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Digital advertising is undergoing a quiet revolution.
It’s being driven not by hype or flashy tech demos but by three real, powerful shifts: a growing mistrust of walled garden platforms, surging digital engagement across premium content channels and increased pressure on ad spend to deliver measurable business outcomes.
Individually, these trends might not feel new. But together, they’re creating a new inflection point, one where advertisers are questioning the status quo and reassessing where and how they invest.
Let’s start with the most visible change: trust in the walled gardens is eroding. For too long, advertisers have operated within closed ecosystems where they can’t see clearly what they’re buying or how it’s performing. Measurement is restricted. Data is locked away. Control sits with the platform, not the advertiser. That model is wearing thin.
At the same time, the way people consume media has changed dramatically. From streaming TV to digital audio and trusted news environments, consumers are spending more of their time – and attention – in corners of the internet that are open, premium and plural.
By “open internet”, I mean the decentralised, content-rich part of the digital world that sits outside the walled gardens. It includes the majority of premium, long-form editorial and studio-produced content – on channels that continue to attract professional content creators and advertisers alike. It’s open because it’s not controlled by a single platform; premium because of the quality of content, and plural because it supports a diverse range of voices and publishers.
This isn’t a marginal shift. It’s mainstream. In the US, people now spend 61% of their digital media time on the open internet. That figure is growing – and spend should reflect that. Advertisers increasingly recognise that user-generated content and endless scrolling may offer reach but it doesn’t always offer context or value.
Add to that a tougher economic climate and the demands on ad budgets are more intense than ever. CMOs are under pressure to prove performance and vague proxies aren’t good enough. Impressions, clicks, eyeballs: they’re not the outcome. Business growth is.
What we’re seeing – and what excites me – is a return to advertising fundamentals powered by smarter tools and better data. The open internet supports that. It allows advertisers to make more deliberate choices. It rewards relevance and quality. And it gives marketers the control to act, adapt and optimise.
Of course, that’s only possible when advertisers have access to the right tools. Programmatic is uniquely well-suited to this moment because it brings transparency, measurability and agility together. But we have to make it work harder. That’s why, at The Trade Desk, we’re focused on evolving the programmatic model to meet this new reality.
That means using AI in a practical, results-driven way to help buyers make decisions at massive scale in real time. It means surfacing data that empowers advertisers, not overwhelms them. It means building privacy-first identity solutions like the European Unified ID (EUID), a transparent, open-source framework developed to replace third-party cookies and improve targeting across channels while respecting consumer privacy.
It also means transparency in the supply chain. The OpenSincera tool on our Kokai platform helps marketers evaluate the quality of every impression, with metrics like ad-to-content ratio and refresh rates. It’s about giving advertisers a clearer picture so they can spend smarter.
But this isn’t just about tech. It’s about principle. We believe the future of digital advertising lies in a more open, competitive and fair ecosystem – where buyers, sellers and consumers all benefit. Where premium content gets funded. And where advertising earns its place because it adds value rather than noise.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about the death of the open internet. I don’t buy it. In fact, I think the opposite is true. As media habits shift and market dynamics assert themselves, the open internet is coming into its own. It’s where the best content lives. It’s where advertisers can truly measure what works. And it’s where innovation can thrive – not behind closed doors but out in the open.
That’s the future I’m backing. 
Phil Duffield is VP, UK at The Trade Desk