The Illusion Of Complexity: How CTV's Power Brokers Keep Publishers In The Dark | AdExchanger

"Publishers produce the content that makes streaming valuable, yet they carry the heaviest burden and earn the smallest share. Meanwhile, OEMs and streamers have tightened control of distribution and data. What began as a basic imbalance between supply and demand has evolved into a structure where the largest intermediaries set the rules and everyone else plays by them. Industry discussion often blames fraud, invalid traffic or unavoidable complexity."

"The underlying problem: A glut of supply CTV inventory has multiplied over the past few years. FAST channels, OEM apps and new AVOD services have poured billions of impressions into the market, outpacing demand and pushing CPMs down. Price corrections are normal as markets expand, but many distributors haven't absorbed them. Instead, they've changed the terms of participation to preserve their margins and control."

"These practices make publisher inventory harder to find, value and transact, despite being identical in quality to what platforms sell themselves. Hoarding inventory: Many OEMs and streamers take as much as half of a publisher's ad inventory by contract. They aggregate that share, repackage it as premium direct supply and label the remainder as lower quality. The same audience, same content and same impression value are treated differently simply because one side controls the pipes."

Publishers produce the content that underpins streaming but shoulder the greatest burden while earning the smallest share. A rapid expansion of CTV supply from FAST channels, OEM apps and AVOD services has flooded the market with impressions, outpacing demand and driving CPMs down. Many distributors have preserved margins by changing participation terms rather than absorbing price corrections. Contractual control of inventory, selective data access and self-serving definitions of supply make identical publisher inventory harder to find, value and transact. The resulting opacity hides inefficiency and shifts costs onto publishers.

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