The Big Story: Who Dares Wins

This week on “The Big Story,” we travel to Washington, DC, tour some walled gardens and fly into the clouds – before coming back to earth to piece together the evolving TV landscape.

First pit stop: AppNexus founder Brian O’Kelley spoke at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing called “Understanding the Digital Advertising Ecosystem and the Impact of Data Privacy and Competition Policy,” where he unloaded on the programmatic ad industry that he helped to create.

We’ll recap what he said, his gripes against Google and some interesting discrepancies in his testimony.

Next, if you thought the ad networks were dead, just take a look at Google, Facebook and Amazon. Senior editor Allison Schiff examines how precisely Google, Facebook and Amazon have extended their influence beyond their own walled gardens by buying impressions from publishers and marking them up. But is this a bad thing?

After all, it’s hard to argue that the data contained within the trifecta doesn’t make the advertising perform better.

Then we leap into Google’s cloud business, as the advertising giant seeks to add diversity to its revenue stream. But unlike so many other areas, such as search and marketing, Google is a bit of an upstart when it comes to cloud services, especially compared to Amazon and Microsoft.

Alison Weissbrot looks at how Google is using consultancies like Deloitte and Accenture to push its cloud agenda forward, and how those consultancies are using Google to bust into the CMO’s office. And she explains how exactly marketing technology fits into all of this.

And finally, we try to settle down to watch some TV, but man, the landscape is just too fragmented to find a foothold.

Senior editor Sarah Sluis looks at the massive amounts of data infusing connected TV, and why it’s so hard to wrangle it all into one place.

This post was syndicated from Ad Exchanger.