A Bigger Vision for Adtech in the AI Era
TTD reported earnings last week and was down nearly 40% the following day. TTD is particularly interesting as an adtech storytelling case study because they’re the de facto leader of the independent adtech industry. In that regard, I’d contend that their earnings call remarks show we as an industry can and should tell a bigger story.
CEO Jeff Green’s main point: “Our goal is to buy the entire open Internet objectively for buyers, big and small.” Objectivity is the wedge TTD wants to drive between itself, as the self-proclaimed portal to the open internet, and the walled gardens (Google, Meta, Amazon). The argument: The walled gardens grade their own homework and prioritize their O&O. TTD works transparently for advertisers to drive the best outcome. Solid.
But TTD’s role is to make a case not just for its own platform but for the open internet as a whole. Objectivity is part of that picture, but it's not the headline right now. The headline is AI.
As an industry, we need to make a bold statement about the open internet in the AI era — one that instills confidence in investors, advertisers, and talent. AI is a gift. It gives us a chance to imagine radically different — and better — futures for media and advertising: much more effective ads that support more vibrant media, and a chance to rightsize the proportions of an industry that’s been devoting two-thirds of every dollar to the walled gardens.
Is the storytelling of our industry’s most prosperous companies living up to that moment?
In Silicon Valley, entrepreneurs talk about colonies on Mars, immortality, self-driving cars, and thinking machines that can do the intellectual labor of highly educated humans. A couple of those things have already happened! In adtech, as my friend Steven Liss at OpenAds says, you suggest “AI will help us make better ads,” and the bears pop out to call you a fraud. Impossible!
Well, I have the audacity to believe AI, the most powerful technology of my lifetime, will help us make vastly better ads. Ads that drive the full-funnel performance Green talks about. Ads that make brands look a hell of a lot better via unique creative for every impression, as Steven at OpenAds says. Ads that may not look like ads at all, but interactive agents, as Michael Rubenstein at Firsthand says. Ads that deliver transparent, measurable, continuously optimized performance, as Jason Fairchild at tvScientific says. Ads that help brands live their values and standards, as Brian O'Kelley says. Ads that are autonomous, as Tim Vanderhook says.
I believe adtech inventors in the AI era will achieve all of that and much more. If Silicon Valley can aspire to immortality and interplanetary life, we can aspire to better ads — and deliver them. (I came up with that em dash with my human brain, by the way.)
To paraphrase a great movie about a generational adtech company: this is a once-in-a-generation, holy-shit moment. The stories we tell need to live up to that moment. The products we build do, too.
We can do better than marginally better targeting. Better than objectivity. We have to reimagine the ad — and the economics of media. Otherwise, we’re not doing this moment justice. And the reluctant Silicon Valley adtech giants will keep eating independent adtech’s lunch.
