For me, they'll only open up as a fob to the regulators to stop more meaningful disposals. The revenue upside of opening up YT is negligible compared to the strategic impact on their AdTech ecosystem. Advertisers have to have a Google product today but not in an open world. Worth noting YT already stage the opening up of new placements/platforms/Geos etc to dampen the inflationary effects of increasing demand - eCPM payouts to creators only go down in the long run. Agree with Richard re: data access.
1) it seems highly unlikely there are advertisers (Google would have the largest number alongside Meta) that would be brought incrementally to YT. I struggle to think TTD or Yahoo has a major buyer that does not also work w Google;
2) the value of YT inventory is intrinsically linked to the wider data Google collects on logged-in users (or infers probalistically where users are not logged-in), and draws upon Search history, location, etc. How could those other DSPs be competitive in "decisioning" without that data?
3) From a regulatory perspective, what need does Google have to open up, any more than any other FAST content provider is obliged to sell via agents?
4) Finally, you have not considered the downsides and costs of providing access to that inventory and the risk others "sniff the bidstream" just to compare pricing and likely value. Google would be giving away a lot for nothing guaranteed.
For me, they'll only open up as a fob to the regulators to stop more meaningful disposals. The revenue upside of opening up YT is negligible compared to the strategic impact on their AdTech ecosystem. Advertisers have to have a Google product today but not in an open world. Worth noting YT already stage the opening up of new placements/platforms/Geos etc to dampen the inflationary effects of increasing demand - eCPM payouts to creators only go down in the long run. Agree with Richard re: data access.
Tom, a few flaws in this piece IMHO -
1) it seems highly unlikely there are advertisers (Google would have the largest number alongside Meta) that would be brought incrementally to YT. I struggle to think TTD or Yahoo has a major buyer that does not also work w Google;
2) the value of YT inventory is intrinsically linked to the wider data Google collects on logged-in users (or infers probalistically where users are not logged-in), and draws upon Search history, location, etc. How could those other DSPs be competitive in "decisioning" without that data?
3) From a regulatory perspective, what need does Google have to open up, any more than any other FAST content provider is obliged to sell via agents?
4) Finally, you have not considered the downsides and costs of providing access to that inventory and the risk others "sniff the bidstream" just to compare pricing and likely value. Google would be giving away a lot for nothing guaranteed.