There is immense variation in programmatic ad pricing by publisher. Drawing conclusions about the market as a whole, or about publishers not exactly like the one studied, would be a mistake.
Agree that tfa is clueless. However even second price auctions cannot explain the data they claim to see. Any ad exchange these days has data showing publisher revenue delta of far more than 4% for cookie-able browsers.
It's not just oba... much of the non-oba demand running through programmatic requires a "cookie" for frequency capping or just basic anti-fraud.
Yes it is highly offensive to many English speaking individuals in the US. It has historically been used as a highly derogatory term for disabled individuals.
Let's nip this trend in the butt. Outside the organization in question we really have no idea what's going on and who is or is not responsible for a particular poor outcome. It's not fair to the individual - or to the real executives who fucked up - to call out one person in this way.