In case you haven’t noticed, the competitive spirit in ad tech is heating up. There’s a war brewing on two fronts, and the press is starting to pay attention. The western front of the war is between Amazon and The Trade Desk, while the eastern front of the war seems to be between Meta and the agencies themselves.
What I refer to as the western front truly came to a head this week with the leak of the Amazon demand-side platform deck that appears to offer brands a free way to test and migrate their ads from The Trade Desk to Amazon.
This is not simply a shot over the bow. This is a complete attempt to take over the open web and consolidate more ad spend with Amazon.
Amazon is a player
Amazon is known for these kinds of moves. The company has a history of identifying a business to go into, and very quickly taking it over. It started with books, expanded to all commerce, then cloud services, and most recently expanded to advertising, quickly becoming one of the top three players in digital advertising.
This is not a criticism of Amazon. It’s more written out of envy. It’s a player, and it knows how to grow rapidly.
The Trade Desk is also formidable, and has established itself as the primary player for open web and large digital publishers not named Google or Meta. It has become the de facto standard bearer of the broader advertising industry, innovating in areas where other walled gardens have not.
Do I think Amazon can succeed in usurping any of the land that has been secured by The Trade Desk?
Grab the popcorn
It might, but not everyone wants to willingly cede more of the industry to Amazon, Google and Meta. The larger universe of CTV and online video needs to be serviced by an independent entity. The Trade Desk plays that role and should continue to do so.
All that being said, I feel like I need to get some popcorn and watch as these two Goliaths try to maintain their own respective areas of carved-out territory.
Speaking of carved-out territory, while Amazon and The Trade Desk duke it out over media, Meta is duking it out with the agencies on creative.
Earlier this year, Zuckerberg was quoted as saying that advertisers will be coming to Meta to run campaigns and AI will generate all the creative, cutting out the need for agencies to build and traffic the messages that run on Meta.
Agencies and Meta
Surprisingly little has been written to cover that story as we enter late 2025 and begin the procession for Q1 of 2026. How are the agencies not fuming over that proclamation? How are they not steering their clients away from Meta in the hopes of raising a stink about the fact that Meta wants to disintermediate them completely?
I assume the big holding companies have done back-door deals with Meta that ensure their services will not be cut out, maybe even offering their services on the back end to Meta as quality control for that creative.
AI-driven creative automation is available, and it comes in many shapes and sizes, but it is not solely available by and for use in Meta. There are many options that agencies are starting to use as a way of supplementing what they do for their primary ad creative, enabling more diversity of creative and thereby avoiding wear-out.
Maybe Meta stopped talking about this because the agencies secretly complained, or maybe Meta just realised it hasn’t cornered the market on AI creative.
Heating up
However you look at it, the ad-tech space is once again heating up. It’s not quite Game of Thrones-level antagonism just yet, but it’s definitely worth getting some popcorn and watching what happens.
The most interesting gem I can offer is that for all the hubbub and hullabaloo, the industry is still navel-gazing. These ad wars are companies fighting over what they want, but they are ignoring the simple fact that consumers still don’t like ads. They block, skip and ignore when possible. They don’t click. They don’t visit.
You’d think that rather than looking down and fighting over formats that don’t work, maybe companies should be looking forward to create new ways of working and better formats for reaching that audience?
Or maybe that’s just what the rest of us should be doing on the “outer rims”? (Blatant Star Wars reference, for those of you who really don’t know).
Cory Treffiletti is chief marketing officer at generative AI-powered product placement platform, Rembrand. He was previously SVP at FIS. He has been a thought leader, executive and business driver in the digital media landscape since 1994. In addition to authoring a weekly column on digital media, advertising and marketing since 2000 for MediaPost‘s Online Spin, Treffiletti has been a successful executive, media expert and/or founding team member for a number of companies, and published a book, Internet Ad Pioneers, in 2012.
