What drives mobile ad spend in 2026

What actually drives DSP investment decisions is a question the ad tech industry has to keep revisiting — because the answers keep changing. This episode of the Measured, Attributed podcast captures the state of mobile growth, programmatic spend, and the shifting economics of the DSP/SSP stack as of mid-2026. 

Host Neha Dawar is joined by two operators with very different vantage points on the ecosystem:

• Khalid Izbarov, Lead of third-party demand at Yango Ads, where he oversees both mediation partnerships and DSP relationships on the ad network side.
• Dumitru Cazacu, Senior Manager and New Business Lead on the monetization side at Liftoff Mobile, a leading growth acceleration platform working across both supply and demand.

Together they break down what signal quality actually means and why it drives spend allocation, how the line between DSPs and SSPs is blurring into hybrid end-to-end platforms, and why independent exchanges are the ones facing the hardest road ahead.

Dumitru and Khalid also explore whether rewarded video and playables genuinely move the needle or just inflate CPMs, and the surprising rise of short-drama apps as one of the most monetization-efficient formats to emerge in years. This episode explains why that matters and what it means for how publishers, advertisers, and platforms think about growth going forward. 

Subscribe:  Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube | Pocket Casts | Overcast