Home The Big Story The Big Story: Ad Tech Report Card

The Big Story: Ad Tech Report Card

SHARE:
Logo for AdExchanger's Big Story podcast, with journalistic insights on advertising, marketing and ad tech

It’s report card time for ad tech. TAG TrustNet issued grades on the log-file transparency to DSPs, SSPs and walled gardens. Not many are passing with flying colors, which is especially true for the walled gardens in the group.

Log files help advertisers suss out any funny business going on in their programmatic ad spend, allowing them to monitor take rates and do supply-path optimization more efficiently. But not all DSPs and SSPs want to share log-level data.

AdExchanger Senior Editor James Hercher, who covered the release of this report card, tells us how to interpret the grades and helps us understand the larger issue of transparency behind advertisers’ desire for log-level data.

Then, we discuss programmers’ embrace of targeting, programmatic and ad-supported streaming. Associate Editor Alyssa Boyle talked to or covered the earnings of pretty much every major streaming service or app in the past two weeks (Disney, Netflix, Paramount, Roku, Amazon, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery and Crackle). Across the board, she sees programmers becoming more comfortable with making their inventory biddable.

Disney is making its inventory available in private marketplaces, for example, and Paramount improved its programmatic integration. These are baby steps, while advertisers like HP are using UID 2.0 to better target potential laptop and printer buyers and measure the effectiveness of their CTV ad campaigns, and streamers are touting their ad-supported subscription numbers.

The changes are accruing for everyone invested in the growth of programmatic: Sellers are increasingly embracing streamed TV, and the deep-pocketed ad dollars that go along with data and automation.

Must Read

Alphabet Can Outgrow Everything Else, But Can It Outgrow Ads?

Describing Google’s revenue growth has become a problem, it so vastly outpaces the human capacity to understand large numbers and percentage growth rates. The company earned more than $113 billion in Q4 2025, and more than $400 billion in the past year.

BBC Studios Benchmarks Its Podcasts To See How They Really Stack Up

Triton Digital’s new tool lets publishers see how their audience size compares to other podcasts at the show and episode level.

Comic: Traffic Jam

People Inc. Says Who Needs Google?

People Inc. is offsetting a 50% decline in Google search traffic through off-platform growth and its highest digital revenue gains in five quarters.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters

The MRC Wants Ad Tech To Get Honest About How Auctions Really Work

The MRC’s auction transparency standards aren’t intended to force every programmatic platform to use the same auction playbook – but platforms do have to adopt some controversial OpenRTB specs to get certified.

A TV remote framed by dollar bills and loose change

Resellers Crackdowns Are A Good Thing, Right? Well, Maybe Not For Indie CTV Publishers

SSPs have mostly either applauded or downplayed the recent crackdown on CTV resellers, but smaller publishers see it as another revenue squeeze.

The IAB Formalizes Its Measurement Initiatives Under Its New ‘Project Eidos’

The IAB unveiled its Project Eidos on Monday, a new program uniting its numerous measurement initiatives under one banner.