SSPs

PubMatic says adoption of its AgenticOS, combined with strong CTV and mobile demand, set the stage for double digit growth in the second half of this year.

Traffic didn’t drip. It dropped. In 2026, publishers are prioritizing stability over scale as AI, automation and curation reshape the sell side.

When it comes to managing fraud, there are four steps CTV publishers should take to remove bad actors from the supply chain.

Gamera, a media quality measurement startup for publishers, announced on Tuesday it raised $1.6 million to promote its service that combines data about a site’s ad experience with data about how its ads perform.

The generative AI trend generated endless hot takes this year, but the ad industry also had plenty to say about growing competition between DSPs and SSPs. Here are AdExchanger’s top 10 most popular guest columns of 2025 and why they resonated.

Unauthorized ID stuffing, rampant reselling and misaligned signals inflict incredible damage on the programmatic ecosystem. If publishers want to compete with the walled gardens, we must raise our standards. 

Publisher comment sections remain an untapped source of intent-based data, according to Kelly Andresen, who recently left USA Today to head up comment monetization platform OpenWeb’s direct sales efforts.

Enjoy this weekly comic from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem … and happy Thanksgiving!

Confusion in CTV isn’t a natural byproduct of a maturing market; it’s an outcome of how distributors protect their pricing power.

Traffic-starved publishers are hopeful that their long-undervalued audience data will fuel advertising’s automated future – if only they can finally wrest control of the industry narrative away from ad tech middlemen.

Enjoy this weekly comic from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem …   

Magnite says it’s not mad at The Trade Desk for prioritizing OpenPath or labeling all supply-side platforms as “resellers.”

A DSP, an SSP, an agency and a publisher walk into a room. Believe it or not, that isn’t the lead-in to a bad joke. It’s the model used by Medialive, a new AI startup that brings media buyers, sellers and vendors together to collaborate directly in a shared (digital) space. Joe Prusz, former CRO […]

Prebid’s future is up for grabs as the open-source project grows apart from the IAB Tech Lab, the industry’s self-appointed standards authority.

A peek inside PubDesk, The Trade Desk’s new dashboard that gives sellers detailed info on how buyers value their inventory.

SSPs are staring at their own demise. And it’s because, for over a decade, SSPs have positioned themselves as agnostic platforms.

Rather than sharing universal TIDs that any DSP or curator can access, Raptive says publishers should instead share encrypted TIDs with an encryption key provided only to trusted demand-side partners.

Dentsu might sell its overseas business; a Prebid update worries the buy side; and Washington State imposes a new ad tax.

Is TTD forcing agencies to adopt the new Kokai interface despite claims they can still use the interface of their choice? Here’s what we were able to find out.

Native advertising has been around for a long time. But creating a native ad unit online is way more complicated than a standard programmatic placement, because multiple teams and systems have to compose it on the fly, says Priti Ohri, CEO and co-founder of startup Advertible, which describes itself as “native-as-a-service.”

Enjoy this weekly comic from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem … 

DSPs are building tools to bypass SSPs, and SSPs are trying to cut out the buy side. But the real question in the noise is whether the technology improves effectiveness, says Kara Puccinelli, chief customer officer at Nexxen, which just so happens to describe itself as an end-to-end platform.

The layoffs at TripleLift come roughly four months after the company hired Dave Helmreich as its new CEO.

Equativ is now blocking made-for-advertising content from all exchange activity, marking a larger trend of pushing to eliminate MFA sites.

In 2017, Mediaocean CEO Bill Wise predicted the demise of supply-side platforms. The category survived, but he’s sticking to his theory that pureplay SSPs are a thing of the past. Plus: An update on Mediaocean’s $550 million Innovid acquisition and Wise’s counterpoint to recent criticisms of The Trade Desk.

2024’s most popular guest columns offer a snapshot of an industry in flux – and one that’s grown cynical due to repeated promises of unrealized change.

Enjoy this weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem … 

Publishers are skeptical that “curation” is actually doing anything for them. Plus, what’s coming up in 2025?

Publishers are initiating more and more auctions – but doesn’t mean DSPs are listening to more bids, according to Chris Kane.

Programmatic media buyers care about serving the needs of their advertiser clients. But there’s no reason they can’t also help publishers – especially diverse publishers – at the same time.