Consumer internet and adtech companies

Consumer internet and adtech is splitting into two very different worlds. On one side sit the companies that own the pipes, the retail data, or the identity graph: Alphabet, Amazon Advertising, LinkedIn, Magnite, Klaviyo. They still face AI eating into some referral traffic or agency fees, but they control something buyers can't easily replicate, so their pressure scores stay low. On the other side sit the middlemen: agencies, DSPs, SSPs, and mobile ad networks whose whole job was doing analysis or bidding that AI tools now do natively inside Google, Meta, and Amazon's own platforms. Japan's ad agency holding companies (Septeni, DAC, Digital Holdings, Freakout) are getting absorbed or squeezed by their own parent networks and platform automation at the same time. China's WeChat and Douyin ecosystem SaaS players (Weimob, Youzan) are losing ground because ByteDance and Tencent are building merchant tools that skip third parties entirely. The one thing that decides survival here is whether a company owns first-party data or user attention that AI can't replicate, versus selling a targeting, bidding, or measurement layer that a hyperscaler can now bundle for free. Scale and proprietary data are winning. Fee-based intermediation, no matter how sophisticated the AI inside it, is getting priced out.

Will Google Search survive the rise of ChatGPT and Perplexity?

Alphabet is still classified as built to last because Search, YouTube, and Cloud give it scale AI challengers can't match yet, though AI Overviews is already cutting the referral traffic that funds AdSense publishers.

Is The Trade Desk losing to Amazon Advertising?

The Trade Desk faces real pressure because Amazon's DSP bundles Prime Video and retail data at roughly a 1% take rate versus The Trade Desk's near 21.6%, which is pulling ad budgets toward Amazon.

Which adtech companies are getting replaced by AI ad tools?

Criteo's retargeting business, Outbrain/Teads' native ads, and Digital Turbine's mobile mediation are all losing ground as Google Performance Max, Meta Advantage+, and AppLovin's Axon automate what these companies used to sell as a service.

What is happening to mobile ad networks like AppLovin and Digital Turbine?

AppLovin is winning ad mediation share with its Axon bidding engine at Digital Turbine's expense, though AppLovin itself faces a funded coalition around AppsFlyer and an SEC probe threatening its data practices.

Will Chinese ecommerce SaaS companies like Weimob and Youzan survive?

Both are losing its protection because ByteDance's Douyin and Tencent's WeChat are building native merchant commerce tools that let small sellers skip third-party SaaS entirely, and Weimob's merchant-solutions revenue already fell 7.3%.

Is Xandr shutting down?

Xandr is not shutting down but Microsoft is retiring its Invest DSP in favor of Copilot-based buying, pushing demand-side ad spend toward The Trade Desk, Google DV360, and Amazon Publisher Services instead.

• Publisher referral traffic from Google Search continuing to fall in reported metrics
• Amazon DSP's share of programmatic ad spend versus The Trade Desk's in quarterly earnings
• Further acquisitions or absorptions of Japanese or Chinese ad agencies and SaaS platforms by larger parent networks