A version of this story was originally published in AI, Tech & Money, a free, weekly newsletter packed with news and exclusive analysis on all things tech, platforms, and deals in advertising and media. Sign up for it here.
Happy Thursday, and welcome to another edition of AI, Tech & Money. I’m Kendra Barnett, ADWEEK’s senior tech reporter, in New York.
After a couple of months of standard post-Cannes quiet (well, maybe “quiet” isn’t the right word, but you get it), the event circuit is picking up again. This week, I popped into Smartly’s Advance event in lower Manhattan, where Horizon’s Bob Lord railed against the holdcos’ FTE-based pricing models. It felt somewhat pointed considering he shared a stage with a WPP executive, as the British holdco has said that labor-based compensation will remain key to its “mixed” model; Lord said he was “not picking on anyone.”
Also at the event: Timbaland. Yes, Timbaland the rapper, who spoke with Smartly CEO Laura Desmond about tastemaking and creativity in the AI era.
Missed it? Fear not! The event onslaught is only beginning. Next week, I’ll be in Miami for the inaugural IAB-backed Jupiter Festival. There, I’ll lead an onstage interview with Aaron Sisto and Scott Greenberg, the cofounders of Chronicle Media, an AI upstart automating audience discovery for creators, Hollywood studios, and brands. If you’re in Miami, drop me a line.
Meanwhile, many of my newsroom colleagues will be on the ground next week at ADWEEK House: Advertising HQ. We have a week of stellar programming (and fun happy hours) lined up, so please stop by. Even Gronk is going to be there! You can register here.
The Top Line
- Amazon overhauled its ad platform, putting agents front and center.
- OpenAI launched Dots, its answer to Meta’s always-on assistant Muse.
- Horizon Media leader Bob Lord railed against the holdcos’ FTE pricing models.
- AI video startup Runway debuted an agent that can create and measure ads.
The Quant
Muse, Meta’s AI personal assistant unveiled in early September, is the buzziest model du jour. Its adoption has been impressive, and it’s already the leading source of AI-agent traffic, Human Security found, with agents browsing the web and taking actions on users’ behalf. By September 27, less than three weeks after its launch, Muse was generating 2.34 times more requests than all other measured AI agents combined, according to Human Security.
Also notable: Muse appears to be particularly well-suited for shopping; the research found that the AI is 25% more likely to reach checkout pages than other agents.
The findings were published before the Tuesday lauch of Dots, OpenAI’s rival agent.
Deep Learning: Google Gets to Keep Its Adtech Stack Intact. Does The Trade Desk’s Pitch Lose its Punch?
Despite finding that Google operated illegal monopolies in the ad exchange and publisher ad server markets, a federal judge last month ruled that the company would not be forced to break up its adtech stack.
Instead, the tech behemoth received a series of small orders designed to fix the monopolies. These include connecting its ad exchange AdX and its publisher ad server DFP to Prebid, requiring them to play by the same rules as everyone else, requiring AdX bids to alternative publisher ad servers to offer the same terms as they would to DFP, limiting self-preferencing in the adtech stack, and sharing data on ad auction wins and losses with publishers.
In short: Google’s adtech business gets to walk away largely unscathed.
Though Google might be riding high on the outcome (particularly after a different federal judge who previously ruled that Google’s search business was an illegal monopoly also let the company off the hook with little more than a wrist slap), one adland heavyweight might be more salty: The Trade Desk.
The largest indie demand-side platform, The Trade Desk, built its business and go-to-market strategy as the alternative to Google. The court’s ruling on remedies, however, has left Google’s empire structurally intact.
When it debuted on the Nasdaq a decade ago, it had a simple proposition: Its neutral tech could offer ad buyers a better version of what they were getting with the closed, vertically integrated ecosystems of the tech giants.
In 2018, the company launched an identity resolution tool, Unified ID, or UID, to establish a free, shared industry ID, and, per CEO Jeff Green, “to make sure certain players, particularly Google, didn’t have an unfair cookie coverage advantage over the rest of the internet.” Within two years, UID was reportedly the most ubiquitous ID in bid requests across the open web.
When Google announced plans to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome in 2020, it strengthened The Trade Desk’s position.
The second, open-source iteration of the tech, UID 2.0, doesn’t rely on cookies but translates a user’s login data, like an email address or phone number, into a pseudonymized alphanumeric token. The Trade Desk pitched it as a rival to Google’s own proposed post-cookie tools, which Green railed against in a January 2024 diatribe (“All those brilliant minds inside of a nearly $2 trillion company couldn’t do better than this?” he wrote).
