Explainer: What vertical integration means for the ad tech supply chain
· 2h ago · Originally reported by PPC Land
Vertical integration describes one company owning successive stages of a supply chain. In ad tech, it refers to a single firm operating the buy side, the exchange and the sell side of programmatic advertising. The piece lays out the concept for readers new to how ad tech intermediaries are structured.
Why it matters
It matters because when one company touches every step of an ad transaction, it shapes who controls the flow of money and information between advertisers and publishers.
Explain it like I’m new here
It's like one company owning the wheat farm, the flour mill and the bakery, so it controls the whole journey of your bread from field to shelf.
Terms in this story
Ad inventory
Ad inventory is the total amount of advertising space a publisher has available to sell, usually counted in impressions across its ad slots, pages, apps or screens.
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.
Ad exchange
An ad exchange is a digital marketplace where buyers and sellers of ad impressions meet and trade through automated auctions, usually in real time.
Creative
A creative is the actual ad content a person sees or hears, such as an image, video, audio spot, HTML5 animation or native text, delivered into an ad slot.
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