The Open Internet and Direct Deals are Making a Quiet Comeback
By Asaf Shamly | October 8, 2024

Since 2021, open programmatic ad spending has barely grown by 3% while the walled gardens – think Google and Amazon – have surged ahead with 10% growth. This gap raises questions about the future of the open internet. But, against this data, there are signs this landscape may become more balanced.
A closer look at a natural evolution
The open internet and programmatic advertising relationship status has always been “complicated”. For a long time, the balance of power has tilted in favor of walled gardens. This isn’t surprising or sudden. It’s a natural consequence of market consolidation. However, there are indications of a change in trend.
Take for example Connected TV (CTV) advertising. It has emerged as a powerful force, combining the reach of traditional media with the precision of digital targeting. This has opened up new opportunities for the open internet to compete. Companies like The Trade Desk are leading the change, demonstrating the potential for the open internet to regain ground.
Shifting back to direct deals?
Now here’s the interesting part – we’re seeing more publishers and brands moving back to direct deals. Why? Programmatic, while great for scale, often leaves publishers with less profit because of all of the middlemen involved. Brands, especially the big ones, are moving back to direct deals also because they love the transparency of knowing exactly what they’re buying and from whom. Big publishers are increasingly recognizing this shift and seizing that opportunity to take back control of their ad inventory.
The fall of MFA publishers
The decline of Made for Advertising (MFA) publishers has also contributed to this shift towards direct deals. These publishers often rely on arbitrage, acquiring users without offering substantial value. As brands and agencies became aware of the inefficiencies associated with MFA publishers, they began to allocate their budgets elsewhere.
This realization has only pushed big brands further towards direct deals.
After all, why gamble with MFA publishers when you can strike a deal directly with a trusted, high-quality publisher? It’s a much more straightforward and effective strategy for everyone involved.
What’s next?
The ongoing Google antitrust trial could have a significant impact on the future of adtech. A potential breakup of Google’s ad business could create a more level playing field for smaller supply-side platforms (SSPs) and demand-side platforms (DSPs), as well as potentially driving more publishers toward direct deals. This would further empower the open internet by giving publishers greater control over their ad inventory and reducing the dominance of the walled gardens.
Latest Articles
-
Your Media Plan is Still Yours – Until it Isn’t
Platforms like X aren’t building AI to support advertisers - they’re building it to control the process. Systems like Grok optimize for what’s measurable inside their ecosystem, not for a brand’s broader goals. Automation without visibility isn’t strategy, it’s dependency and that shift is one every advertiser should be paying attention to.
View Now -
The Web’s Closing Doors – And AI’s Feeling the Lock
Recently, Cloudflare took the unusual step of publicly calling out Perplexity AI for scraping publisher content without permission. And they didn’t hold back - accusing the company of disguising its crawler, bypassing robots.txt rules, and consuming massive bandwidth without attribution or consent. Cue the familiar debate: who owns online content? Should AI assistants be allowed to “learn” from everything on the web? Is scraping theft - or fair use?
View Now -
We Now Know What Ad Was Served. We Still Don’t Know if it Mattered.
The IAB’s new ACIF standard brings much-needed structure to creative asset tracking in programmatic advertising. It’s a meaningful step — but knowing what was served isn’t the same as knowing if it mattered. This piece explores what ACIF fixes, what it doesn’t, and why understanding the experience of an ad is key to measuring true impact.
View Now