‘Absolutely no intention’: Publicis Group CEO rules out building a Trade Desk rival amid ongoing dispute

Which leaves Publics pointing clients toward rivals — none of which are models of transparency themselves. If the best case it can make is that those platforms are at least transparent about their opacity, marketers are going to have questions. 

“It’s too early to say how investment will flow for the future, but what I can tell you is that we do it very transparently, which is, by the way, a point that is so important for our clients,” said Sadoun. “They have valued the way we are addressing the topic, and we have absolutely no intention to build a competitive offer to The Trade Desk.”

A Publicis-owned demand-side platform, in other words, undermines the valuation story the company has spent five years constructing. It’s a bet that in the AI era, what matters is controlling the data and the client relationship, not the commoditized, capital-intensive layer. The Trade Desk’s margins — as much as 30% of ad dollars transacted through its platform — make the counter argument easy to see. In practice, building one would tell investors the thesis is stalling. 

“Having another self-serve DSP won’t help our clients to transform and grow in this AI world,” said Sadoun. So we don’t see that as a priority.”

That goes some way to putting to rest one of the theories that circulated when Publicis first advised clients to pull spend from The Trade Desk last month. Some wondered whether it was clearing the ground to launch its own — not an unreasonable read, given that Epsilon already gives it a supply-side equivalent. A DSP looked like a logical next step. In hindsight, it was already a stretch. Publicis had cited transparency as the central reason for the pullback. Launching its own buying platform would have made that argument very hard to sustain. 

And harder still now. Scrutiny over how agencies profit from their ad dollars, from principal media arrangements to post-auction discounts, is at its highest in years. Any holdco launching a DSP now would sink further into that question. Publicis, having staked its credibility on transparency, would have the least room of anyone to weather it.

That’s not to say it can’t be done. Other agencies, notably the independents, are moving in that direction. Some are launching their own alternative buying platforms, others, like Horizon Media, are building platforms to orchestrate them all. Publicis simply arrived at this moment carrying more baggage than most.

“I’d say this is in part because the role of a DSP is somewhat evolving, especially in relation to SSPs. Publicis already have a SSP (Epsilon) which is plugged into most DSPs,” said ad tech consultant Jonathan D’Souza-Rauto. “Whilst you can argue it is not perfect or has the cleanest reputation, if the expectation that DSPs & SSPs start to transform into a single entity alongside whatever the future state of agentic buying ends up being, the executional layer will take a lot of existing ad tech out of business.”