But then, after years of postponing its cookie-cutting date, Google ultimately decided to keep cookies in Chrome, stifling momentum around alternative ID solutions, including UID and UID 2.0. (That’s not to say the tech isn’t relevant; advertisers today live in a multi-ID world where cookies, various APIs, and token-based systems like UID 2.0 all exist in tandem, but the collective push toward cookie replacements has petered out.)
Another one of The Trade Desk’s biggest strategic plays came in 2022 with the rollout of OpenPath, which leapfrogs supply-side platforms (SSPs) and lets advertisers transact directly with publishers. The idea: a shorter, more straightforward supply path cuts out unnecessary fees, reduces latency, and improves transparency in ad buying.
It was launched in conjunction with the DSP’s exit from Google’s Open Bidding, with The Trade Desk citing the “opaque and harmful privileges of the walled gardens.”
Publishers have for years operated in a system largely controlled by Google, relying on Google’s ad server, with Google’s ad exchange getting priority in the auction. For publishers, OpenPath was a way to get paid without going through Google or the SSPs. It’s a product that is, at least theoretically, most valuable in an ecosystem where publishers are looking for an alternative to Google.
Now, the court-ordered remedies handed to Google in the government’s antitrust case over AdX and DFP may dilute that pitch. Google will have to make sure AdX bids through Prebid on the same terms it offers to DFP, and must show publishers those bids. In a theoretically fairer and more transparent auction, OpenPath’s value prop as the honest counterweight loses some of its punch.
The Trade Desk and Google declined ADWEEK’s requests for comment.
What People Are Saying
The DSP’s bigger prediction, of course, was a total withdrawal from the open web.
Amid Google’s ongoing battles with the Justice Department last year, Green told Axios: “I do think you can expect Google to exit the open internet at some point, simply because, strategically, it’s good for them. It’s where all their privacy and antitrust risks come from, but it’s not where all the money comes from.”
21 months later, that reality has yet to materialize. Federal courts declined to force a breakup of either Google’s adtech business or its search business in the DOJ’s two antitrust cases against the company.
While The Trade Desk has consistently reaffirmed its commitment to building more open and transparent substitutes for walled garden adtech, the walls on the garden would appear to have grown higher still.
That’s not to say Green’s prediction couldn’t pan out. Google admitted in a court filing last year that “the open web is already in rapid decline” (specifying in the press that it was referring to open-web display advertising in particular). In any case, its business is shifting away from open web browsing as it transforms its core search product into an AI answer engine.
The Trade Desk has, of course, broadened its narrative and pitch to buyers beyond Google and the open web, investing heavily in connected TV and agentic advertising.
In The Trade Desk’s play against Google, we may still be in early innings.
Deals, Deals, Deals
- Chip giant AMD plans to buy AI startup World Labs for $8.2 billion in stock.
- Barry Diller’s People Inc. dropped its $18 billion bid for MGM Resorts.
- A24, Sony, and The New York Times are all interested in acquiring film-focused social platform Letterboxd.
- Samsung plans to infuse $1 billion into Helix, the KKR-backed AI-infrastructure company led by former AWS CEO Adam Selipsky.
- Private equity group Shamrock Capital made an eight-figure investment in the social-first agency Saylor, which it will combine with gaming agency Mutiny.
Revolving Door
- Wing, Alphabet’s autonomous drone delivery business, brought on LinkedIn alum Minjae Ormes as head of marketing.
- Three top BBDO NY execs—CEO Emma Armstrong, CCO Michael Aimette and chief client officer Kelli MacDonald—are departing for “a new opportunity” less than a year after coming over from FCB when Omnicom bought IPG.
- Paramount’s streaming chief Cindy Holland is out; HBO’s Casey Bloys is expected to run HBO Max and Paramount+ together.
- Roger Lynch, the CEO who spearheaded Condé Nast’s AI-licensing push, is leaving the publishing giant to join Mattel as CEO.
- WPP Media appointed Laura Ryan, an IPG vet from Orion Worldwide, chief media officer.
- Goodby Silverstein & Partners cofounder Rich Silverstein will step down, transitioning into a role as chairman emeritus; Jeff Goodby will stay on as chairman.
- Meta named MongoDB CEO CJ Desai its new chief enterprise platform officer; he’ll helm the company’s B2B AI efforts.
- Brandtech Group brought on Will Hanschell as chief technology officer; Hanschell is the former CEO of AI marketing company Pencil.
- Similarweb hired Michael Akkerman as CEO; he’ll join from Digital Turbine, where he was chief business officer.
Bits From the Ether
