The Adotat Staff

Oct 2, 2026

Wire & File: Apple Wrote The Trade Desk's Rules. A Jury Wrote Meta's. Dailymotion Wrote A New Name.

Safari locked out The Trade Desk while Google's bids cleared, New Mexico priced Meta's privacy promise at 43 million violations, and Dailymotion rebranded its way past its traffic questions. Plus the IAB's rulebook nobody has to follow, AI agents almost nobody can stop, Jon Cook walking out of WPP's "one company," Nike's layoff plan, and Google asking the web to fact-check the AI it keeps promoting.

The Adotat Staff

Oct 1, 2026

Blackburn and Blumenthal Called It a Crime Pipeline. TAG Says They Skipped the Meeting.

The industry called child sexual abuse material "abhorrent." When ADOTAT asked 23 companies whether blocked sellers still get paid, seventeen left the answer blank.

The Adotat Staff, +1

Oct 1, 2026

Amazon Promised Full Control. Its Agent Won't Let You Pick An Audience.

Amazon retired the DSP name, not the DSP. It folded the engine into an AI agent that now picks your channels, your audiences and your bids, then grades the results itself, one month after the FTC accused it of rigging its own auction floor.

The Adotat Staff, +1

Sep 30, 2026

Thursday Field Kit: Zeta Says It Claws Back CSAM Money. Your Contract Doesn't Say You Can.

The industry called child sexual abuse material "abhorrent." When ADOTAT asked 23 companies whether blocked sellers still get paid, seventeen left the answer blank.

The Adotat Staff

Sep 29, 2026

Tuesday Thread: Viant Says It Measures The Market. It Won't Say How Much Of Its DirecTV Is DirecTV.

Viant's reps are pitching agencies DirecTV for less than DirecTV charges. DirecTV says that isn't possible. They're both telling the truth, because they aren't selling the same thing.

Pesach Lattin (ADOTAT), +1

Sep 28, 2026

Mike Follett Says the Old Farts Were Right About Attention

He has a button on The Trade Desk and still won't call attention a currency. Beer, goldfish and a podcast ad that broke the machine.

Pesach Lattin (ADOTAT), +1

Sep 25, 2026

The Trade Desk Says It's a Platform. It's an Ad Broker.

Thirty years ago, anyone who sold inventory they didn't own was called a broker. The ANA found 29 cents of every DSP dollar goes to the middle, and The Trade Desk still can't show buyers the segment earned its cut.

The Adotat Staff

Sep 25, 2026

Wire & File: Everybody Announced A Transformation. The Trade Desk Reset The Options

The WFA rebuilt agency pay and filed rebates under "separate issue." Infillion attacked walled gardens while building one. Dentsu signed on to represent both sides of an anime deal. IAB Europe forecast agentic scale and Apostra reported $1.2 million. And in the File: The Trade Desk's repricing proxy, where Jeff Green's 1.6 million options get reset, his 50.2% of the vote decides it, and the 575 people laid off don't qualify.

The Adotat Staff

Sep 24, 2026

The Field Kit: Asellus Calls a Client's Sighting Proof. Here Are Seven Questions That Ask for the Paper.

Asellus says the proof is a client seeing his own spot. Seven questions ask for the rights, the path and the log behind it.

The Adotat Staff

Sep 22, 2026

Tuesday Thread: Tim Vanderhook Wrote The Rule For AI Agents. Eight Experts Say Viant Breaks It.

Decide, spend, get measured independently, repeat. The panel agreed with every word, then pointed at TVision.

Pesach Lattin (ADOTAT), +1

Sep 18, 2026

Wire & File: Roku Grades Roku. Award Shows Grade Award Winners. Everyone Brought A Receipt.

Roku Still Only grades Roku, pause ads get "proven" by the people selling them, only 18% of people know PepsiCo's family, and Google thinks Moloco is closed.

The Adotat Staff

Sep 17, 2026

Thursday Field Kit: The Bid Request Says CTV. Nobody Is Required to Check.

Six checks on your largest CTV deal, the dodge you will hear on each, and the email that ends the dodging.

