The Open Web Advantage: Why Q4 is the Time Advertisers Should Diversify Their Media Mix
With Q4 already underway, advertisers know what to expect: increased competition, rising CPMs, and mounting pressure to deliver results during the most expensive quarter of the year. Social and search platforms remain critical pieces of the puzzle — indispensable for reach, precision, and performance. But while advertisers often plan Q4 around these familiar environments, it’s worth asking a simple question: are we giving enough weight to the other places where consumers spend their digital time?
The truth is, the open web across OTT/CTV, streaming audio, online video, and native/display, continues to command a majority of attention. Yet many budgets still skew disproportionately toward the other channels. At Mediate.ly, we believe Q4 is the right moment to rebalance, not by abandoning what works in walled gardens, but by leaning more heavily into the environments that complement them.
But here’s the wrinkle many marketers overlook: while brands pour dollars into walled gardens like Meta and Google, the majority of consumer attention actually lives outside them. The open web spans online video, streaming audio, banner display, native, OTT/CTV, and more, commands more time from users than social platforms. Yet it consistently receives a smaller slice of advertising budgets. This disconnect is where opportunity lies.
We see Q4 not just as a challenge to survive but as a chance to rethink how dollars are allocated. By shifting a portion of spend into the open web, advertisers can extend reach, reduce fatigue, and create more positive ad experiences, even as costs rise.
Where People Really Spend Their Time
It’s tempting to equate digital time with social media. Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook dominate headlines and trends. But the data paints a more nuanced picture.
A 2023 survey from The Trade Desk Intelligence revealed that 59 percent of Americans’ digital time is spent on the open internet, yet only 48 percent of ad budgets follow them there. That means advertisers are over-indexing on social platforms and under-leveraging the spaces where people actually spend more of their attention. eMarketer has echoed this finding, consistently showing a gap between time spent and dollars allocated when it comes to open web versus these other channels.
This misalignment matters most in Q4, when every impression costs more. If consumers are engaging with more content outside of social media, then brands doubling down only on social are paying a premium for diminishing incremental reach.
The Seasonal Squeeze
No one escapes rising CPMs in Q4. Increased competition during the holiday shopping season inflates costs across channels. But the squeeze is especially pronounced in social.
We have seen Meta’s CPMs increase in Q4 2024 by 22% compared to the rest of the year. Snapchat’s increased by 150% during that same time period, needed to maintain competitive edge and remain relevant among holiday advertising (and that thing called the Election) in our ad markets.
The reflex is to increase bids to stay competitive. Yes, higher bids can maintain reach, but advertisers need to watch their increased frequency which then comes with ad fatigue if budgets aren't redistributed. In Q4, this cycle accelerates. Audiences scroll past familiar creative, click-through rates dip, and brands end up paying more for less impact.
Why the Open Web Feels Different
By contrast, open web channels distribute exposure more evenly across a user’s media journey. Instead of clustering impressions in a single feed or app, campaigns reach consumers in varied contexts: a streaming show, a podcast, a news site, a sports update. The result is a more natural cadence of frequency, spread across devices and moments in time, which feels less intrusive and more integrated into daily life.
Think about the difference between seeing the same Instagram ad six times in a week versus encountering a brand once while streaming Hulu, once while listening to Spotify, once in a news article, and once in a banner ad on your favorite hobby site. The frequency is similar, but the perception is dramatically different. One feels like saturation, while the other feels like presence.
This is the democratization of time spent. As users engage across multiple channels and devices, advertisers have the chance to meet them in diverse moments without overwhelming them in a single channel.
At Mediate.ly, we’ve seen this firsthand with clients across healthcare, higher ed, and financial services. It is in our best interest to ensure we mitigate ad fatigue with increased CPMs to ensure our campaigns perform. But this redistributing budgets from crowded social channels into programmatic video or streaming audio campaigns not only stretched further but often lifted brand favorability, because the ad experience felt less repetitive and more contextually relevant.
The Case for Rebalancing Budgets
For advertisers planning Q4, the recommendation isn’t to abandon social or search altogether. These platforms are still essential for addressability, scale, and consideration. The argument is for rebalancing. By moderating spend on these other channels and reallocating some dollars to open web channels, brands can capture more diverse attention and mitigate the downsides of Q4 inflation where the blend of frequency, volume and optimal costs are imperative.
Consider the following approach:
-
Audit your social spend: Identify campaigns where frequency has already plateaued, and performance is flattening despite higher bids. These are prime candidates for budget reallocation.
-
Lean into format diversity: Online video, OTT/CTV, and streaming audio each offer immersive, lean-in experiences that complement display/native, social, and search. Ads in these contexts often feel more premium and carry greater memorability.
-
Test contextual alignment: The open web gives advertisers the ability to pair creative with relevant content environments (i.e. a Healthcare DOOH ad alongside a marathon race route). This relevance reduces friction and enhances resonance.
Importantly, reallocating isn’t just about cost savings. It’s about creating better user experiences. When ads are seen in more organic, less crowded contexts, consumers are more likely to receive them positively. This is a crucial advantage in an era where ad fatigue drives opt-outs and ad-block usage.
Addressing the Counterpoints
Skeptics might argue that social’s strengths outweigh its rising costs. Social platforms excel at targeting, leveraging first-party data and engagement signals that open web environments may not match. Measurement, too, feels more straightforward inside walled gardens, where closed ecosystems control and report the data.
Those are valid points. But the open web has evolved. Advances in contextual targeting, programmatic supply, and clean-room integrations are narrowing the gap. Advertisers can now access compliant, privacy-safe data onboarding that enables precise audience activation across open web inventory. And while measurement may feel fragmented, emerging attribution models are increasingly sophisticated, helping marketers connect the dots across channels.
In other words, the choice isn’t between hyper-targeted channels and scattershot open web. It’s between over-indexing on one environment versus building a balanced, resilient mix that reflects actual consumer behavior.
Why Mediate.ly Believes Now is the Time
For brands, Q4 is often a test of how well strategy adapts under pressure. Rising costs expose inefficiencies. Saturation reveals overdependence. This is where Mediate.ly helps brands and agencies stay ahead of the curve.
Our demand-generation DNA means we don’t view media plans as line items; we view them as journeys. By fusing syndicated research, first-party integrations, and omnichannel activation, we ensure that shifts in budget don’t simply chase lower CPMs but create stronger, more sustainable impact. Whether it’s reallocating a portion of channel spend into CTV for a hospital system, or layering streaming audio into a higher-ed awareness campaign, we position brands to meet their audiences across the open web with relevance and frequency that feels right.
Closing Thought: Rethink the Default
The easy choice in Q4 is to push harder on your current channels, outbid the competition, and accept rising frequency as the cost of doing business. But easy isn’t always better. With most digital time already spent on the open web, it offers a broader, healthier, and often more cost-effective canvas for advertisers’ stories to be told within the media. Our recommendation is about rebalancing budgets.
For advertisers willing to rebalance, the payoff can be substantial: less fatigue, more positive user sentiment, and campaigns that resonate across the full spectrum of digital experiences. And while the debate to lean into the open web will continue, Q4 is the moment to invest our budgets where people spend their time.
If you want to learn more, or to discuss how you can rebalance your budgets for Q4 (and beyond), please contact us to connect with a Mediate.ly team member.