"let me rephrase: i think you re spot on. Ad tech as is not that interesting and sustainable. But that does not mean it is not possible to build an interesting play in int. The problem is that too much of the ad tech companies out there (including those you probably see) are not that innovative. They all claim to have a magical algorithm or some sort of hack that does not sustain or is at risk (eg toolbars is a hack to search...) but very few are truly innovative precisely because the engineering resources are geared towards building more of the same "crap" vs truly innovating. The ad tech industry still leaves on banner ads that have been around for 20 years and the whole stack and ecosystem has been built around it, including the min guarantee and cat and mouse game you re describing above. Only 2 great companies have been a sustainable ad tech play: Google with search because they own the techno and the inventory and invented (sort of ) a new quality behavior. Facebook who owns a..." - Ouriel Ohayon