It may be getting rough for the advertiser/agency ad server marketplace with recent developments squeezing viable independent alternatives to Big G. Digital marketers and their media agencies would do well to think through the impact on their ad tech stack instead of the usual.
These challengers (and others) could still be a worthwhile alternative to Big G’s near monopoly on advertiser/agency ad serving. With the heavy hand of GDPR and CCPA looming regulators are looking to score political points and have a real need to fund overstretched governments with fines.
The bad news is that Sizmek is entering bankruptcy proceedings which itself is a roll-up of many companies. Formerly known as MediaMind, it is made up of Pointroll, Eyewonder, Eyeblaster, RocketFuel/x+1, Peer 39, StrikeAd and others. From the outside, it looks like self-inflected wounds are the cause and not a problem with the quality of their technology products per se.
According to AdExchanger, Sizmek owes around $26MM to various ad exchanges/networks. Missed revenue targets on the tech-side at the same time that they were trying to consolidate operations is mentioned. It would not be the first time that a lack of operational savvy by the financiers caused problems. Just because combining a media business model and technology model works for the dominant player in the market does not mean it is a good strategy for challengers. Mashing up a challenger technology product company with an overglorified ad network is usually a bad idea.
TrueEffect does not seem to be making much progress and is rumored to be having trouble. That would be unfortunate as their unique and innovative approach first-party ad serving would improve measurement of KPIs like reach, frequency and viewthrough measurement. It is too bad that more advertiser’s and their agencies choose ad servers based on expedience without considering the hidden costs.
Next, there is Flashtalking with their nascent relationship with Adobe. In 2018, it was announced that the two would collaborate on integrating the Flashtalking ad server with the Adobe Media Optimizer DSP (demand side platform) which would together improve identity management in part of the ad stack. On the heels of Adobe Summit 2019, there is not much new to get excited about. For their part, Flashtalking brings a novel approach to identity management with their ad server leveraging probalistic machine fingerprinting methods to boost targeting and analytics efficacy. Limited reliance on 3rd party tracking cookies seems to be a good proxy for first-party browser tracking.
The Atlas ad server is history. In 2013, Baby G acquired the Atlas ad server technology from Microsoft (an early funder of Baby G) and then ran it into the ground. Briefly, there was potentially big funding around and it was all about people-based ad serving with an obvious identity management benefit. Alas, the towel was thrown in by Baby G in 2016. Riding two different horses is hard. Prior to Microsoft it was part of the aQuantive group which also included the DrivePM and the Razorfish agency. Microsoft also let the Atlas ad serving technology go to waste which is thought to be a me too move and also to prevent Big G from getting another DoubleClick.
Meanwhile, it is all sunshine and rainbows in Mountain View. Big G continues to scam advertisers/site-owners for more data with the old DoubleClick Flooglight for Google Tag Manager switcheroo (more on this soon). Conveniently, they and their media agency lackeys blame Apple Safari ITP for the land grab under the auspices of: it is to improve measurement [theirs primarily it seems].
