Publicis Groupe’s planned acquisition of LiveRamp has renewed attention on a broader shift underway across advertising, with agencies increasingly attempting to exert greater control over the infrastructure, identity layers, and orchestration systems underpinning how digital advertising works, not just buy media more efficiently.
The intended deal is just the latest development in an industry-wide shift taking place well beyond identity and data collaboration, with Digiday sources theorizing that developments in early 2026 represent a redesign of the industry’s programmatic middle layer.
For years, the architecture of digital advertising relied on relatively distinct layers: publishers worked with supply-side platforms, advertisers bought media through demand-side platforms, and agencies sat in the middle, stitching the pipes together.
Since the early 2020s, those boundaries have started to blur, as DSPs and SSPs have increasingly encroached on each other’s patch, with sources pointing to The Trade Desk’s OpenPath and the subsequent launches of Magnite’s ClearLine and PubMatic’s Activate as prime examples.
And now, as the decade enters its second half, large buyers themselves are exploring ways to move closer to media supply to gain more control over the economics and data flows, i.e., transparency, hoping to reduce the operational costs embedded throughout the market.
