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The above graphic from Terence Kawaja at Luma Partners represents the vast universe of players in the display advertising market. In one way or another, every company in this image is vying for a piece of the current $60 Billion annual ad spend, and trying to bring more online.
I’m not sure how many logos are on the slide, but I’m pretty sure that it’s too many. Many of the smaller, less focused companies are being propped up by ambitious and idealistic venture money. And many of the best small companies will likely soon be gobbled up by the bigger names on the chart.
It’s clear that the industry needs a number of players between the advertiser and the media. These players most definitely include creatives and ad serving technology. These players might also include media buying companies, aggregators, optimizers, and many of the other buzz words you see grouping these logos above. These players probably don’t include companies without a technical advantage, advertiser relationship, or publisher relationship. In other words, the players on the left are the creatives and agencies–they have the strongest advertiser relationships. The players on the right do the ad serving themselves and they have the strongest publisher relationships. Everyone else in the middle is fighting to produce superior technology to scale and get a piece of the ad spend flowing from left to right. It’s a really interesting graphic and it will be even more interesting to see it as the months go by.
Thanks for reading.
