Most organizations initiate their observability journey with the clear intention of gaining visibility, but as systems scale, telemetry data grows silently in the background. Frequently, the monthly observability bill rises significantly faster than the actual value teams derive from the data, leading to a state of "uncontrolled volume" where organizations may even pay more for observability than their actual infrastructure. The problem is rarely the tools themselves, but rather a lack of control over what enters the pipeline. In this session, Jones positions the OpenTelemetry (OTel) Collector as a central control plane for cost governance. We will move beyond the "collect everything" mindset to explore how to shape, filter, and route telemetry before it reaches expensive backends. And you'll be walking out with some of the tips from sampling to agressive filtering with practical guidelines.