Tech firm The Trade Desk launches ad campaign to rally advertisers to improve the Internet

Tech firm, The Trade Desk, has launched a campaign that sheds light on the business practices of “walled gardens” such as Google while calling for a more open and transparent advertising approach on the open internet.  

The ‘Unbreak the Internet’ campaign calls out Google and how its tactics and behaviours within the advertising ecosystem are 'breaking' the internet. The campaign serves as a call to action for advertisers, publishers and anyone that touches the advertising ecosystem to come together to do their part to improve the internet. This campaign's goal is to create a fair and competitive ecosystem for advertisers, publishers and consumers.

The campaign was conducted programmatically through The Trade Desk platform. The campaign includes a series of short video ads run across connected TV and online video advertising, complemented by audio, digital out-of-home, display, and paid social executions in Australia, Singapore, the US and Canada.

Don't miss: Google looks to generative AI ads as it amps capabilities

The Trade Desk's senior vice president, client services, APAC, Mitch Waters, said:

Advertising is more than just a commercial break, it’s fundamental to the way the internet is funded. It helps publishers generate revenue for the companies that produce the content we love, whether that’s high-quality journalism, music streaming, podcasts, TV, films, radio or mobile apps.

These businesses often rely on advertising to make their content free for consumers, Waters added. 

He explained that if brands continue to invest the vast majority of their ad budgets in 'walled gardens' such as Google, they inadvertently reduce the amount of money that the internet needs to produce high quality content.

Google makes money on both the buyer and seller sides of an advertising transaction. It benefits Google when more ad dollars are pushed to the ad inventory it owns, such as YouTube rather than the ads that’s best for advertisers. Consequently, this creates an inherent lack of objectivity and transparency that are essential for effective data-driven advertising. 

According to a report by Kantar, 'walled gardens' command nearly 80% of the ad spend in Asia Pacific, The Trade Desk said in a statement.

The ‘Unbreak the Internet’ campaign argues that the solution to Google’s dominance is advertising on the open internet, which comprises of fast-growing ad channels like over-the-top (OTT), music apps, news websites, blogs and gaming.

Waters explained that brands often assume that consumers spend their online time on social media, but that’s no longer true. "Majority (59%) of the time spent online by consumers in APAC is now on the open internet," he added. 

He said, “That’s great news for publishers and advertisers. For publishers, the more time spent on their sites than on social media, the more advertising revenue they’ll attract. And for advertisers, the open internet provides for a more effective way to deliver relevant ads through data-driven advertising, while offering more transparent access to omnichannel campaign performance."

"This level of openness and transparency helps advertisers make more-informed decisions to drive better-performing campaigns. It’s a win-win for everybody," he shared.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE has reached out for more information. 

Recently, Google Search ads plans to utilise generative AI to curate ads that are of increasing relevance to a user’s queries as it adapts to the rapidly changing ad industry.

At its Google Marketing Live event this week, Google announced that it will begin implementing generative AI to enhance and adapt search ads based on the context of the query. This will build on Google’s existing search ad engine, which already has an established foundation with the execution of automatically created assets for search ads a year ago.

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