Lesson 5 of 5 · 7 min read · beginner
The LUMAscape: a map of the whole industry
Read the famous LUMAscape map of ad tech, see the major categories of companies, and follow where an advertiser's dollar actually goes.
If you have ever seen a slide crammed with hundreds of tiny logos arranged between "Marketer" on the left and "Consumer" on the right, you have met the LUMAscape. It is the most famous picture in ad tech, and it is both a map and a joke: a map because it shows every category of company, and a joke because nobody can believe one ad needs that many.
The LUMAscape is like the map of the London Underground or the Tokyo metro. It looks overwhelming at first, but once you realise it is just a handful of lines with many stations, you can plan any journey. You do not need to know every station, just which line you are on and where it connects.
Where the map comes from
The chart was popularised by Terence Kawaja of the investment bank LUMA Partners, starting around 2010. It has been redrawn many times for display, video, mobile, search, TV and commerce. Over the years logos have disappeared as companies merged, shut down or were bought, but the categories have stayed remarkably stable.
The main "lines" on the map
| Category | What it does | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Agencies and trading desks | Plan and buy media for advertisers | WPP, Publicis, Omnicom, Dentsu |
| DSPs | Automated buying software | The Trade Desk, DV360, Amazon DSP |
| Data and identity | Audiences, IDs and data management (DMP, CDP, clean rooms) | LiveRamp, Experian, Salesforce |
| Exchanges and SSPs | Automated selling and auctions | Magnite, PubMatic, Index Exchange, Google AdX |
| Ad servers | Decide and record delivery (ad server) | Google Ad Manager, Campaign Manager 360 |
| Verification and measurement | Ad verification: viewability, brand safety, fraud; plus attribution | DoubleVerify, IAS, HUMAN, Nielsen |
| Creative and DCO | Build and personalise the ads | Innovid, Flashtalking |
| Publishers | Own audiences and ad slots | News, apps, streaming channels |
Around the edges sit walled gardens such as Google, Meta and Amazon, which do many of these jobs inside a single company. Newer maps have grown whole regions for retail media, connected TV and privacy tools, reflecting where budgets moved in the 2020s.
Follow the dollar
The most useful way to read the map is to follow one advertising dollar from left to right and ask who takes a slice. The animated diagram below shows a typical open-web path.
Where the advertiser’s dollar goes
A brand sets aside $1.00 for programmatic display. It hopes that dollar buys attention from real people on quality sites.
- A brand spends a dollar: A brand sets aside $1.00 for programmatic display. It hopes that dollar buys attention from real people on quality sites.
- Agency and platform fees: The agency and the DSP each take a share for planning, buying and running the technology. The DSP’s cut is its take rate.
- Data and verification: Audience data, Ad verification and brand-safety tools charge per thousand impressions. These can be small individually and add up together.
- The sell side takes its cut: The SSP or exchange keeps a fee before paying the publisher. Resellers in the chain can add more hops.
- The mystery slice: In the ISBA/PwC 2020 study, about 15% of spend could not be traced to any party: the unknown delta. Later studies found better matching data shrinks it a lot.
- What reaches the publisher: In that study, publishers received about half of the advertiser’s spend. The rest is the ad tech tax: the price of automation, data and intermediaries.
- And was it even a person?: Even the part that reaches a site only works if a human sees the ad. MFA sites and invalid traffic can soak up spend without reaching anyone real.
- Agency feeThe agency charges for planning and buying, sometimes as a percentage of spend.
- DSP feeThe buying platform keeps a share of what flows through it, known as its take rate.
- Data and verificationAudience data, brand safety and fraud checks are often charged as a small CPM add-on.
- SSP and exchange feeThe selling platform keeps a share of the winning bid before paying the publisher.
- PublisherWhat remains, the "working media", reaches the site or app that actually showed the ad.
The total of all those slices is nicknamed the ad tech tax. How big is it? Two landmark studies tried to find out using real campaign data rather than estimates.
That missing slice became known as the unknown delta: money that left the advertiser but could not be matched to any fee in the chain. The study also reported that only a small fraction of impressions could be traced end to end, because companies did not share matching data.
The ANA study counted not only fees but also "lost productivity": ads that were not viewable, were served to invalid traffic, or ran on made-for-advertising sites built purely to harvest ad money. Its point was that the ad tech tax is not just the fees you can see on an invoice; it is also the money spent on impressions that never had a chance of reaching a real, attentive person.
How to use the map
- Place any company. When you hear a new ad tech name, ask which column it belongs in and who pays it.
- Count the hops. Fewer hops between advertiser and publisher usually means less fee leakage and fewer places for fraud to hide.
- Watch the double agents. Companies in several columns at once may face conflicts between buyers and sellers.
- Ask for logs. Both the ISBA and ANA studies showed that shared, log-level data is the only way to see where money really went.
Key takeaways
- The LUMAscape maps ad tech from advertiser on the left to consumer on the right, grouped into a few stable categories.
- Following one dollar across the map shows how agencies, DSPs, data, verification and SSPs each take a slice.
- The combined slices are called the ad tech tax; money that cannot be traced at all is the unknown delta.
- ISBA/PwC (2020) and ANA (2023) used real log data to show large shares of spend never reach publishers or real people.
Questions people ask
What is the LUMAscape?
The LUMAscape is a chart created by LUMA Partners that maps the companies in digital advertising by category, from advertisers and agencies on the left through DSPs, data providers, exchanges, SSPs and ad servers to publishers and consumers on the right. It is widely used to explain how crowded and complicated the ad tech supply chain is.
What is the ad tech tax?
The ad tech tax is the combined share of an advertiser's budget kept by intermediaries such as agencies, DSPs, data providers, verification vendors, exchanges and SSPs before money reaches the publisher. Some definitions also include wasted spend on non-viewable, fraudulent or low-quality impressions. Studies by ISBA/PwC and the ANA found only around half or less of spend reaching publishers.
What is the unknown delta in programmatic advertising?
The unknown delta is the part of programmatic spend that cannot be attributed to any company in the supply chain. In the 2020 ISBA/PwC UK study it averaged 15 percent of advertiser spend, about a third of total supply chain costs. It arises because data between DSPs, SSPs and publishers often cannot be matched impression by impression.