So, the DOJ finally said what we’ve all been muttering into our Slack DMs: Google illegally muscled its way into dominating the ad stack. Judge agrees. Antitrust violation confirmed. Big Tech’s worst-kept secret is now on the record.

But before you pop the champagne or update your pitch deck to “Post-Google Era,” take a breath. This is the start of a marathon through molasses, not the sprint to an open web.

As Paul Bannister put it—quite plainly—when the DOJ dropped the hammer: “This was a surprise to almost no one.”

Right. The only surprise is that it took this long.

Bannister imagines a scenario—call it a "reasonable fantasy"—where the DOJ’s proposed remedies actually stick. Here’s what he suggests could happen:

His fictional-but-plausible date: April 2, 2029. Mark your calendars or your grave, whichever comes first.

Here’s what Bannister says the DOJ’s aiming for: “Let’s assume Google is forced to divest of Google Ad Manager (GAM) and its ad exchange, AdX. Let’s also assume that these are spun off into a separate company.”

That alone would rattle every media planner spreadsheet from here to Cannes.

But there’s more: “The GAM/AdX spinoff is forced to make AdX available to publishers outside GAM,” he adds, which is code for: AdX has to finally show up to Prebid like everyone else.

Imagine that. No more Google-only perks. No more backdoor deals. AdX becomes just another SSP. A big one, sure. But not a special one.

Prebid, that scrappy open-source hero of independent publishers, suddenly becomes the belle of the ball.

As Bannister puts it: “Most web publishers use Prebid as the primary source of programmatic revenue, so AdX would need to build a Prebid adapter like all other SSPs on the market.”

Let’s pause here: Google, the company that has fought interoperability like it was a communicable disease, being forced to build something that plays nice with others? That’s not just a shift. That’s a whole new ecosystem rulebook.

If it happens.

And here’s the most delicious part: “Some savvy programmatic-only publishers will likely drop GAM for a much simpler ad server.”

Why? Because AdX demand won’t be chained to Google’s ad server anymore. Prebid becomes the new bridge. And with DOJ-mandated export tools and APIs, publishers can finally walk away without losing half their data, revenue, or will to live.

It’s not revolution overnight. Bannister is clear about that: “Change will be slow, and the risk of fragmentation or just swapping one gatekeeper for another is real.”

But the psychological shift is the point. For the first time in over a decade, there’s daylight between publishers and the Google stack—and curiosity is creeping in.

Bannister doesn’t sugarcoat this part. “While changing market dynamics is a good thing, it doesn’t necessarily mean that publishers’ businesses will improve overall.”

Why? Because the real problem isn’t just bundling. It’s that fees across ad tech—even outside Google—are still sky-high. And unless someone cracks open a serious conversation on spend efficiency and value contribution, it’s just a new shuffling of tollbooths.

What could actually fix it?

Two things, Bannister says: “The first is that adtech fees need to go down; the second is that advertisers need to spend more money on the web.”

Neither of which is guaranteed by Google’s breakup. But what is guaranteed? A massive shift in perception—and with it, a new power vacuum.

Don’t get too comfy. Bannister reminds us the DOJ still has another grenade in its pocket: the search monopoly case.

“If the judges and DOJ decide to consider both cases together and create remedies that span the issues,” he writes, “this could lead to much larger changes that could totally disrupt the dynamics of the market.”

Translation: AdX and GAM may just be the appetizer. If search and AI get pulled into the ruling, Google’s entire web dominance—from traffic to monetization—gets restructured.

The DOJ’s win is a crack in the wall, not a door kicked down. But for once, publishers can see through the wall. And that changes everything.

As Bannister puts it best:
“Perhaps most importantly, the issues specific to the adtech market today are unrelated to the future issues that Google could cause for web publishers, which are almost entirely about the traffic that Google sends to websites. But that’s a story for another day.”

Yes, Paul. Yes it is.

And we’ll be there to tell it.

ADOTAT's most anticipated report of the year is finally here — and it’s savagely honest. We pull zero punches in a 46-page takedown-meets-deep-dive on the company everyone either wants to work for or wants to dismantle.

📉 Why did The Trade Desk’s Q4 miss cause a $20B stock wipeout?
📺 What really happened with Kokai’s “black box” AI that freaked out media buyers?
🛠️ Is OpenPath the future of clean programmatic — or just a power grab wrapped in transparency-speak?
📡 How did a failed Sonos partnership derail TTD’s plan to reinvent your TV’s operating system?

This isn’t a hype doc. This is the definitive breakdown of how the industry’s cleanest DSP became its most powerful — and possibly, most vulnerable — operator.

