The fall of Mediamath, the YouTube scandal and the great opportunity for DOOH.

The agenda in the digital advertising world has been disrupted with the fall of Mediamath and recently with the YouTube scandal. Many wonder what led to Mediamath’s bankruptcy: whether it was their business model, wrong decisions by their board of directors, or simply that most DSPs (Demand Side Platforms) have become basic products that don’t add value or real solutions for buyers.

In my opinion, it’s a combination of all three. Mediamath was a leading platform in the market (the second largest DSP after Google’s), but they really didn’t seek to solve or facilitate the work of their end users: the buyers. Additionally, they made wrong decisions regarding acquisitions or mergers over time and couldn’t contribute anything new to the ecosystem due to standardization in technology.

Recently, something related to YouTube came to light. To summarize, Adalytics revealed that YouTube deceived almost 1,000 advertisers in the last three years. How did they do it? Basically, they charged premiums to advertisers to show their premium ads in safe environments and high-quality content. However, in reality, these ads were routinely shown on the worst sites, generating a large amount of useless impressions and threatening brand image.

It’s nothing new to read or hear about digital advertisers’ concerns that their ads are shown on low-quality websites, apps, videos, or online games or content that could damage the brand. It would be unthinkable that in digital out-of-home advertising (DOOH), an advertiser buys space on a screen and it’s shown in a completely different location.

Faced with programmatic’s almost obsessive efforts to improve transparency, guarantee quality sites and relevant inventory for brands, the DOOH industry has an enormous opportunity to capture these budgets, be relevant in advertising, and finally position itself as a powerful and transparent medium. Retail has found a significant revenue source that can reach important figures by year-end, with an even better outlook for next year.

Finally, digital communication experts are understanding the importance of “speaking” to consumers at the moment of purchase, and increasingly more physical points of sale give them the opportunity to do so using technology. But this doesn’t stop here: fraud revelations in other digital media continue creating growth opportunities in DOOH.

The question is: are media owners prepared to absorb, manage and add value in this supply chain? There are multiple tools that can help outdoor media owners promote their inventory, without losing control or falling into the lack of transparency that advertisers demand. The coming months will be crucial to finally see the great incorporation of DOOH in the digital communication ecosystem.