State of the Market
Adtech and martech are consolidating, identity is being rebuilt without cookies, and AI is reshaping everything from SEO to native ad personalisation. This is where we track what’s actually changing in the media industry, not just what’s trending on LinkedIn.
Some of it’s structural: adtech and martech mergers accelerating, legacy platforms buckling under real-time demands, brands replacing patchwork stacks with CDPs. Some of it’s about trust: bid duplication, sub-floor bidding tactics, and brand safety failures like the Forbes.com clone-site ad fraud case. And a lot of it’s about what happens after the cookie: IP-based workarounds, zero-party data, and Google’s Privacy Sandbox rewriting targeting rules everyone assumed were fixed for good. We track the shifts that actually change how the industry operates, and skip the ones that are just noise.
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Predictions That Didn’t Land, And What Replaced Them
Industry forecasting has a poor track record over any multi-year horizon. Three recent examples worth remembering next time a confident prediction shows up in a deck.
| The prediction | What actually happened |
|---|---|
| Chrome would deprecate third-party cookies by 2022, then 2024, then 2025 | Google reversed the plan entirely in April 2025 and shut down most of the replacement technology in October 2025 |
| SSP fee structures would stay opaque indefinitely | Both Magnite and PubMatic publicly confirmed their fee structures within a year of the rumours first surfacing |
| Direct publisher-DSP connections would steadily displace traditional SSP intermediation | Adoption grew, but so did buyer pushback over transparency, with major agency holding companies pulling spend rather than expanding it |
The pattern across all three: the specific technology or timeline predicted rarely arrives as forecast, but the underlying pressure driving the prediction, privacy scrutiny, fee transparency demands, buyer distrust of platform self-reporting, was usually real and kept mattering regardless.
What Actually Connects This Quarter’s Separate Stories
Read individually, these are unrelated news items about different companies. Read together, one structural problem keeps showing up under different names.
| Story | The trust question underneath it |
|---|---|
| The Trade Desk’s sub-floor bidding tactics | Can buyers see what they’re actually being charged relative to the floor |
| SSPs disputing the “dumb pipes” framing | Whether intermediaries are adding value or just extracting a toll nobody can fully see |
| Bid duplication risks | Whether reported auction dynamics reflect what’s actually happening in the pipe |
| Brand safety in Google’s Search Partner Network | Whether platform-reported placement quality matches placement reality |
Every one of these is, underneath the specific technical detail, the same question: does the reporting match the reality, and who’s actually able to check. That’s the throughline worth tracking across this archive more than any single vendor’s specific news cycle.
What’s Actually Changing Hands
Adtech and martech M&A ran hot through 2025, around 465 deals across martech, adtech and digital content, up 13% on the prior year, headlined by Omnicom’s acquisition of IPG. Momentum has been uneven into 2026: Q1 saw broader martech deal volume cool, down 14%, with scaled transactions down sharply, while adtech held up better on deal count even as the largest deals became rarer.
The consistent thread across both the busy 2025 and the cooler Q1 2026: buyers are concentrating on incrementality measurement, identity resolution and AI-driven performance, not scale for its own sake. A named example worth watching: The Trade Desk’s acquisition of Sincera, a direct bet on supply chain transparency data, the same theme running through the sub-floor bidding and dumb pipes stories above.
Every State of the Market article
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Adtech + Martech Mergers Surge: What This Means for the Industry
Adtech and martech M&A ran hot through 2025, roughly 465 deals, up 13% on the year. It’s cooled…
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Self-Supervised Learning in AI & Digital Marketing
An emerging trend – self-supervised learning (SSL) – has gained attention for its potential in transforming the way…
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AdTech’s Financial Dilemma & Google’s Sandbox
With the introduction of Google’s Privacy Sandbox, the traditional methods of advertising are being reinvented.
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A New Era of Inclusive Marketing
An evolving trend within the marketing world is that brands are no longer content with just being advertisers.
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Redefining Martech: A Necessity in a Dynamic Environment
Legacy martech systems are proving to be a drag on performance. This article explores the challenges and potential…
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In-Store Retail Media in 2024: Reality or Hype?
The rise of retail media is attributed to the shift in consumer behaviour towards online shopping and the…
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Disputing the ‘Dumb Pipes’ Theory: The Evolution of SSPs
“SSPs are dumb pipes” has been the pitch behind every direct DSP-to-publisher initiative for the last three years.…
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How Brands Paid Forbes.com For Fraudulent Ads
Forbes ran a second, undisclosed version of its own site, reformatted purely to fit more ads, and sold…
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Unpacking The Trade Desk’s Sub-Floor Bidding Tactics
This article aims to shed light on the implications of TTD’s new approach on SSPs, publishers, and the…
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Brand Safety Considerations And Google’s Search Partner Network
Google’s Search Partner Network is included by default on most search campaigns, and most advertisers running it have…
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The Shift to IP Address Band-Aids In A Cookie-Less World
IP-based targeting was never a great identity solution, it was a workaround. Chrome keeping third-party cookies didn’t retire…
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Are Consumers Truly Embracing Sustainability?