Stay Bold, Stay Curious, and Know More than You Did Yesterday.
— Team ADOTAT

While the industry spent the last decade building PowerPoint decks that masquerade as product roadmaps, Tyler Kelly of Basis was quietly building something that actually works. Not a shiny new feature, not another “omnichannel” dashboard—he built pipes. Actual, boring, glorious infrastructure. And in a world where Google might be forced to unbundle, Kelly and Basis Technologies are positioned like the guy holding the only working flashlight in a blackout.

Let’s be clear: Kelly didn’t drink the Kool-Aid, he threw it out and installed a plumbing system that delivers clean water.

Back in 2021, Centro became Basis Technologies—not because it sounded cooler, but because, as Kelly made clear, they were no longer just a DSP. The goal wasn’t to chase headlines, but to fix everything under the surface of digital advertising. He said, “If we stayed the same company we were in 2005, we’d be out of business a long time ago.” Instead, they pivoted and built a full-stack infrastructure platform that could automate workflows across search, social, display, and programmatic.

Kelly isn’t pretending automation is sexy. He’s calling it what it is: foundational. It’s the plumbing of digital advertising—“pipes” that allow everything else to function. And it’s not automation for automation’s sake. He wants to kill off the pointless, soul-sucking tasks like campaign pacing and billing reconciliation—the ones we keep throwing junior staff at like we’re running a 2010 agency sweatshop. As he said with no hesitation, “The associate position should be 100% automated.”

Kelly nailed it when he said, “Everyone says they want transparency—until it’s time to actually build it.” And he’s not wrong. The ad tech industry has talked a big transparency game for years—while still charging hidden fees, hoarding data, and building “partnerships” that look suspiciously like monopolies. Basis, on the other hand, has done the hard part: building infrastructure that actually delivers on the transparency promise.

The result? They don’t need to fake it with vaporware. Kelly flatly said, “We’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars” and built an R&D team over 240 people deep—not to pitch buzzwords, but to create tools that actually work across an entire media plan. It’s not something “you can build in your garage,” he said, and definitely not something you can duct-tape over with AI.

Speaking of AI, Kelly has thoughts. A lot of them. He said that what he saw recently at Possible was the most unhinged he’s ever seen the industry—every other company was a wrapper over someone else’s infrastructure. He pointed out that most of these companies are three- or four-person teams using existing LLMs under the hood and calling it proprietary. “They look like they’re massive,” he said, “but they’re sitting on other people’s infrastructure.”

Which is why Basis isn’t chasing the AI dragon. They’re laying down the tracks. He made it clear: the future is autonomous, but autonomous doesn’t happen without automation first. And automation doesn’t work unless you’ve spent the time building infrastructure deep enough to support it.

Here’s the difference between Basis and everyone else: they’re not trying to own the interface, they’re trying to own the route the data travels through. “We want to be the most integrated company so people can build on top of Basis,” Kelly said, not because it sounds good on an earnings call, but because that’s the only way you survive in a post-Google-stack world.

If Google is forced to divest GAM and AdX, the entire market will start looking for flexible, scalable, integrated solutions that aren’t dependent on one platform’s rules. Basis has been building for that inevitability all along. It’s not glamorous. It’s not headline-grabbing. But when the stack collapses, you’re going to need a system that can actually hold up under pressure.

And Basis is already that system.

Kelly’s not just building infrastructure for media; he’s building it for people. He talked about how burnout hits the team not because the work is hard, but because the workflows are dumb. That’s why automation isn’t just about efficiency—it’s about not wasting talent on “grunt work that is just reporting.” He wants to hire smart people and give them meaningful work. Imagine that.

He credits Basis’s shockingly high employee retention to a culture of trust and radical transparency. During the pandemic, the leadership team took the biggest pay cuts, and when the company outperformed, they paid everyone back and gave bonuses. That’s infrastructure too—the human kind. “Trust, transparency, and communication,” he said, “are the three main tentpoles of why a lot of people have been here a long time.”

What’s next? According to Kelly, it’s not domination—it’s ubiquity. “All media should be running through our platform,” he said. And he means all media. Not just programmatic display, but search, social, even traditional.

He wants Basis to be the underlying layer other companies build on top of—“fully global,” with the currency, time zones, and systems to back it up. The goal isn’t to be the flashiest platform in the room. It’s to be the one running underneath the flashiest platforms in the room.

And if Google’s breakup becomes reality, companies like Basis—who built infrastructure instead of just integrations—aren’t just ready. They’re needed.

The kind that doesn’t crash when the wind blows. The kind that can plug into any media plan and make it work—without the hype. As the ecosystem fractures and everyone scrambles to replace the Google stack, Kelly’s already holding the blueprint for what comes next.

Want the exclusive deep-dive into who actually wins post-Google and how Basis might quietly become the AWS of media buying?