How can a startup DSP grow when all the growth in the category seemingly goes to the big three: Google, Amazon and The Trade Desk?
By building up a deep expertise and account roster in one particular category, where a smaller company can outcompete a much larger incumbent.
We looked at DSPs that specialize in political ads, health care and pharma, local SMBs, out-of-home media and B2B marketing to see how they’re trying to stand out.
Some of the takeaways are specializing in ways that omnichannel giants simply can’t. For instance, the AdQuick OOH DSP buying ads on a map overlay, or political DSP IQM’s voter files as the anchor to its identity graph.
Also, we dive into the rare AdExchanger double byline after Hana Yoo and Alyssa Boyle were pursuing separate stories about targeting US Hispanic audiences.
For Alyssa, this was spurred by reporting last year that touched on the efforts (and failures, mostly) to accurately measure Spanish-language households in TV ratings. For Hana, she was trying to answer the question: Why do I so often see ads in the wrong language?
It soon became apparent that their reporting belonged in one trend story.
