Independent agencies are asking a harder question in their media buying reviews: at what point does a dedicated demand-side platform become optional? On the Digiday Podcast, senior marketing reporter Kimeko McCoy and executive editor Tim Peterson unpacked indie agency frustrations, the blurring of adtech categories, and the rise of agentic media buying.
The direct-deal promise that hasn’t landed
Indie agencies were told the path was simple: spend enough and a DSP would grant a direct relationship, letting them bypass reseller fees. In practice, agencies say that promotion hasn’t arrived. They still describe steep financial penalties to access platforms, and at a past Programmatic Marketing Summit, some labeled The Trade Desk the “Spirit Airlines of the DSP world.”
That comparison captures the frustration: agencies feel they are paying a full-service toll without getting the value they were promised on the open web.
A changing open web
The open-web argument is getting weaker. Peterson pointed out that more than 50% of website traffic is now bot traffic, which makes display impressions harder to defend. He also wondered whether indie agencies need a Trade Desk or Amazon DSP seat at all when TikTok, Google and Meta are credible walled-garden alternatives; as Peterson put it, Google and Meta “aren’t turning away money.”
This matters for media planners: if a client’s open-web campaign cannot clear the bot-traffic hurdle, the DSP line item loses its advantage quickly.
AI agents enter the buy
The next disruption is execution. Meta already supports managing some buys through Claude or ChatGPT, and Butler/Till’s Scott Ensign has described media buying becoming more agentified. The comfort with AI handling negotiation is growing, and the conversation is shifting toward letting agents deploy budget directly.
DSPs, SSPs and unified platforms blur
Category lines are also dissolving. DSPs are reaching into supply, while SSPs such as Magnite, PubMatic and Index Exchange are courting buy-side relationships. Peterson described the result as a blur “into this unified ad platform in the middle.”
For an indie agency, that raises the question McCoy flagged: why maintain a “Frankenstein stack” of platform contracts if one agent or unified platform can cover the workflow?
What to do before your next renewal
The takeaway is not to cancel every DSP overnight. It is to make the relationship prove value. A simple audit can help:
- List total platform cost, including any reseller markups.
- Compare open-web DSP performance with walled-garden campaigns on the same objectives.
- Test one agent-managed workflow with small budgets and human checkpoints.
- Ask each platform what unique inventory or data only it can provide.
If a platform cannot answer the last question clearly, it becomes a consolidation candidate.
Why the moment matters
The media buying layer is compressing, and indie agencies are early indicators because their margins expose every fee. Their experiments with walled gardens, AI agents and unified platforms will likely shape which vendors remain essential and which become optional middleware. For marketing teams and students, the lesson is to treat each platform as a testable choice, not a default line item.
Source: Digiday
