🚨 Programmatic Advertising: We Have a “Few” Ideas to Revive the French Open Web 🙂

An opinion piece by GreyFox Ads for Open Garden

The 2025 figures from France's Observatoire de l'e-pub, published by SRI (the French association of online advertising sales houses), are in. And they're impressive:

France's digital advertising market reached €12.442 billion in 2025! 💰

The pie has never been bigger: nearly four times its size a decade ago. And it's still growing, up 11% year on year! 💵💵💵

So here's the question everyone in the French Open Web ecosystem should be asking.

Not: “How do we limit the damage?” 😓

No, no, no. 🙂‍↔️

The real question is: “How can we create more value from the BILLIONS of page views generated by the Open Web — and win a bigger share of the BILLIONS of euros invested in digital advertising?”

Good news: we've been thinking about this for a little while. 🤔🤔🤔

And we've come up with LOTS of concrete proposals to dramatically improve the French Open Web's value proposition versus the major platforms — and make advertisers excited about it again. 🤑

Why Does the French Open Web Need a New Value Proposition?

Digital advertising investment is growing, but a growing market doesn't automatically mean more revenue for independent publishers. The challenge is not simply to generate more impressions. It's to make Open Web advertising more attractive, effective and transparent for brands.

How Could We Revive the French Open Web?

We've put our proposals and analysis into a longer article for Open Garden, a French publication covering programmatic advertising and the Open Web:

👉 https://www.open-garden.com/p/publicit-digitale-ce-qui-a-cass-l-open-web-et-comment-le-r-parer

Fair warning:

📝 It's a little (🤏) long. Very long, actually.
😉 But if you care about the Open Web, we think you'll find plenty to dig into.
😍 And yes, we've even included pictures!

You might not agree with every proposal. That's fine. At least they're now on the table. 🍽️

A big thank-you once again to Nicolas Jaimes for giving us the opportunity to share our perspective in Open Garden, a leading French publication dedicated to programmatic advertising and the Open Web. 🙏

What Is GreyFox Ads Doing to Improve Open Web Advertising?

At GreyFox Ads, we're convinced that a high-quality Open Web delivers real value for advertisers — and could deliver even more.

That's why we've designed curated programmatic deals around a simple principle: better inventory, smarter targeting and greater transparency.

📡 Supply Path Optimization (SPO), prioritizing direct publisher connections
🚫 Excluding ad-cluttered websites and subdomains — the ones that look like Christmas trees 🎄
📐 Optimizing ad formats and players for meaningful on-screen presence (screenshare)
🎯 Audience targeting across cookie-based, cookieless and non-consented environments, using approaches appropriate to each privacy context
🛡️ Brand safety filters
👌 Simple activation for programmatic media traders
🪟 Transparent costs throughout the supply chain

Looking for a Quality Programmatic Advertising Partner?

Want to work with a partner focused on quality in your display and video campaigns?

📩 Get in touch with GreyFox Ads to discuss your programmatic advertising challenges!

Original LinkedIn post: https://lnkd.in/eZNZHDTb