Who will stand up for the open web?

AdExchanger's James Hercher asks whether the conventional wisdom that the open web is in irreversible decline is actually true, and assembles a roster of people betting against it. Inuvo's Eric Tilbury argued display is badly undervalued because it has always been judged on garbage metrics like clicks and match rates: "Display ads are like a cheat code because they're so much cheaper than all the other channels." Otherside's Cory Dobbin, a longtime walled-garden buyer, said the math flips as Meta, Google and Amazon squeeze brand margins: "programmatic is shifting from a dirty word to being a little bit in style and sexy right now." The structural bets are real: Yahoo is the exclusive reseller for Microsoft and NBC's open web display inventory, and Taboola's Adam Singolda is pitching a one-stop hand-off, saying "It gives us the opportunity to make display ads great again." The honest counterpoint sits in the piece itself: when marketers clean up open web campaigns, the numbers look worse because the old metrics were padded.

The crux

The open web's revival thesis rests on value for money rather than attention quality: as walled-garden acquisition costs climb, display's cheapness becomes its appeal, but only for buyers willing to tolerate honest metrics that look worse than the padded ones they are leaving behind.

Sell-side read

This is the strongest argument yet that premium, contextually-targeted open web inventory can command higher CPMs from performance buyers, but only where the publisher can prove incrementality and is willing to show reach and ROAS honestly.

Watch

Whether Yahoo's Microsoft and NBC reseller deals expand to more blue-chip publishers, and whether ecommerce-native brands follow AppLovin's path into open web programmatic.