DSPs Become Omnichannel Ad Platforms

Omnichannel demand-side platforms (DSPs) are evolving into omnichannel advertising platforms.

These platforms help advertisers plan, buy, measure, and optimize paid media across various online and offline channels but are adding capabilities that go beyond what the acronym “DSP” connotes. Today’s most significant omnichannel ad platforms dispatch AI agents, create audiences, automate creative production and testing, and resolve identities across devices and channels.

DSPs Reflect Programmatic’s Past

For nearly two decades, DSPs thrived on real-time bidding, programmatic advertising’s infrastructure, and advertisers’ need for automation. During the 2010s, DSPs like MediaMath, Invite Media, and Turn offered advertisers a single interface to decide on inventory across channels, devices, and publishers. DSPs connected advertisers to standalone ad exchanges, relied on ad networks’ popularity, and satisfied buyers’ need to accelerate advertising’s workflows. But the conditions that sustained DSPs are no more:

Real-time bidding is broken. Allegations of fraud and privacy violations erode trust.
Ad exchanges are absorbed. DSPs no longer need to connect advertisers to standalone exchanges.
Outmoded ad networks are obsolete. Networks plagued by fraud that merely marked up unsold inventory have been boxed out by walled gardens and those offering superior quality and transparency.
AI agents obviate DSPs. Agents can, without a UI, simultaneously interact with and recognize patterns across publishers, removing the need for a centralized interface for decisioning.

The Rise of Omnichannel Ad Platforms

The use cases and functionalities DSPs served remain imperative, though the acronym “DSP” is shopworn. Ad platforms maintain DSPs’ mission of unifying media planning, buying, measurement, and optimization workflows, minimizing advertisers’ time-to-insight, and delivering increasingly engaging ads. Typically, advertisers use 3-5 ad platforms to access closed and open ecosystems.

Looking ahead, the confluence of agentic AI, antitrust suits, supply path optimization, signal loss, CTV, and commerce media’s growth will shape ad platforms’ roadmaps and routes to market. Vendors who stitch together signals that span the gamut of addressability and make a market for commerce data will thrive. Vendors must embrace AI without disempowering advertisers, get advertisers as close as possible to consumers, and adapt programmatic’s infrastructure to tomorrow’s fastest-growing channels.

Explore The Omnichannel Ad Platform Landscape

Forrester’s Omnichannel Advertising Platforms Landscape, Q4 2025 overviews 27 vendors. It explains the value B2C advertisers can expect from omnichannel ad platforms, clarifies how vendors differ, and offers options based on size and market focus.

Today, the market is top heavy, with the three most popular platforms – Amazon, Google, and The Trade Desk – commanding nearly 90% of market share. Ad platforms primarily serve advertisers in North America and EMEA across the retail, financial services, consumer packaged goods, and hospitality industries. They benefit from the tailwinds of CTV, commerce media, out-of-home, and audio.

Stay tuned for The Forrester Wave™: Omnichannel Advertising Platforms, Q1 2026, which will evaluate the most significant players. Feel free to schedule a guidance session to learn more.