Secure your place at the Digiday Media Buying Summit in Nashville, March 2-4
It’s been clear what Google’s plan is for the display advertising infrastructure. It wants to piece to piece an end to end system. The charitable view is the driving force behind this is an effort to bring simplicity to an overly complex landscape. The less charitable view is Google wants to dominate display the same way it dominates search. There’s probably some truth to both. Jay Sears, general manager of the ContextWeb Ad Exchange, has a not completely unbiased view in AdAge of the Google move to acquire Admeld. Sears doesn’t bemoan Google’s efforts to build its share of queries bid on exchanges.
My concern is just the opposite — that Google’s peers Microsoft, Yahoo and others — are not being diabolical enough. We need more diabolical liquidity, otherwise we will have a display advertising monopoly. And that’s only fun for one person at the party. Google has been building its dominance in display in plain sight yet few seem to understand how to counterbalance its cunning and impactful moves.
More in Media
Media Briefing: Turning scraped content into paid assets — Amazon and Microsoft build AI marketplaces
Amazon plans an AI content marketplace to join Microsoft’s efforts and pay publishers — but it relies on AI com stop scraping for free.
Overheard at the Digiday AI Marketing Strategies event
Marketers, brands, and tech companies chat in-person at Digiday’s AI Marketing Strategies event about internal friction, how best to use AI tools, and more.
Digiday+ Research: Dow Jones, Business Insider and other publishers on AI-driven search
This report explores how publishers are navigating search as AI reshapes how people access information and how publishers monetize content.