As pressure mounts on agencies and holding companies for more transparency and reduced transaction taxes through the digital media supply chain, an escalating battle between DSPs and SSPs for dominance is moving quickly to publisher side selling exchanges from the once dominant DSP sector, according to newly minted OpenX regional VP for buyer development Clay Gill. 

Gill noted this shift at Mediabrands toward SSPs 18 months ago and it has since gathered pace across a swathe of agencies and holding companies. Historically they have been firmly on the side of DSPs but the need for more transparency, faster reporting and better control on the delivery of billions of digital ad impressions is forcing a market-wide shake-up. Among the most contentious of areas is reducing the transaction fees and taxes in the digital media supply chain – often just 36 cents in the dollar of an advertiser’s budget ends up as an ad to a real human. 

"The competition is getting a little bit more crowded, they're [DSPs] now going to have to fight a lot harder for the fees that they charge along that impressions chain,” Gill said. “Now where they're asking for 10 per cent or even 12 per cent, 14 per cent – that's going to come down because the buyers are seeing more value from the SSP services.”

Gill said the catalyst for SSPs ascension in the $600bn global digital ad business was the landmark speech six years ago from P&G’s Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard when he fired a rocket, calling the online sector a “dirty digital supply chain”. Pritchard had spent hundreds of hours “in the weeds” personally and forensically unpacking who got what and how – and what was missing – from his budget of billions.

“He was basically turning to the DSPs and the SSPs and saying ‘hey, you guys are taking a big slice of the action on my dollar. How are you adding value here?'” Gill told Mi3.  

"The funny thing is when he did that, the SSPs said ‘he’s right, we're closer to the ad server, we can provide all these services to the buyers to give them that control, to show them how to curate safer, better inventory. Because clearly on the DSP side, you are trying to do that – but we actually talk directly to ad server, you don't’." 

The challenge for SSPs is that this is all new territory and many don’t have the capabilities and talent to deliver on these new services to the level required by the market said OpenX APAC managing director, Mitchell Greenway. Hence a broader buy-side investment and analytics exec like Gill was a step change. 

"Any partner that sells supply that is not directly integrated with a publisher – so they've taken that ad request from another supply path – they immediately become irrelevant because they're not adding any value to the chain,” Greenway said.

“Now, I know what I know and I don't know what I don't know – the fact is SSPs are only new to being brought in close to agencies. So having that skill and that knowledge is really important, and more broadly, that's why I'm excited Clay is a part of this kind of set of early adopter agencies that are really leaning in and partnering with supply side platforms." 

Greenway said “the difference” between SSP people smarts today and what will be needed is a “generalised digital ad salesperson” that spent a couple of years selling media, versus “someone that has either been involved in investment teams or planning cycles in an agency. They're two different people, although they're both working on digital as a format or an execution.”

The SSP-DSP power struggle is heating up a notch. Now Gill's in the thick of it.