Are consumers genuinely embracing sustainability, or is it merely a passing trend? We explore how sustainability is shaping…
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How To Reassemble the Fragmented Media Landscape
While internet advancements has created many opportunities for marketers, it has also brought with it a host of…
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Bid Duplication Risks And Challenges For Marketers
Bid duplication isn’t fraud, and it isn’t even always a bug. But it quietly inflates the apparent competitiveness…
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How AI Is Shaping A New Era Of Personalized Native Ads
We explore how AI is reshaping native advertising strategies, enhancing customer engagement, and delivering personalized content at scale.
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How In-Game Ads Are Influencing Digital Marketing Strategies
Gaming advertising has experienced exponential growth in recent years, attracting attention from prominent brands and marketing strategists worldwide
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Social Commerce: A New Era of Retail Media and Marketing
The fusion of eCommerce and social media, social commerce is a powerful force transforming the way brands interact…
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Rethinking Audience Targeting in a Post-Cookie World
The cookie deprecation has started. We explore how advertisers can navigate these changes and future proof their addressability…
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How To Revolutionize Your Digital Marketing With Voice Search (VSEO)
Voice-enabled devices have changed how users interact with search engines, prompting marketers to adapt their Voice Search Engine…
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Articulating Marketing’s Value to Finance
Marketing and finance aren’t disagreeing about whether marketing works. They’re speaking two different measurement languages, and the burden…
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Why Marketers Need To Embrace Zero-Party Data
Zero-party data is critical for marketers that must balance satisfying consumer demands for bespoke experiences and respecting privacy…
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The Future Of SEO: Embracing AI And Chatbots
SEO is experiencing a revolutionary shift, courtesy of AI. As we delve into the intricacies of this new…
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Can You Tell Reality from AI? How To Navigate The Deepfake Threat
Ads have been a staple of the internet, but as technology advances and policies change, the wealthy are…
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Beyond Commercials: Shifting Focus In An Ad-Free Digital Landscape
Ads have been a staple of the internet, but as technology advances and policies change, the wealthy are…
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Why Brands Are Turning to CDPs to Power Their Martech Strategies
Gaming has become an integral part of the media industry, creating a new frontier in entertainment known as…
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A Deep Dive into the Future of Entertainment
Gaming has become an integral part of the media industry, creating a new frontier in entertainment known as…
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5G Technology: A Revolution in Media Delivery and Accessibility
Promising high-speed connectivity, lower latency and a remarkable improvement in media accessibility and delivery, 5G is not merely…
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Audio Revolution: The Podcasting Phenomenon
With its diverse range of content and accessible nature, podcasting has emerged as a dominant force in the…
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New Revenue Models for Media Companies
The rise of digital platforms, changing consumer behavior, and the unprecedented challenges posed by technological advancements have led…
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Big Data: Transforming Digital Content Strategies
The term ‘big data’ has become a buzzword, transforming various aspects of our lives and industries, including the…
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News Transformation: Citizens and Social Media
News dissemination has undergone a profound transformation in the digital era. The rise of social media platforms has…
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Synthetic Media and its Role in Advertising
In today’s digital age, the landscape of marketing and advertising is constantly evolving. With the rapid advancements in…
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Sustainable Digital Media Driving Impact
In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of the environmental impact of various industries, and the…
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Blockchain & Marketing Convergence Trends in Australia
The digital media landscape has undergone significant transformations in recent years, driven by technological advancements and changing consumer…
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Australia’s Data Privacy Media Landscape
Data privacy regulations have become a crucial aspect of the digital landscape, with the European Union’s General Data…
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Breaking Down The Streaming Landscape
Streaming has revolutionized the way we consume media, offering a convenient and personalized experience. With the rise of…
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Crafting Connections: The Art of Propensity Modeling
A powerful tool that is revolutionizing marketing strategies is propensity modeling. By leveraging the power of artificial intelligence…
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The Rise of Retail Media: Revolutionizing Digital Advertising
In the ever-evolving world of digital advertising, a new wave is emerging – retail media. This exciting frontier…
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Programmatic AI: Revolutionizing Monetization & Media Buying
Publishers are constantly looking for innovative ways to monetize their content and improve media buying efficiencies. One technology…
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Digital Disruption: Content, Media Corporations & Prosumers
Digital disruption has transformed the way information is created, consumed, and shared. With the advent of social media…
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What does “State of the Market” actually cover?
Structural shifts in adtech and martech (consolidation, legacy systems being replaced), the post-cookie identity landscape (Privacy Sandbox, IP-based identifiers, zero-party data), AI’s effect on SEO and ad personalisation, retail media and social commerce, and programmatic trust issues like bid duplication and brand safety failures.
How is this different from The Media Guide Perspective?
State of the Market tracks what’s happening and why it matters commercially. The Media Guide Perspective is where we argue a point of view on it. If you want the facts first, start here; if you want an opinion on what to do about them, that’s the Perspective archive.
How often is this archive updated?
Whenever a shift is worth covering, not on a fixed schedule. The archive above pulls every article in this category automatically, so it’s always current.
Do these articles connect to the advisory work you do?
Often, yes. Several of these themes (martech consolidation, identity and privacy shifts, retail media) show up directly in the problems covered on Business Challenges. The news explains the shift, the advisory work is what you do about it.
I don’t have time to read the whole archive. Where do I start?
Editor’s Picks shortlists the pieces with the most lasting relevance, rather than just the most recent.
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