Publishers are getting a new option for challenging Google’s stranglehold on ad tech revenue.
Paresh Dave reports today at Reuters that a company called Trade Desk is opening a system called Open Path that will allow the companies to make contracts directly through ad clients instead of going through Google’s Open Bidding system.
This isn’t the first challenge to Google over publisher profits – a Texas lawsuit in 2020 is another example of these stakeholders pushing back against what they see as monopolistic power.
Created by former Microsoft employees in 2009, Trade Desk was reported to be involved in Facebook’s real-time bidding Facebook Exchange project, and also in the OpenRTB supply chain prior to its “Media for Humanity” ad campaign in 2019, which was meant to elaborate on the firm’s objectives.
“We believe that the open internet is the best way to fuel a global marketplace of content and ideas, and that it empowers everyone producing that content — from journalists and broadcasters to media creators and idea generators of every type,” Susan Vobejda wrote in Medium at the time. “Today, this open internet mission is more important than ever. We all want a media ecosystem that supports a broad diversity of content and voices. … It’s a hugely aspirational brand statement. But at our core, it’s what we stand for and what drives everything we do.”
That’s been the idea for a while: here’s how Trade Desk cofounder Jeff Green described it in 2014:
“We are a sophisticated demand-side platform. We’re able to give agencies and aggregators the tools and technology to have full transparency and control over what they buy, how they buy and when they buy it. We are a platform that powers hundreds of agencies and aggregators—we’re empowering the entire service layer to accelerate the world moving into programmatic.”
Now, as the Open Path project progresses, Trade Desk’s top brass believes it is time for this type of competition.
Saying there is a “substantial appetite” for moving away from Google, Green expresses enthusiasm in a recent press release.
Keep an eye on whether publishers are able to utilize these kinds of options to compete in today’s digital media world.
