The Leadership Letter

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

Owning the Pipe Is Worth More Than Renting It

Every dollar that flows through someone else's exchange is a dollar where you don't set the toll — and Bellack's math shows just how big that toll can be.

Intuitively we know that moving $1 from DBM-3PE to DBM-AdX gets us a 20% revshare we didn't have before, so it should deliver a ton. The bigger question is how to do that, and whether we've tested any. Questions like: is there a defensible way to change DBM buying strategy to move more spend from 3PE to AdX? How much lift do publishers actually get today by calling DBM multiple times through different 3PE, relative to running all of DBM through AdX? Can we build features or set commercial terms that give pubs & buyers more incentive to run DBM through AdX instead of through 3PE? Should we change the DBM buying strategy entirely for emerging businesses like mApp, instead of recreating the Web's 3PE marketplace? We're just starting to pivot toward these questions on the sell side, there's a lot more to do.

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Court Exhibit
United States v. Google LLC (Ad Tech)
1:23-cv-00108 (VAED), Trial Ex. PTX0605 — DOJ public archive
May 10, 2018
Public domain
View the primary source →