"For years, SSPs were cast as the critical pipes carrying publisher inventory into demand platforms. Now, The Trade Desk has decided those pipes are just resellers - middlemen moving ad inventory at arm's length rather than direct conduits between buyers and sellers. Earlier this month, it made that reclassification official. On the surface, it sounds like semantics. But to SSPs - and the publishers relying on them - the reclassification comes with real consequences: less money and even less leverage."
"By itself, this doesn't make The Trade Desk a villain. Fewer middlemen means fewer tricks - from bid duplication to floor manipulation - that can drain money from buyers. The issue is how it's executed. The Trade Desk isn't just cutting out inefficiencies - it's using its position to tighten control over the flow of ad dollars. Here's how that can - and often does - play out:"
"Take a publisher with inventory available through both an SSP and The Trade Desk's preferred paths - OpenPath, its proprietary direct link to publishers, or SP500, a curated set of 500 "efficient" supply routes across the open exchange. Before Kokai, where dollars landed often depended on buyer deals or preferred setups. Now, with SSPs tagged as resellers, those paths are scored as less efficie"
The Trade Desk reclassified SSPs as resellers, altering market perception of supply paths. Kokai, its AI-powered platform, penalizes resold inventory and prioritizes so-called "clean" supply paths. The shift lowers revenue for SSPs and diminishes their leverage with publishers as buyers are steered toward OpenPath and SP500 integrations. The Trade Desk is incrementally adding sell-side functionality, reducing intermediaries while consolidating control over ad flows. Fewer middlemen can reduce fraud and inefficiencies, but concentrated control risks redirecting ad dollars and weakening independent SSP influence in programmatic advertising.
Read at Digiday
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