Programmatic Direct was one of the fastest-growing areas of digital advertising in 2019, and Michelle’s team at Google saw the need to educate publishers and advertisers on underlying deal types in programmatic.

In late 2017, Michelle partnered with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in a groundbreaking collaboration that revolutionized the digital advertising landscape. The research, analyzing publisher- and advertiser-consented data, revealed critical inefficiencies in traditional digital advertising processes that were costing the industry millions in operational waste.

In 2016, consumers began accessing web content more from mobile devices than on their desktop computers. But large web publishers were slow to optimize for a mobile experience, often leading to a poor user experience and site abandonment. Michelle’s team at Google partnered with technical leads to publish a comprehensive study of over 10,000 mobile web domains to reveal a critical gap between user expectations and mobile site performance.

Their model projected that mobile-optimized publishers would earn 2x more mobile ad revenue than non-optimized publishers. In a mobile-first world, speed isn't just about user experience—it's about survival and success in the digital marketplace.

In a seismic shift that's reshaping the landscape of digital advertising, Programmatic Direct has emerged as the new powerhouse of media buying. Gone are the days of traditional deal-making. – Google's ads platform witnessed transactions triple in 2015 alone, marking a watershed moment in advertising technology. The numbers tell a compelling story: imagine over 90 of the world's most sophisticated marketers from the Ad Age Top 100 list orchestrating their campaigns through Programmatic Direct, while more than half of America's digital publishing elite embrace this revolutionary approach. But perhaps most fascinating is the platform's explosive growth in the mobile sphere, where impression growth outpaced desktop by an astounding 4x – a clear testament to our increasingly mobile-first world. From the bustling digital markets of Japan to the rapidly evolving landscapes of Ukraine, Turkey, and Spain, where impressions doubled in a mere twelve months, Programmatic Direct isn't just changing the game – it's rewriting the rules of digital advertising entirely.

The digital advertising landscape continued to experience disruption in 2015 as programmatic advertising reshaped how premium inventory could be bought and sold. In 2015, Michelle partnered with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to publish a landmark study that revealed programmatic spending was set to surge beyond $30 billion, fundamentally transforming publishers' business models.

This wasn't just about automation - it was about reimagining how publishers create and capture value in the digital age.

In a comprehensive 2014 study, Michelle partnered with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to examine how programmatic advertising was reshaping the publishing industry's future. While this research was conducted nearly a decade ago, its predictions about digital transformation in publishing proved remarkably prescient.