Dive summary:
- According to Seth Demsey, svp of global advertising products and strategy for AOL Networks, the technology tax applied to media buys need to go.
- For every $1 a digital advertiser spends on placement, only around $.45 of that typically goes to the publisher—the rest gets caught up in trading desks, DSPs, exchanges, networks, data suppliers, data aggregators, ad verification vendors, tag management vendors, retargeters, optimization vendors, SSPs and more.
- Demsey's solution is to develop an "open ecosystem" by turning the focus of innovation away from niche technology features and towards compatibility across platforms.
From the article:
"A market where $1 is really only worth $.45 cannot sustain itself. Consolidation will happen naturally, but unification will take an industry commitment to open standards, open cooperation and an open ecosystem. Instead of a morass of individual companies battling each other for a few pennies of the ad dollar, the ad tech industry should be known for delivering real advertising ROI, not tech return on equity. Only then will advertisers get the most value from the powerful cross-channel solutions they need more than ever, and a greater proportion of ad budgets will go to the consumer connection they’re meant for."
