Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
10 minutes of expert insights every weekday. Your morning ritual for staying ahead in retail media.
Will agentic media buying be the end of us all?
===
[00:00:00] Kiri: I've been thinking about this question a lot lately. As agentic workflows and tools are introduced to retail media, who gets disrupted? Will the way that a dollar flows [00:00:15] through the retail media ecosystem today still be alive and well in one or two years? And I've been posing this same question to industry folks on one-on-one calls [00:00:30] privately
[00:00:30] And I'll even be taking another stab soon at creating another industry map showing how the dollars flow through the ecosystem with various scenarios playing out. But before I went on vacation [00:00:45] over the summer, I also posed this question publicly to Scott Messer and Jana Meron, who are two big brains behind a new podcast called Ad Tech Therapy, and in the episode [00:01:00] named Where the Puck Are We Going?,
[00:01:03] which was published on July 14, they aired my question and provided their point of view response to it. So my question was, is agentic [00:01:15] media buying going to be the end of us all? Platforms and retailers are building algorithmic media buying black boxes. Agencies and brands are building their own agents.
[00:01:26] The current state is layers upon layers of [00:01:30] tech and handoffs between media management platform, DSP, SSP, and ad server, and back again with measurement. Will agentic media buying slash through some of those layers? Which one and who's [00:01:45] left? And Scott and Jana provided a very thoughtful response,
[00:01:49] which I'm gonna share some highlights from. Let's go
[00:01:52]
[00:01:54] Kiri: So first part of the answer here is that fear is natural and possibly even [00:02:00] helpful from an evolutionary standpoint
[00:02:03] so any fear that people have about the part of the ecosystem that they're working on being at risk or even their job being at risk is rational
[00:02:12] and maybe even helpful. Let's listen
[00:02:14] Scott Messer: This [00:02:15] is a very human nature for us to think in doom and gloom cycles, but it shouldn't prevent us from sounding the doom and gloom alarm because part of what keeps you out of doom and [00:02:30] gloom is your fight and flight response mechanism, which helps you fight against these forces that are trying to wipe us out.
[00:02:39] Janna: 100%. I think that we've talked a lot about the destruction [00:02:45] and, "Oh, we'll get rid of all these people because we won't need them anymore," and then all of a sudden they're not there, and oops, this takes a lot more people than we thought, and now we're scrambling because we don't have enough people to do the work.
[00:02:58] I also think, [00:03:00] though, that programmatic as itself is a good indicator that we'll all still be around. It's not going to kill us. People were saying the same thing about ad salespeople and [00:03:15] direct sales businesses, and they're still here, and there is a flourishing multi-billion dollar industry around it.
[00:03:23]
[00:03:24] Kiri: So now with that existential dread pushed temporarily to the side, [00:03:30] Scott went on to answer my question about the current tech ecosystem and which, if any, components would be eliminated
[00:03:39] Scott Messer: In one sense, it's no, it will not slash these layers because you're building [00:03:45] tech on top of the systems to operate the systems better, right?
[00:03:50] And that's where you're gonna use the same stuff with fewer people. All right? And so you're not removing measurement, you're not making it easier, you're not doing these things. Maybe your insights get better, your analytics get faster, [00:04:00] your trafficking gets easier, but that doesn't slash the layers. But then there's the second part where, and maybe this isn't so much agentic, but I think it's getting leaned into it, where you're seeing more DSPs go publisher direct, Backstage at [00:04:15] Yahoo, Trade Desk, Viant now with its new product.
[00:04:19] PubMatic is even, you know, through its agentic thing, like, there's a DSP in there. Curation is certainly bringing us, like, closer to those pieces, and it's collapsing [00:04:30] the entire ecosystem. It's accelerated by agentic process. So in that sense, like, yes, we will slash through some of those layers, but you can't get rid of them entirely.
[00:04:42] You still need measurement. You still need technically buy side [00:04:45] and sell side, and you still need an exchange. The functions have to happen. Just where they are and what you call them Might go down.
