Early advertising watered the soil. You dug a trench, a placement in a specific publication read by a specific audience, and guided the river directly to the roots. Programmatic ad-tech replaced the trench with a sprinkler: a fine mist sprayed broadly, wetting the leaves, the path, and occasionally a plant.

Sprinklers are not irrational. They cover ground no trench could reach, and they scale without a shovel. But they also simulate rain rather than deliver it. A lot of the water evaporates before it lands, and you cannot easily tell the difference between a well-watered field and a merely damp one.

Watering the plant is not the same as watering the soil. Programmatic often does the former while billing for the latter.

The fix is not to smash the sprinklers. It is to measure what actually reaches the roots, verified human attention, and to keep at least some trenches dug for the crops that matter. Mist has its place; it should not be the only tool in the shed.