Ad tech is in an efficiency spurt.
Consolidation happened at record pace in 2023. Challenging economic conditions led many companies to prune their tech stacks or offer more direct options to buyers concerned about fees. DSPs tried to hop over SSPs. SSPs tried to hop over DSPs.
One former great, MediaMath, bit the dust as marketers used fewer DSPs and bid duplication made it more expensive for them to operate. AdExchanger not only broke the story of its bankruptcy, but it also covered the ripples created by its implosion.
Transparency in ad tech was another huge theme for the year. Marketers are doing supply-path optimization (which causes consolidation) because of what they are finding in their log files, and they’re also continuing to be surprised by what they’re buying. This is evidenced by the many Adalytics reports this year, including its November report about Google’s Search Partner Network that landed in our top 10 stories.
Finally, though the end of the third-party cookie was mercifully absent from any top headlines this year, it motivated another key theme of the year: measurement.
Platforms are embracing new measurement approaches, like media mix modeling, and agencies (like Tinuiti) see value in bespoke or original measurement approaches to social media. Finally, the end of the third-party cookie creates an opening for retail media data (see: Macy’s story), which is increasingly prized as third-party data disappears.
With those three themes in mind – consolidation, transparency and measurement – here are our top 10 stories of the year.
1. MediaMath To File For Bankruptcy After Acquisition Talks Fall Apart (June) Of all the OGs in programmatic, MediaMath is the company sitting at the front of the photo. Many spent time at, worked with or competed against the storied DSP, which faltered for years before descending into bankruptcy. It shut down with little notice after a failed acquisition. And the backstory behind Managing Editor Allison Schiff’s scoop – first sniffed out at Cannes – is epic in itself.
2. MediaMath Owes More Than $100 Million To At Least 200 Companies, Including Magnite And PubMatic (July). MediaMath’s sudden bankruptcy sent buyers scrambling to find other DSPs (and ruined their weekends). But ad tech vendors may have had it even worse, finding themselves out $100 million for media the DSP bought but hadn’t yet paid for. With so many debtors, everyone in the industry with a stake in the game (and the rubberneckers watching the fallout) read this follow-up piece.
3. Yahoo Shuttering Its SSP Is Evidence That Ad Exchanges Are Becoming Interchangeable (February) This was a year of tight purse strings, which led to consolidation. Yahoo shut down its SSP and laid off 20% of its staff before betting on a DSP. We followed the web 1.0 company’s latest transformation closely in 2023, from its DSP’s tight integrations with publishers (which resurrected some of its SSP chops) to the new DSP’s focus on first-party data and AI.
4. Why Facebook, Google And Amazon Are Embracing Media Mix Modeling (September) Everyone is fretting about the end of the third-party cookie – and during that fretting, the IDFA was gutted. The most well-resourced platforms in Big Tech are responding through an embrace of media mix modeling. They’re grading their own homework, but with convenience and accuracy that leads many marketers to utilize the results.
5. Adalytics Exposes An Alleged $10.5 Billion Black Hole In The Google Search Partners Program (November). The black box of Performance Max received another ding this year when it was revealed that many buyers’ search ads (bought on Google Search and PMax) appeared on searches for sanctioned sites, pornography sites and right-wing fringe publishers. Google responded by offering a bit more transparency shortly after. But the report was just the latest blow by Adalytics against Google, following its YouTube investigations this summer.
6. Magnite Cuts Out DSPs With Direct-Buy Video Platform for CTV (April) When a major SSP hopped over DSPs with a product (ClearLine) that enabled buyers to go directly to the SSP, the industry took notice. The move followed The Trade Desk (TTD) cutting out SSPs with its OpenPath product the year before. Before the end of 2023, PubMatic would release a similar intermediary skipping products to the market.
7. TripleLift Announces Layoffs, The Latest In A Miserable Trend (February) This scoop about SSP layoffs caught the attention of an industry already feeling burned out following one layoff story after another in early 2023. Plus, the layoffs occurred right after another SSP, EMX, filed for bankruptcy. Every Big Tech company reversed course, going from hiring any qualified person in sight to throwing them overboard like excess weight in a sinking boat.
8. Macy’s Dives Into Open Programmatic, Names The Trade Desk As Its First DSP Partner (May) When a 165-year-old retailer dives into programmatic, it feels like a validation of a whole emerging category: retail media. And a second one: how to use second-party data (aka Macy’s audience segments) in an environment where third-party data is going extinct. The popularity of this story speaks to our audience’s close attention to the emerging opportunity of commerce media (and its obsession with TTD).
9. Publishers Cry Foul As SSPs Claw Back Revenue Lost To MediaMath’s Bankruptcy (July) When MediaMath peaced out, it left SSPs and their publisher clients on the hook for millions in ads they bought but hadn’t yet paid for. Many SSPs passed the buck, either clawing back money from publishers or refusing to pay them out for funds they never received. Others took the loss and made publishers whole out of their own pockets. With SSPs taking different approaches and publishers already dealing with a tight ad market, the lost ad revenue made publishers rethink their contractual relationships with their SSPs.
10. Tinuiti Snaps Up Ampush To Enhance Its Social Chops (January) Amid the changing winds of measurement, Tinuiti snapped up social agency Ampush at the beginning of the year, citing its unique analytical model that it planned to fold into its broader agency. As signal loss transforms measurement and the DTC bubble pops, it’s not surprising to see adoption of new measurement tools and an embrace of new ideas.
Related:
How much has ad tech changed in a year? Read our top stories from 2022.
Plus: Read our top 10 columns of 2023.
