Basics
LUMAscape
A LUMAscape is a well-known industry map, published by investment bank LUMA Partners, that shows the hundreds of companies in ad tech and martech grouped by category.
The LUMAscape is the famous crowded chart of logos that explains the ad tech ecosystem at a glance. Terry Kawaja of LUMA Partners, an investment bank focused on digital media and marketing tech, published the first display advertising LUMAscape around 2010, showing how money flows from marketers on one side to publishers on the other through agencies, DSPs, exchanges, SSPs, data providers and more.
LUMA now publishes several versions, for display, video and CTV, mobile, search, social, commerce and marketing technology. Each is updated as companies merge, pivot or disappear. Comparing old and new maps is a quick lesson in consolidation.
The map became a symbol of complexity: critics point at it to explain the ad tech tax and the hiding places for fraud. It is a simplification, though. Many companies span several boxes, and walled gardens do much of the same work inside a single logo.
Think of it like this
The LUMAscape is like a subway map for ad tech: it will not tell you what each station is like inside, but it shows the lines and how the money travels between stops.
An example
A new hire at an Indian SSP is handed the display LUMAscape on day one to learn where the company sits, who its competitors are and which companies it plugs into.
Related terms
Ad tech
Ad tech is the software and infrastructure that decides which ad appears where, buys and sells that ad space, delivers the ad, and measures what happened afterwards.
DSP (demand-side platform)
A DSP (demand-side platform) is software that advertisers and agencies use to buy ad impressions automatically across many exchanges and publishers, deciding which impressions to bid on and how much.
SSP (supply-side platform)
An SSP (supply-side platform) is software that publishers use to sell their ad inventory automatically to many buyers, running auctions and managing prices, deals and quality controls.
Ad tech tax
The ad tech tax is the combined share of an advertiser's spend taken by intermediaries, such as agencies, DSPs, data providers, verification vendors and SSPs, before the rest reaches the publisher.
Programmatic advertising
Programmatic advertising is buying and selling ad space through automated software, usually one impression at a time, instead of through manual negotiations, phone calls and paper contracts.
Sources: LUMA Partners: LUMAscapes