Programmatic advertising is experiencing a dramatic shift. Conversational and agentic AI are here, and their effects are already being felt.
Microsoft announced the shuttering of its DSP in May, stating that the current DSP model no longer aligns with its AI-powered priorities.
As ad tech barrels toward automation, companies of all sizes along the supply chain are leaning in, with all the investment that requires. However, ad tech is simultaneously facing another existential challenge: a growing cash flow gap created by extended payment terms and persistent delays.
Cash flow is treated like back-office admin for finance and accountants. That blind spot is costing the whole industry. But the demise in recent years of legacy DSPs is not a glitch in the matrix; it’s a business model failure, leaving SSPs and publishers to pick up the pieces.
The stark truth: In any given ecosystem, a liquidity problem anywhere along the chain quickly becomes everyone’s problem.
Mind the gap
The industry’s cash flow crisis has long-standing origins. Huge companies, including Big Tech players, large advertisers and their agencies, are the source of the funds that flow down the programmatic advertising chain. These companies benefit by dictating terms that often leave publishers and smaller ad tech players gasping for liquidity.
As essential intermediaries, DSPs keep the system running and are therefore at particular risk from the cash-flow gap. While they may only be paid by advertisers and agencies after 90 or 120 days, DSPs often need to settle up with SSPs within the month. Extended payment terms, however painful, are only part of a problem that’s exacerbated by invoices being paid late, either due to commercial calculation at the top or cash flow problems further down.
This liquidity crisis increasingly undermines the entire programmatic advertising market. Built-in inequalities pinch smaller players, starving them of operating capital and the ability to invest in new products. The market inevitably consolidates around cash-rich giants. And in the threat the crisis poses to DSPs, it plants a time bomb under the entire programmatic supply chain.
As Adotat’s recent whitepaper, The Liquidity Crisis in Ad Tech, makes clear, the cash-flow gap has created “a precarious operating environment in which DSPs function more like short-term lenders than technology platforms.”
When DSPs go down, the effects are seismic and extend both ways along the chain. MediaMath’s 2023 bankruptcy, for instance, left more than $125 million (£92.3m) in unpaid debts to over 200 partners.
Left unaddressed, this kind of liquidity problem only ever gets worse, particularly in difficult economic times. Why isn’t it being discussed or addressed? Creativity and finance don’t often sit at the same table, and most companies simply accept harsh payment terms as part of the cost of doing business. Meanwhile, the gap between the cash-strapped Davids and the wealthy Goliaths of the digital advertising world only gets wider. The potential for large-scale meltdown becomes ever greater.
The benefits of liquidity
Besides repairing a system at risk of permanent rupture, what does faster capital actually unlock? When money travels quickly and efficiently through a supply chain, it creates innovation, momentum and greater spending power at all levels. It’s a virtuous circle that stimulates the entire business and allows smart companies to benefit more quickly from the great work they do.
How can we effect change? One way is to bring greater transparency to the issue. We need to talk more openly about what is really killing DSPs. We need to develop a blueprint for keeping the ecosystem alive through sustainable financial models, liquidity solutions and trust-based relationships. Perhaps we even need to shine a light on persistent late payers and allow smaller companies to make an informed judgment about their business partners.
The DSPs, the publishers, the affiliates, the intermediaries who are under threat – these are the lifeblood of the industry. It is up to us to decide whether enough is enough or risk sleepwalking into a gathering crisis that could bring down our entire ecosystem.
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.