The Adotat Staff

Tuesday Thread: IAB TechLab Blames Arrogant Bros for Bidstream Lies

Adtech

Sep 15, 2026

Tuesday Thread: IAB TechLab Blames Arrogant Bros for Bidstream Lies

The self-proclaimed steward of OpenRTB says the market ignores all of her fixes out of hubris. Forty minutes earlier she said "capitalism, baby." One of those is the real answer.

Pesach Lattin (ADOTAT), +1

Sep 14, 2026

Howard Shimmel: The Currency Is A Dropdown Menu. Nielsen, VideoAmp And Comscore Have Spent Twenty Years Pretending Otherwise.

The Ephron Award winner watched a CTV campaign hit the same three percent of a target roughly two hundred times. Every tool to prevent it is in production at multiple vendors. Forty-seven years in, he says the barrier was never technical.

Pesach Lattin (ADOTAT), +1

Sep 11, 2026

Wire & File: Everyone Says It's A Competition. WPP, Amazon, Prebid And Meta Are Writing All The Bids.

WPP wrote a plan to bid against itself, Amazon's own defense says 92% of its ads skip the highest bid, and Coca-Cola's fastest-growing brand of 2026 has a survey score and no sales number.

The Adotat Staff

Sep 10, 2026

Thursday Field Kit: The Eight Disclosures Your Agency Owes You Before Every Principal Media Buy

The advertiser trade body wrote the clause in 2023. Sixty-three percent of its members think their contract has it, and a quarter have no idea.

The Adotat Staff

Sep 4, 2026

Wire & File: Everyone This Week Called It Business As Usual. Their Own Filings Said Otherwise.

Coca-Cola, Amazon, Google, Paramount and Publicis all had a public version of this week. None of them matched the paperwork.

The Adotat Staff

Sep 4, 2026

Publicis Took Pepsi. WPP Gained Five Percent For Winning Nothing.

Two companies, two clauses, the trade in the first and the absurdity in the second. Damage lands at character 45. The Coke story is implied by anyone who reads the first clause, so you get four companies in the reader's head using two in the type.

The Adotat Staff, +1

Sep 3, 2026

Nobody Walks Out of a $4 Billion Pitch. On Wednesday, Publicis Walked Out of Coke's.

Every phone in this industry went off at the same time Wednesday afternoon, and the message was some version of the same three words. Publicis took PepsiCo's global media without a pitch, then quit Coca-Cola's review before dinner, leaving WPP alone in a contest Coke started specifically to find alternatives to WPP. Everyone is calling it a conflict of interest. It was a decision, and once you understand the arithmetic behind it you will never look at a billings number the same way again.

The Adotat Staff

Sep 2, 2026

BREAKING: Publicis Took PepsiCo's Global Media Without A Pitch. Then It Walked Away From Coke.

The exit everyone will call a cost decision was a conflict decision. Omnicom lost twenty years of PepsiCo without a shootout, and the reported frontrunner for Coke's $1.44 billion just left the room.

The Adotat Staff

Aug 28, 2026

Wire & File: Meta Paid $17.1 Billion. WPP Kept $350 Million.

Meta, TikTok, WPP, Nielsen, The Trade Desk and Paramount all shipped a number this week. Six filings say something else.

The Adotat Staff

Discord Pays For One In-Game Action but Fraud Teams Call That Bait.

Gaming

Aug 24, 2026

Discord Pays For One In-Game Action but Fraud Teams Call That Bait.

What Incentivized Actually Means

The Adotat Staff

Aug 24, 2026

Walmart's Mayward: "We're Controlling the Attribution Model in All Cases." He Thinks That's the Sales Pitch.

Walmart tore down the garden walls everywhere except around the scoreboard. That's not an oversight. That's the product.

The Adotat Staff

Made Together Has One Episode. WPP Media Keeps Welcoming You to It.

WPP

Aug 23, 2026

Made Together Has One Episode. WPP Media Keeps Welcoming You to It.

A series earns the noun by producing a second one. What WPP Media has is a single photograph being waved at a window, captioned "welcome," four times running.

The Adotat Staff, +1

Wire & File: Ad Tech Sold More, Charged Less, and Called It Growth

News

Aug 21, 2026

Wire & File: Ad Tech Sold More, Charged Less, and Called It Growth

This Week: Weekly: S4's Escrow, The FTC's Pricing Rules, And The Ad Network NBC Warned You About In 2009

The Adotat Staff