In ad tech, everything is everything.
Demand-side platforms are building supply-path optimization tools and direct publisher integrations, while supply-side platforms are rolling out their own buyer agents and proclaiming they want to be the orchestration layer for agentic transactions.
On Magnite’s Q2 earnings call Wednesday evening, CEO Michael Barrett painted a picture of a company that’s edging into the buy side by adding more DSP-style capabilities for planning and activating campaigns.
For example, he talked about Magnite using SpringServe not just to serve ads but to help package inventory and audiences for advertisers and also handle optimization decisions – all of which historically happened on the buy side.
“Today, publishers and buyers have access to richer first-party data, commerce signals, AI, pricing intelligence and much more workflow flexibility,” Barrett said. “As a result, more valuable decisions are moving toward the supply side, and the breadth of our relationships and technology position us well to capture the shift.”
But Barrett was also careful to say that Magnite isn’t turning into a DSP.
“Certainly, we are introducing products that are DSP-like,” he said, “but we, in no way, shape or form are trying to replace the DSP. And, as a matter of fact, I think they’ll just do fine.”
DSP democracy
Magnite is doing just fine, too.
Total Q2 revenue was $193 million, up 11% year over year. (The total contribution minus traffic acquisition costs was $190 million, up 17%.) CTV was $97 million of revenue ex-TAC, a 36% YOY increase. Magnite raised its outlook for 2026 and its expectations for margin expansion.
The more interesting story, though, is that Magnite is now doing more of the work that used to sit squarely with the buy side, including packaging audiences, routing demand and using AI to decide which impressions go to which campaigns and at what price.
Consider commerce media.
Companies like Fanatics, CVS Media Exchange, Best Buy and PayPal Ads use Magnite to plug their first-party data into CTV and open internet campaigns, Barrett said. Walmart Connect, meanwhile, is using Magnite to combine Walmart’s commerce data with Vizio’s inventory to support off-site campaigns and provide closed-loop measurement to buyers.
In the past, DSPs owned the targeting and measurement layer, and SSPs mostly stayed in their lane selling impressions.
Whether it’s SpringServe, CTV or commerce media, though, the pitch is the same, which is that no single DSP should get privileged access to data and inventory, Barrett said. Magnite’s role, he added, is to democratize access to the underlying data and supply across multiple DSPs, not just the one where the data is housed.
“That definitely brings more seamless demand into the picture,” he said.
No more ‘slinging banners’
Barrett framed all of this as part of a broader shift in how ads are bought and sold (which is one way to say “agentic” without actually saying “agentic”).
As publishers and advertisers lean more into their data and harder into AI, he said, it’s inevitable that audience enablement and decisioning will move from the buy side to the sell side.
“Buyer agents and seller agents will become increasingly common across digital advertising,” Barrett said. “But agents do not eliminate infrastructure; they increase the need for it.”
Magnite, of course, wants to be the provider of that infrastructure. In June, it launched Magnite Orchestration, a software layer that helps agents communicate and coordinate.
In Barrett’s telling, that’s what it means to be an SSP today, which is no longer “about just harnessing undifferentiated DSP demand.”
“Gone will be the days where you can make an easy buck just stringing a bunch of DSPs together and slinging banners,” he said. “I think that really bodes well for Magnite, [although] maybe not for the whole ecosystem.”
