Keith Gooberman of Pontiac, CEO & Co-founder of Pontiac Intelligence, looks at the changing face of the demand-side, and the need for us to rethink the DSP…

For years, the ad tech industry has joked that a new DSP launches every month. What's happening now is different: a new category of buying platform is quietly reshaping how agencies access programmatic supply. While the business model is not fundamentally different from DSPs of yesterday, the margin at which these platforms operate is a step change below the major established DSPs in the market. 

Up until recently, many agencies would not entertain calls with new DSPs. That skepticism was understandable. Ad tech veterans would argue a true DSP historically required ownership of the bidder itself. The bidder wasn't just infrastructure - it was the core intellectual property, and all types of different companies started calling themselves a 'DSP'.

Today, sophisticated buyers are asking: if a platform is built on top of another company's infrastructure, is it truly a DSP? It's a relevant question given the rise of CTV platforms built on FreeWheel's buy-side technology. The largest agencies know the difference between workflow software and actual bidding infrastructure.

A new category has quietly emerged: the "direct" DSP - a bundled buying platform tightly integrated with the SSP layer. These platforms don't compete only on proprietary bidding algorithms. They compete on operational efficiency, direct supply-path access, transparency, and dramatically lower take rates. Magnite launched ClearLine. PubMatic introduced Activate. Index Exchange recently outlined a more open yet similar infrastructure approach with Index Cloud. Even DV360 and Amazon DSP fit aspects of this model as they are low-margin access to direct inventory…plus access to "third-party inventory".

What's emerging is less a replacement for the DSP than an evolution of its role: an intelligent booking layer sitting closer to supply, orchestrating PMP access and integrating directly into agency systems.

In the future is this new category simply a thinner DSP? Or is it an entirely new type of advertising platform? Maybe a Direct Booking Engine? A DBE? 

The DBE isn't a replacement for the DSP - it's what a DSP looks like when it's purpose-built for transparency, supply-path integrity, and fee compression. For advertisers, more working media per dollar. For publishers, more yield retained. For agencies, a measurable advantage on every plan.

Why now? 

Margins have compounded into a meaningful ad tech tax, and agency clients are pushing harder on working-media dollars. The DBE addresses that - same DSP-style controls, dramatically lower take rates, and tighter integration with the supply that matters most.

"Pontiac DSP has been established as our 'Booking Engine', allowing us to manage PMPs across all providers," says Nick Halas, head of commercial solutions, Amplifi Global, dentsu. "The fair market value DSP rate and direct integration with Index Exchange and other supply sources lets our team focus on allocation of spend across specific PMP deals and deliver value to our clients."

Other offerings are being built by publishers in the USA including Universal Ads which is placing buys directly into the publishers ad servers, and while it is not utilising programmatic 1:1 auctions, it is another way into the publishers ad placements and they provide this access with a thinner ad tech tax.  

Much of the IAB discussion around agentic has been the Agentic Frameworks including ARTF, which is in its earlier incarnation, but will also lead to methods to activate on publisher inventory without utilising a legacy DSP.  

While the frameworks and the activation will slightly vary, there is a real need and desire for the advertiser and the publisher to get closer together and lower the ad tech tax which is taken from the middle. The buyer still wants the ability to decision on every possible ad slot, and the publisher wants to sell every ad at the highest possible yield (while protecting sponsorship of course).