At the tail end of the IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting, GroupM’s global head of investment, Andrew Meaden, discussed the giant media buyer's global preferred relationship with another sell-side platform, PubMatic. 

More conversations are swirling around supply path optimization, a process where buyers winnow the number of tech intermediaries they work with to get optimum rates and more transparent pricing on opaque ad trading.     

But the words "global preferred relationships" don't appeal to everyone, especially some publishers. A couple of big players do not make for a vibrant ecosystem, (take the U.K.'s competition watchdog's investigation into Google). Not to mention, more of these deals could see the sell-side vendors acting in the interest of the buy-side over publishers. 

“We have steadily seen ad tech generally move from the publisher to the buy-side as more tech is activated at the DSP and agency level,” one global publishing exec told me recently. “That’s led to the commoditization of publishers. SSPs have been the last hold out, too much emphasis on those trading deals might see them move the other way.” 

I’d love to hear where you sit on this topic, since there are more of these deals to come. 

And with that, please consider supporting our journalism with an Adweek+ Subscription and gain full access to all of Adweek's essential coverage and resources.

Thanks for reading, have a great week!

Lucinda

[email protected]

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