to be, ‘How efficiently can you deliver this audience?’. Now the question is increasingly, ‘How will this investment help our business grow?’. That requires agencies to understand pricing, customer economics and data availability, rather than just media metrics. As trading becomes easier to in-house, strategy, integration and specialist interpretation become more valuable.
Which do you think video advertising is the most effective for – generating awareness and brand-building, or driving short-term sales?
Video can drive short-term sales but making that its primary justification risks shrinking its advantages. Its main strength is brand-building because sight, sound and motion can create emotion and meaning at scale – and that’s not the opposite of sales, it’s often what makes future sales easier and cheaper. The problem comes when we only judge it by the final click. The more we optimise towards immediately observable conversions, the more we target people already close to purchase, and we end up harvesting rather than creating growth.
What team within your agency handles CTV, and why?
CTV sits within our AV team, with programmatic specialists involved when required. We believe AV specialists better understand the nuances of the video ecosystem and how to craft effective video campaigns, while also being fluent in the latest programmatic video and CTV opportunities. The risk of planning CTV without an AV specialist in the room is that you’ll end up with something that looks like a display plan, with narrow audiences, ineffective content and short attribution windows. Our priority is building video campaigns that are going to move the needle for our clients’ business objectives.
How is the growth of CTV changing your TV buying strategy?
It hasn’t really changed our strategy because we’ve been planning and buying CTV alongside linear TV for years, but new technologies are allowing us to plan more intelligently. Audiences have changed their viewing habits and we’ve shifted more of our investment to where those audiences are, but we also treat TV as a single video ecosystem, rather than two competing channels.
Ofcom’s latest Media Nations report showed that broadcaster content still accounts for the largest share of video viewing in UK homes, but audiences are increasingly moving between live TV, BVOD, SVOD and YouTube on the biggest screen in the house. That means our planning has become less about deciding between linear and CTV, and more about understanding which combination of environments performs best for our clients. So the biggest shift isn’t in how we buy TV but in how we think about audiences.
What could agencies do better to help clean up the industry?
I think the industry needs to be more open to the conversation about whether agency commercial models that are increasingly reliant on incentive-based buying and proprietary inventory are sustainable. Procurement-driven pitches have created a market where agencies are expected to deliver more for less, and while that might look like good value on paper it can make agencies more reliant on incentivised media solutions.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with this kind of model in moderation, but clients are becoming more aware of the dangers of using agencies where commerciality is prioritised over what’s going to drive the strongest results for their business. Agencies need to have conviction in proposing fees that are competitive but also let them do their best work. And clients need to be brave and choose the agency with the best ideas to help them grow, not just the cheapest solutions.
Which ad tech solution has delivered the most impact for your business?
We actually rebuilt our proprietary TellyAds.com database, which is one of the longest-running TV ad archives on the web, as an AI platform. It reads an ad the way a strategist would, for example looking at the emotional arc second by second, so we can offer our clients a new way of evaluating creative effectiveness. We also built out our creative function, and in 2024 we produced the first ever AI-generated ad on linear TV, which was Clearcast approved and broadcast quality. And in the past year we’ve had three clients using Guerillascope AI-created assets going live across linear TV.
Which metrics do you value most in video and CTV advertising?
Standard delivery metrics are invaluable for validating playout quality and spotting delivery issues, but we actually see the greatest value in measuring what happens after the campaign has run. We look at independent econometric analysis into the short- and long-term business impact of our work. That independence matters to us because agencies assessing the effectiveness of their own campaigns can end up marking their own homework, and the strongest decisions are based on impartial analysis. The biggest obstacle is cost; robust econometric studies aren’t feasible for every advertiser. But for clients with the budget it’s one of the most valuable investments they can make.
What could publishers, broadcasters and pay-TV companies do to compete more effectively with the tech giants?
I think a vibrant media landscape with lots of different players is good for the market, but scale will help against the tech giants. We’re seeing consolidation across UK media, ITV and Sky being the most prominent example, and greater scale should give the broadcasters more firepower – not only to improve their technology and make their inventory easier to access, but also to compete for the best talent, rights and high-quality programming.
That said, scale will only take them so far. The greatest competitive advantage is still content, and traditional owners need to be braver with it. Playing safe and producing more of what has worked before won’t be enough when audiences have almost unlimited choice. Traditional media owners need to back distinctive ideas, take creative risks and create content that people talk about at work, share with their friends, and that enters the wider cultural conversation. The tech giants have the advantage in data and distribution, but broadcasters still understand how to create shared cultural moments. The opportunity is to use greater scale to make more of them.
Which person in the industry has inspired you the most?
I’d like to mention Josh Jenkins, whom I worked alongside at the7stars from 2016 to 2020, and who sadly passed away last year. Josh was a brilliant TV buyer and media planner who was loved and respected by his colleagues and those who knew him across the media landscape. He was hilarious to be around, a genuinely great team player, and a thoroughly good human being. I left the7stars a far stronger media professional than when I arrived, and a large part of that was due to Josh’s influence.
Out of all the video and TV advertising campaigns you’ve been involved with, which are you most proud of?
There are many TV moments I’m proud to have been involved with across my career, but just to look back at this past year at Guerillascope there’s several campaigns worth mentioning. We’ve worked with Formula E on clickable CTV formats, we worked on the relaunch of Estée Lauder’s iconic Double Wear foundation, and got a last-minute George Ford partnership into the Six Nations on linear TV for Tide.
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