Programmatic Advertising: The Thorny Issue of Sharing the Value... 📊💰

By Max Legrand · GreyFox Ads · A French perspective on the Open Web

When an advertiser spends €1,000 on Meta, the platform receives the €1,000. When that same advertiser invests €1,000 through the programmatic Open Auction, figuring out where the money goes can be rather more complicated. 💸

1. €1,000 invested: where does the money go?

Advertisers often criticise programmatic advertising for its lack of financial transparency. Invest €1,000 on Meta and the commercial relationship appears straightforward: the platform receives the spend and supplies the advertising environment (although this comparison does not describe Meta's internal costs or margins).

Invest the same €1,000 through the Open Auction and the distribution of money across the supply chain may be much less obvious. The Nestlé, WPP Media and Hubvisor study is one example referenced in the original discussion of this issue. The exact fee split depends on the buying route, contractual arrangements and services involved; there is no universal percentage that applies to every campaign.

But the complexity has a legitimate explanation: unlike a walled garden, the Open Web is an ecosystem of independent businesses, each potentially bringing something different to the table.

2. Who contributes what in the programmatic supply chain?

In a walled garden, one company typically brings together the inventory, audience targeting, algorithms and technical infrastructure. In open programmatic advertising, those components may come from different providers:

It is only fair that those who create genuine value should be paid for it — ideally in proportion to the contribution they make. The difficult part is defining and demonstrating that contribution.

3. A deliberately simplified example: retail media audience extension 🛒

Imagine a Media Trader contacting a retail media sales house to activate a segment of “Coca-Cola loyalty-card shoppers” across the Open Web. In this scenario, the retailer's first-party purchase data is the asset the buyer primarily wants.

Wouldn't it be logical for the retailer to capture the lion's share of the relevant CPM? 🦁 That is our intuition, at least in this deliberately VERY simplified example (actual revenue sharing depends on inventory costs, technical fees, contracts and the other parties' contributions).

For a closer look at this opportunity, see our article on first-party and 1.5-party data, as well as the original discussion about publishers becoming data providers.

4. Publishers are the rock on which the Open Web is built 🪨

There is a fundamental point that must never be forgotten: publishers supply the inventory. They invest in content, products and relationships with audiences. Without them, the rest of the open programmatic ecosystem has nothing to monetise.

If that rock collapses, the whole ecosystem goes down with it. 📉 This is why a debate about fee transparency cannot stop at what advertisers pay. It must also consider what quality publishers ultimately receive.

5. The real problem: fees that add little or no value

We are not arguing that every intermediary is unnecessary. Quite the opposite: valuable services deserve to be remunerated. The problem is the commissions that bring little or no incremental benefit to advertisers while reducing the share available to genuinely useful partners.

Examples worth challenging include bid repeating, questionable ad formats, opaque reselling chains and overpriced services. For more context, read our analysis of reseller-generated bid requests and the lack of financial transparency in programmatic.

Transparency matters because a fee should be connected to a service that can be explained, assessed and, where possible, measured — not simply hidden in the supply path.

6. How can publishers capture a fairer share?

We see three practical avenues for publishers who want to protect the value of their inventory:

• Become data providers themselves, where they have relevant, permissioned audience signals and a credible commercial proposition. See the original discussion.
• Limit access for low-value resellers and prioritise partners who deliver demonstrable demand or services. See our earlier post.
• Restrict opaque DSP resellers or Curators from accessing their inventory where exchange controls and contractual terms make this possible.

The objective is not to eliminate every middleman. It is to build a supply chain where the economic value flows to the players who actually create it.

7. What GreyFox Ads does differently 🦊

At GreyFox Ads, we try to remove the links in the supply chain that do not deliver real effectiveness for advertisers, while supporting quality publishers on the French Open Web.

• 🚫 Block SSP resellers that bring no demonstrable additional value.
• 🚫 Exclude “Christmas tree” sites and subdomains overloaded with ads.
• 🚫 Exclude small creatives in the campaigns where our share-of-screen strategy calls for it (format size alone does not prove a creative's effectiveness).
• 🔓 Apply a reasonable, transparent fee.

We also provide consultancy services for programmatic sales houses and trading desks. Our Master Deals are designed to make activation simpler, with a focus on quality, efficiency and transparency.

Original LinkedIn post: Read the original commentary. This article presents GreyFox Ads' editorial perspective and illustrative examples, not a universal fee benchmark.