Observed Signal · Sep 10, 2026 · Analysis · Source: Quo Vadis News · Impact: 3/5 · Sentiment: Positive
Open Web's Coordination Problem and AI Opportunity
This article, part of the Quo Vadis series, argues that the open web's specialization has led to a coordination problem, making it less competitive against vertically integrated giants like Google, Meta, and Amazon. The author introduces the concept of 'system-market fit' and suggests that the future of adtech lies in coordinated systems rather than individual products. AI and agentic technologies are presented as catalysts to lower coordination costs, potentially enabling the open web to compete without full consolidation. The article predicts a market with fewer, better companies and dramatic improvement in coordination, possibly through standards like AdCP.
Analytical piece on open web adtech coordination and AI's potential, relevant to future industry trends.
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- The article is part of a series on media money and founder coordination.
- It uses Geoffrey Moore's 'whole product' concept to explain adtech's challenges.
- Agentic buying and selling are expected to shift from innovation-testing to early adopters in 2027 and early majority in 2028.
- The article suggests the open web's fragmentation and high coordination costs are its main weaknesses.
- It posits that AI agents could reduce the need for third-party verification and lower coordination costs.
Connected Companies & Entities
3 Entities mapped“The big three ad players have highly coordinated audiences, inventory, data, optimization, measurement, creative and execution inside system...”
“The big three ad players have highly coordinated audiences, inventory, data, optimization, measurement, creative and execution inside system...”
“The big three ad players have highly coordinated audiences, inventory, data, optimization, measurement, creative and execution inside system...”
Ontology Mapping & Concepts
Related Market Signals & Shifts
Recent verified developments and strategic activity across this market segment.
Agentic AI for the Open Web: Potential, but Scaling Stalls
An industry analysis of 200 marketing leaders (mostly at enterprises with >1,000 employees) finds strong belief but slow adoption of agentic AI on the open web: 82% see it as a growth opportunity, yet just 17% have scaled it as a proven performance driver. The main barrier is operational integration — fitting agentic systems into existing workflows, approval chains, reporting and attribution — rather than budget or technology skepticism. While Google and Meta have embedded agentic capabilities into closed ecosystems, emerging vendors are extending comparable automation to publisher inventory outside walled gardens. Early adopters that treat agentic AI as an operational transformation are gaining a first-mover competitive lead, with high paid-search and paid-social budgets driving interest in open-web expansion.
AI Fuels Walled Gardens, Sparks Open Web Revival
The interview discusses how generative AI and large language models are accelerating offerings from walled gardens while prompting renewed emphasis on an open web for online advertising. Paysen notes that major players—amazon.com, google.com, meta.com, and microsoft.com—are strengthening their market positions through data dominance and AI-enabled, end-to-end solutions, raising concerns about transparency for advertisers. In response, the open web is being actively promoted, with the OWM Summit highlighting a push to invest more in premium publishers and to explore cross-application ID solutions to better address the open web across channels. The conversation underscores privacy challenges: browser makers like firefox.org have privacy-first stances and roughly half of the open web’s net reach is said to be lost due to outdated approaches. Paysen’s own firm positions as an independent open-web actor, using 30 AI models, and champions neuro-contextual targeting that blends context, emotion, and intent to improve campaign performance. Standards gaps and a MRC-style model are called for to accelerate interoperability.
Open Web Needs Alliances to Combat Big Tech Dominance
Online Ad Summit 2025 emphasized the need for market-wide alliances to bolster the Open Web against Big Tech's dominance in Social, Search, and Retail. Although the ad market grows, the Open Web's content-media segment remains stagnating, prompting the
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