Ad Tech & MarTech Industry Trends: A Q&A With Analyst Seth Ulinski

Seth Ulinski is a Senior Analyst at Technology Business Research, Inc. (TBR), a market research and consulting firm that provides strategic insight and market intelligence to technology companies. With over a decade of experience spanning the technology and digital marketing sectors, Seth covers ad tech and martech from an enterprise buyer and vendor perspective. You can follow him on Twitter and connect on LinkedIn.

The following Q&A explores his analytical take on where ad tech and martech have been, where they're going, and what's making life difficult for everyone in between.

1. Can you tell us about your background and how you came to cover the ad tech and martech space?

My career in ad tech started as a campaign manager, which gave me a solid grounding in how ad serving actually works. I've worked on the publishing side and alongside tech vendors leading the charge in areas like programmatic and viewability. From there I moved into industry analysis and consulting, which broadened my coverage into martech as well.

2. What does Technology Business Research do, and what does your role look like day to day?

Technology Business Research, Inc. (TBR) is a market research and consulting firm that helps leading technology companies navigate market trends through strategic insight, analytical frameworks, and competitive intelligence.

As part of TBR's Digital practice, I track key developments across the ad tech and martech landscapes — both significant components of the broader customer experience. On the vendor side, that means monitoring capabilities, market positioning, and business performance. Key segments I cover include demand-side platforms (DSPs), data management platforms (DMPs), and enterprise marketing clouds. The other side of my work involves engaging with enterprise buyers and their agencies to understand what actually drives their ad tech and martech investment decisions.

3. What have been the most significant shifts you've observed over the past five to ten years?

The impact of programmatic platforms — particularly self-service tools — has been remarkable. Small in-house or agency teams can now plan and launch complex, multi-channel global campaigns optimized across a range of KPIs. Ten years ago, that would have required a massive team. Even five years ago, it would have needed significantly more headcount than it does today. The scale, targeting precision, and analytics these platforms provide are genuinely impressive.

The other major shift is the migration from a desktop world built on cookie-based targeting and tracking to a mobile-first world governed by device IDs and deterministic and probabilistic methodologies. That transition has had a significant impact on virtually every stakeholder in the ecosystem.

4. What trends are shaping ad tech and martech right now?

The insourcing movement — enterprises bringing programmatic capabilities in-house through self-service DSPs and similar tools — is still in early stages, but it's a trend with real momentum. The convergence and integration of ad tech and martech stacks will accelerate this, since a more integrated stack enables more coherent customer experiences.

Programmatic TV is another high-growth area worth watching. The ability to layer digital and mobile capabilities onto linear and cable TV inventory is attracting serious investment from content owners and communications service providers. Watching these traditionally separate worlds converge through ad tech infrastructure is one of the more interesting dynamics in the industry right now.

5. What are the most significant challenges the industry is grappling with today?

From an enterprise buyer perspective, vendor fragmentation remains a real obstacle. The landscape is dense, and selecting a best-of-breed tech stack can be genuinely overwhelming — which creates demand for IT strategy firms, management consultancies, and digital agencies who can help navigate it.

Trust and transparency between clients and agencies is another persistent challenge. The legacy media-buying model is under pressure, largely because programmatic tools have made the mechanics of media buying more visible — and more contestable. Agencies and brands are still in the early stages of establishing workable norms for a programmatically driven market.

Walled gardens are a structural problem that isn't going away. While the broader industry favours openness and API accessibility, a handful of major platforms — Facebook and Google being the clearest examples — are leveraging proprietary data and media inventory to capture an outsized share of advertising investment. Running campaigns through these hybrid environments typically means operating multiple tech stacks or running ad hoc campaigns, which creates real friction around operational efficiency and marketing attribution.

Finally, the adoption of ad blockers by consumers is a signal worth taking seriously. It reflects an inequitable value exchange between consumers, publishers, and advertisers. When consumers install blockers at scale, it's a clear indication that the current advertising model isn't working — and that expectations around the digital media experience need to be reset.

6. Do you expect the vendor landscape to consolidate further, or will there continue to be room for new entrants?

The fragmented landscape is ripe for consolidation, and enterprise IT vendors alongside communications providers are already making aggressive acquisitive moves to capture more of the digital consumer experience.

Large enterprise vendors will continue to acquire rather than build — given the pace of innovation and the complexity of developing these capabilities from scratch, purchasing an established tool typically makes more strategic sense. That said, there's still room for newcomers, and individual platforms will continue to emerge.

The Trade Desk is a useful case in point: it maintained its independence and launched a successful IPO in the U.S. market, which reinforced the argument that ad tech isn't just a high-growth segment — it can also be a genuinely profitable one.