The clamor for regulatory reforms targeting Big Tech companies stems from a fundamental issue deeply embedded in the advertising industry. Within this complex landscape, tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Amazon reign supreme, wielding control over data, platforms and buy-side ad tech.

However, the very nature of their dominance poses a challenge, as they find themselves facing conflicts of interest. The imbalances they helped create have sparked the neutrality debate surrounding buy-side infrastructure, driving calls for change. 

Grading your own homework 

Talk about a stacked deck. These companies’ walled gardens are designed to collect and activate audience data. But by owning the data, the platform and the buy-side ad tech, these Big Tech players are grading their own homework.

Buy-side and sell-side are fundamentally at odds: Buyers want to maximize return on ad spend, while sellers want to maximize yield. There is no fair way to play on both sides simultaneously, and the intensifying regulatory pressure on Big Tech makes neutrality an existential question for these companies.

Several years ago, Big Tech bought up all their own ad-serving technology and with it, the mechanisms for reporting on viewability and verification. In the vacuum created by that consolidation, a trifecta of companies created what became a multibillion-dollar market just to handle brand safety and verification, because these checks can only be provided by an impartial third party.

Brands have come to appreciate that the same is true of other core capabilities, everything from ad serving to identity solutions to dynamic creative and audience intelligence. With ongoing fragmentation in supply, omnichannel marketers need these essential tools to be centralized under their control.

As it turns out, Big Tech is feeling the same way and increasingly embracing the idea of media-neutral buy-side infrastructure.

The incentives to do so are strong. First, it’s just what marketers need. Dollars will flow where advertisers can target their audiences and track their investments, and walled gardens still need those dollars. Second, there is an increasing demand on Big Tech to connect third-party ad tech to owned supply.

The walled gardens know they need a healthy independent ecosystem in order to survive, and they are becoming better partners in building it.

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