The lack of trust within the digital ad industry has made tech building a hot subject. In March, Warc estimated that the “tech tax” accounted for 55% of all programmatic spend worldwide. In other words, many advertisers are seeing more of their ad dollars wind up in the hands of tech firms, rather than with the publishers they purchase inventory from.
Building tech sounds like a nice solution to these issues, but doing so is often expensive, time consuming and difficult to find adequate talent for. In an April survey of 119 US media decision-makers conducted by Advertiser Perceptions and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), about 30% of respondents preferred to build tech or do ad ops in-house. The other 70% or so said they either work with a partner or would prefer to work with a partner for these functions.