Despite Massive Concentration Of Seller Power, Brian Wieser Sees No Change in Control of Ad Biz

• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, 7 hours ago

While there has been some shuffling among the top players over time (see table below) the world's largest sellers of advertising have increasingly consolidated the share of global ad spending with the top four (Alphabet, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft) now representing more than half the world's ad spending, according to an analysis published Monday by long-time ad industry analyst Brian Wieser.

"One could review this data and come to the conclusion that the biggest platforms are simply too big. I think that’s an over-simplification," Wieser wrote in the latest edition of his Madison and Wall newsletter, noting: "Sure, Alphabet and Meta are around two-thirds of U.S. digital advertising and around 40% of all U.S. advertising during 2022.

"Add in Amazon and Microsoft and we get to around 80% of all digital advertising and half of all advertising."

Despite that concentration of selling power, Wieser goes on to make the case that actual "control" of the advertising industry hasn't changed all that much over time, assuming you look at it "from the vantage point of an individual advertiser," whom practically speaking, had a limited number of media-buying options to scale their business in 2002 (the baseline for Wieser's analysis) as well as today.

"It’s still only a handful of choices, but the difference now is that it’s the same three choices for every small advertiser regardless of where they are located in much of the world," Wieser explains, adding, "While we can argue that three options are too limiting in either era, at least today’s options are superior because they each operate globally and thus are better aligned with the opportunities that most companies have in front of them.

"In the past, expanding advertising operations to include other territories would have included working with additional geographically constrained media owners who would have been similarly non-competitive. In the present era, a marketer knows that they’ll be able to apply their skills and knowledge from one market to another."