No Consolidation Yet

Terry Kawaja of LUMA Partners released his new version of the industry eye chart display advertising technology landscape. I re-tweeted it and several others chimed in, with the usual comments that it is confusing still and that consolidation is coming.

Last week on the way into work, I did a quick comparison between the old chart and the new one. If inclusion on Terry's chart is any kind of proxy for the industry (and I believe it is since previously it included companies that had a minimum amount of VC funding) things are moving in the opposite direction of consolidation.

Take a look at the images below. I counted 21 additions on the "new" version and 8 subtractions on the "old" one, with one or two moves within the bubbles. That's a net positive in terms of entrants to the chart of 13. Also interesting is that several of the deletions are companies we all know have not been "consolidated": namely, Expedia and eBay (definitely not!).

So while we continue to call for consolidation it continues to move in the other direction. Which means that publishers and advertisers are still going to have to sift through a myriad of choices to determine the right partner for them and other implications.

One other interesting thing that my eye was obviously drawn to was the DSP/Ad Network space. The biggest change to these bubbles over the past few months was not acknowledged by Terry, in that there are several in the Network space that are absolutely calling themselves DSPs and not networks anymore. That would be a suggestion to make the chart more accurate moving forward.

Compare the old eye chart with the new one.