[00:04:52] Janna: Yeah, I also think they might be different. The DSP and the SSP weren't really a thing, right? If you think about what [00:05:00] programmatic started out as, it was, you know, arguably Google AdWords was the first second price auction, or probably, I don't know if it was the first ever, but it was a second price auction for advertising, and it [00:05:15] changed the way we did things.
[00:05:16] And there were new tools that said, "Okay, well, you can do that in search, you can do that in display," and right? And so I think that there will be an evolution here where these tools will evolve, and there will be different layers. And [00:05:30] hopefully they'll be more efficient layers, but there are going to be layers.
[00:05:34] They may not be these layers, but there will still be layers your advertisers can't wait [00:05:45] weeks for audiences. GrowthLoop's Composable Commerce Media solution helps media teams turn first-party data into high-value audiences, launch campaigns faster, and prove what's working [00:06:00] across every channel. Learn how retail media leaders at Costco, Fanatics, and Gopuff use GrowthLoop to create highly segmented audiences and deliver stronger results [00:06:15] for their brand partners.
[00:06:16] Kiri Masters: Visit go.growthloop.com/breakfast. That is go.growthloop.com/breakfast
[00:06:29] Kiri: So I just wanna jump [00:06:30] in here with some context about retail media specifically. In on-site retail media ads, as in the sponsored product ads that show up on a retailer's own site or app, which is [00:06:45] the dominant form of retail media as it stands today, at least in the US market. Actually, in that scenario, there's typically not an SSP or an exchange.
[00:06:58] typically the way it works today [00:07:00] is that a brand buys media through the retailer's console directly or through a management platform like Sky or Pacvue that integrates with the retailer's ad console over an API, and the retailer's [00:07:15] ad server runs the auction and serves the ad.
[00:07:18] And so that auction, ad serving, and reporting all sit with one vendor, or in some cases, the retailer builds their own. And we've never really had this part [00:07:30] of the layer that the open web has recently been trying to sidestep in the SSP. Now, ironically, this is kinda getting down a little bit of a rabbit hole, but interesting to note, there is a recent trend in retail media [00:07:45] to bring back or introduce an SSP into the ecosystem.
[00:07:51] So last October, The Trade Desk began selling GoPuff, uh, on-site sponsored product ad inventory inside its own DSP [00:08:00] with the ad server Kodi connecting the two of them as a commerce SSP and what they call themselves as the industry's first commerce SSP. And so there is some discourse in the retail media ad tech space about whether or [00:08:15] not having an ES-- uh, SSP introduced to the s-to the stack is a good thing or not.
[00:08:21] Definitely a topic for another day. but this is also where Janna landed too, pointing out that there wasn't always this [00:08:30] separation between an, a DSP and an SSP in the traditional programmatic space
[00:08:37] And this to me kinda comes back to this concept of two ways to make money in business, bundling and [00:08:45] unbundling, and which part of the cycle are we at now in retail media versus the broader programmatic ad tech space? I'm not sure
[00:08:56] But where Janna lands is that the layers that we have [00:09:00] today are likely to morph and evolve. She says they may not be these layers, but there still will be layers. And so my take on all of this is I think that this reorg is probably what is of most [00:09:15] interest to people here. It is that existential question, and it is the part that I plan on pushing a little bit further for the retail media space in particular.
[00:09:26] But I did really appreciate this perspective from [00:09:30] Scott and Janna, two people that I really love learning from in the space. They've seen this movie play out before in earlier eras of programmatic advertising, and as we know, while history doesn't repeat itself, it does [00:09:45] rhyme, or at the very least, it gives us some scenarios to play with.
[00:09:49] So I do recommend checking out the Ad Tech Therapy podcast, and you can consider submitting a question through their patient portal for them to answer on the show. [00:10:00] Thank you for listening, and I'll catch you tomorrow
[00:10:02]