Too many ad networks

The doubling of global ad revenue to $1 trillion over the past decade has ushered in a new wave of companies eager to sell consumer attention.

Why it matters: Publishers aren't just competing with Big Tech to sell advertising, they're now also competing with some of their biggest brand clients.

• 🥂 On my way to Cannes, France, last week, United Airlines handed out drinks to customers boarding its flights from Newark to Nice, celebrating the one-year anniversary of its new ad network, Kinective Media.
• ✈️ "You've got to have scale," United MileagePlus CEO Richard Nunn told Axios in an interview. "We flew 174 million people in 2024, so we've certainly got scale. The quality of audience is obviously there. By definition, they're not bots. They're real people."
• 🖥️ Nunn also noted that the plethora of screens that a customer interacts with throughout their flying journey — from the apps on their mobile devices to the screens in the lounge, at the gate and on the plane — provides the company with a "multi-channel" digital platform to reach people with marketing and advertising.

How we got here: The massive growth in advertising over the past 10 years can mostly be attributed to the launch of the smartphone, which allowed social media and search companies to start selling a lot more inventory across their mobile apps.

• Over the past few years, other types of companies with scaled audiences, such as grocers, retailers and travel firms, have similarly built out advertising businesses as a way to make more money and upsell their existing customers.

• That trend has transformed the ad industry, shifting sales power from traditional publishers to technology firms.

Case in point: In 2011, the top five advertisers globally were mostly U.S. publishers: Google, Viacom and CBS, News Corp and Fox, Comcast, and Disney, per WPP Media.

• Today, the top five advertisers globally are all tech firms and two are Chinese: Google, Meta, ByteDance, Amazon and Alibaba.

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