The Leadership Letter

Real correspondence from the people running real companies — and what it reveals about leadership.

Measure The Market You Actually Compete In

If you measure the whole market instead of the slice customers can actually move, you'll misjudge both your power and your problem.

I think for the pricing & strategy we should try to separate the GDN part of AdX from the rest. Pubs see GDN as a kind of giant standing demand pool. It is valuable but you can't do deals with it or really game it much because no bid landscapes etc. GDN is half of AdX. The other half is DBM and other DSPs, networks, etc. This is the half that pubs feel they can influence and put "in play" -- mess with floors, offer private auctions, pitch agencies & DSPs, cut programmatic deals, etc. From Eisar's numbers that non-GDN AdX is around $700m, versus $2-$2.5B on all the other exchanges. In other words, ~75-80% of "in play" demand is on other exchanges who offer lax policies, full bid landscapes, lower revshares, run auctions we think are bad, participate in header bidding, etc. This gives pubs good reason to work with lots of exchanges. If you buy this logic, the track two projects we are talking about should be taken in this light - not the overall size of AdX including GDN, but how do we attract more of the "in-play" demand directly onto AdX, so the pubs need the other exchanges less, and a more basic EB can be acceptable.

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Court Exhibit
United States v. Google LLC (Ad Tech)
1:23-cv-00108 (VAED), Trial Ex. PTX0403 — DOJ public archive
October 29, 2016
Public domain
View the primary source →