In our latest quarterly wrap, head of content John Still takes a look at the events that have defined Q3 2024. What made headlines over summer?

It’s hard to look anywhere other than Google’s legal wranglings as we look back at Q3. In early August, a landmark ruling, brought by the US Department of Justice (DoJ), judged that Google has engaged in anticompetitive practices to preserve its dominance, thereby stifling competition and innovation. Yep, it’s officially a monopoly.

That’s just the first case - the 'trial of the century’ began in September, as the United States vs Google got underway. The DOJ’s case alleges that Google, via a host of acquisitions and subsequent manipulative self-preferential actions, forced as many transactions as possible through its own ad tech stack, to the detriment of players across the entire digital advertising supply chain. 

With the big G’s defence seemingly centred on semantics, the breakup of Google on everyone’s lips. The verdict is expected on November 25th - watch this space…

The trial featured testimony from many key witnesses, including Index Exchange’s Andrew Casale. Hot on the heels of his court appearance, Andrew flew to the UK for our ATS London event, sitting down with Ciaran O’Kane to discuss what it means to be an SSP in 2024. Ciaran also shared the stage with another ad tech GOAT, The Trade Desk’s founder Jeff Green. The pair discussed TTD’s meteoric rise, and how to be successful in a fragmented ad tech landscape.

Q3 also saw our annual adventure to SEA for ATS Singapore. Over 900 attendees from agencies, brands, publishers and tech partners all joined us to hear insights from leading voices in the industry. 

Movers and shakers

Ad tech M&A continued its resurgence, with Equativ once again dipping into the acquisition market and picking up Kamino Retail. It's been a big year for the French company, which also announced that revenue had tripled since 2022.

One of the biggest deals in ad tech went through in August, as Outbrain’s purchase of Teads went through, a deal valued at over $1bn (£765m).

Late in the quarter, video monetization platforms Connatix and JW Player announced plans to merge into a new entity called JWP Connatix, with the deal expected to be completed in Q4.

ExchangeWire Top Five Most Read Q3

Redefining Marketing Measurement with Incrementality

Cookie Deprecation is Dead: What Should the Industry Do Now? 

Smart Curation for the Open Internet

The Retail Media Boom is Only the Beginning

Ad Tech Investment & M&A: It's Back

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“Fundamentally, if the data that is used to train AI models is incomplete and biased, the output is going to be incomplete and biased.” 

Kiessé Lamour, Global Head of Media, Commerce, VML

“It’s not only about funding journalism and holding power to account and doing the good – campaigns on news work very well for brands and advertisers. They work. There’s plenty of data around that.” 

Erin Williams, Sales Director, APAC, CNN 

“Cookies have an increasingly limited influence on the overall market share, especially considering how investment is moving towards CTV and mobile apps which have their own identifiers. Closed ecosystems like Meta and Amazon heavily rely on their own first-party data.” 

Bharat Khatri, Chief Digital Officer, APAC, OMG