This article was originally written by our CEO Pavel Medvedev.
It’s a candid take on what’s really happening in AdTech now.
“Adtech doesn’t need another protocol, framework, or acronym to fix itself. It already has everything it needs. The reason the ecosystem hasn’t truly improved over the years isn’t technical. It’s human. It’s greed.
High platform margins hidden behind complexity.
Fees no one can clearly explain.
Arbitrage dressed up as “optimization.”
Inventory being resold back to the same sellers who created it.
Fraud that everyone claims to fight, but few are willing to trace to its source.
Malware creatives that get “cleaned,” while the origin conveniently stays unnamed.
None of this exists because the industry lacks tools. It exists because opacity is profitable.
That’s why I keep coming back to in-housing. When brands and publishers own their stack, greed has nowhere to hide. You can’t quietly skim margins when the buyer controls the pipes. You can’t obscure decision-making when the logic lives inside infrastructure that the owner actually understands.
In-housing doesn’t magically make everyone ethical, but it removes the incentives that reward bad behavior.
The future of adtech is buying media smarter with clear rules, accountable systems, and transparency that’s built in, not promised in a slide deck. We’ll probably keep inventing new acronyms. That’s what this industry does, but the shift is already happening underneath: ownership over convenience, clarity over complexity, quality over volume.
If we want a cleaner ecosystem, the path is obvious. Control beats greed every time.”
It’s a candid take on what’s really happening in AdTech now.
“Adtech doesn’t need another protocol, framework, or acronym to fix itself. It already has everything it needs. The reason the ecosystem hasn’t truly improved over the years isn’t technical. It’s human. It’s greed.
High platform margins hidden behind complexity.
Fees no one can clearly explain.
Arbitrage dressed up as “optimization.”
Inventory being resold back to the same sellers who created it.
Fraud that everyone claims to fight, but few are willing to trace to its source.
Malware creatives that get “cleaned,” while the origin conveniently stays unnamed.
None of this exists because the industry lacks tools. It exists because opacity is profitable.
That’s why I keep coming back to in-housing. When brands and publishers own their stack, greed has nowhere to hide. You can’t quietly skim margins when the buyer controls the pipes. You can’t obscure decision-making when the logic lives inside infrastructure that the owner actually understands.
In-housing doesn’t magically make everyone ethical, but it removes the incentives that reward bad behavior.
The future of adtech is buying media smarter with clear rules, accountable systems, and transparency that’s built in, not promised in a slide deck. We’ll probably keep inventing new acronyms. That’s what this industry does, but the shift is already happening underneath: ownership over convenience, clarity over complexity, quality over volume.
If we want a cleaner ecosystem, the path is obvious. Control beats greed every time.”