👋 Hello AdTech warriors!

Hope your algorithm’s having a better quarter than MediaMath’s credit rating.

While you were busy pretending to understand your Kokai reporting dashboard, the real titans have been redrawing the map of programmatic power.

The DSP war is here. It’s not loud. It’s silent, strategic, and absolutely savage.

But this isn’t a shoot-out. It’s a Cold War.

Amazon – The Death Star of Commerce Data

Amazon isn’t just in the DSP war—it’s building a planet-sized walled garden and daring everyone else to try scaling it.

They’re running a 1% programmatic-guaranteed fee that makes every other platform look like it’s skimming your lunch money. Performance+ slashes CPAs by 51%. And behind it all? 300 million deterministic shoppers with wallets open and privacy policies ignored.

CTV? Prime Video.
Live sport? NFL exclusives.
Retail media? They are the retailer.

And if you're not on board yet, don’t worry—they’ll price-dump you into submission.

Verdict: Commerce juggernaut. UI still sucks. Doesn’t care.

Google DV360 – The Incumbent With Trust Issues

Google still has the biggest missile silo: YouTube, the Display Network, Netflix inventory, and now household-level CTV targeting that covers 98% of U.S. households.

But don’t confuse reach with trust.
The auctions are still opaque. The Privacy Sandbox is still confusing. And antitrust regulators are circling DV360 like vultures at a compliance seminar.

Marketers still use it, of course. Like they still use Excel. Begrudgingly. Because there’s no realistic alternative. Yet.

Verdict: Still default. Still dodgy. Still dominant.

Criteo – The Neutral Weaponised Middleman

Criteo is playing a smarter game.
Instead of building a walled garden, they’ve become the UN of retail media—uniting over 225 retailers into one stitched-together commerce network.

They don’t own the audience, but they do own the pipes.
Commerce Max is their Trojan horse. Retail media revenue’s up 34%. 70% of top U.S. retailers are on board. And their CEO just got imported from Dentsu, because subtlety isn’t their strong suit.

No first-party graph. No owned CTV. But if you’re a non-Amazon brand? Criteo’s suddenly your favourite frenemy.

Verdict: The Switzerland of adtech. But armed to the teeth.

The Trade Desk – The Idealist with Identity Issues

The Trade Desk is still waving the open-internet flag like it’s Woodstock 2.0.
UID2, Kokai, and a new seat in the S&P 500 make it the last major independent DSP standing. Just one problem: no one’s sure what it stands for anymore.

Kokai got sued. UID2 adoption is patchy. And CTV partners are flirting with Amazon and Google like it’s a swingers’ party for bidstreams.

Still—25% revenue growth. And a decent cult following of buyers who believe someone has to fight the walled gardens.

Verdict: The idealist with a manifesto and declining market share.

Why It’s a Cold War, Not a Hot One

This isn’t a bar-room brawl. It’s a strategic stalemate with scary implications:

  • No one’s fighting head-on. Just quiet reallocations, slow takeovers, and DSPs pretending everything’s fine.

  • The arms race is AI. Every player’s building their own optimisation nuke—Performance+, GA4 loops, Kokai.

  • Data is the deterrent. Whoever owns the most clean-room-friendly commerce graph wins.

  • Proxy battles everywhere. SSP alliances, retail networks, smart-TV OS deals. No one wants to be seen throwing the first punch.

And buyers? They’re stuck in the middle, running multi-DSP stacks like NATO peacekeepers and praying for reporting parity.

What Smart Buyers Are Doing

  • Run a Two-DSP Stack
    Pair a commerce platform—Amazon or Criteo—with a reach engine like DV360 or The Trade Desk. Double the pain, but safer.

  • Demand Fee Transparency
    Amazon’s 1% programmatic-guaranteed fee is now the reference price. Push every platform to disclose margins or walk.

  • Audit the AI
    Impression-level logs or it didn’t happen. Finance teams will ask—and regulators are next.

  • Curate or Die
    Open exchanges are the DMZ of media. Curated PMPs or bust.

  • Get Ready for SPaaS
    Supply-Path-as-a-Service is coming. Expect buy-side tools to emerge from SSPs with unified contracts. Buzzword bingo, but useful.

My Forecast – Programmatic Power by 2028

  • Amazon will lead in total spend managed—$150 billion and climbing

  • Google will still have the largest reach across screens

  • Criteo will become the non-Amazon default for retail media

  • The Trade Desk will still be tweeting about open-internet freedom

And media agencies?

Still writing strategy decks explaining why they’re using four DSPs to buy one pre-roll ad.

Mic drop.

Until next time,
David