The Walled Gardens of AdTech [Infographic]
The internet was supposed to be open and equal — at least that was the founding vision. A closer look at the online advertising industry tells a different story, one that looks remarkably like a game of Monopoly played by four very well-capitalized opponents.
The infographic below frames the competitive dynamics of Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple as a walled-garden edition of that game — four major AdTech players each leveraging proprietary data, closed ecosystems, and captive audiences to extend their dominance.
Amazon
E-Commerce Platform
Amazon's e-commerce platform accounted for 56.7% of all US online retail sales in 2021 — and with that scale comes an extraordinary volume of purchase data. Google and Facebook know what users search for and click on, but Amazon knows what people actually buy, who they buy it from, and how often. That distinction makes it uniquely valuable to retailers.
Devices
Amazon's hardware lineup — Kindle, Fire TV Stick, Echo — is sold at or near break-even prices, with the real objective being to pull users deeper into the Amazon ecosystem and increase overall spend. The strategy works: Amazon hardware owners spend twice as much on the platform annually ($1,450) compared to non-hardware shoppers ($725), according to a Consumer Intelligence Research Partners study.
Analytics
Amazon's Brand Analytics tool surfaces conversion and keyword data — including data tied to its own Amazon Basics private label. That the platform operator can see its merchants' performance data while also competing directly with them has been a recurring source of friction in the industry.
Advertising Products
Amazon's DSP enables advertisers to reach Amazon shoppers on Amazon-owned properties, across the web, and in mobile apps. Amazon originally kept its proprietary shopper data tightly locked away, but making it available to merchants serves a dual purpose: softening anti-competitive optics while simultaneously incentivizing brands to increase advertising spend on the platform.
Sizmek Acquisition
Amazon's acquisition of Sizmek's ad server and dynamic creative optimization (DCO) tool strengthened its case as a serious third contender to the Facebook–Google duopoly. With Sizmek technology integrated into its stack, Amazon can serve personalized ad messages to consumers across the web based on their search and purchase history on Amazon.
Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has become the infrastructure backbone for a significant portion of the internet — from startups to government agencies to household-name platforms like Netflix, Spotify, and Airbnb. For AdTech companies in particular, AWS is a default hosting and processing environment, quietly extending Amazon's footprint well beyond retail.
Social Media Platform
Facebook's core advantage is its ownership of the platform on which its ads appear — no revenue sharing with third-party publishers, full control over ad slot pricing, and a rich store of behavioural data that feeds audience segmentation, recommendation engines, and lookalike models. It's an unusually strong hand.
Facebook Ad Manager
Facebook's Ad Manager sells Facebook inventory only, based on formats that exist exclusively on Facebook. There is no DMP or DSP integration capability and no cookie matching with external systems — advertisers who want Facebook audiences must go through Facebook's own tooling. This appears to be a deliberate design choice, keeping both inventory and audience data firmly inside the garden walls.
Facebook Audience Network
Facebook's Audience Network extends the platform's reach beyond Facebook itself, allowing advertisers to show ads on third-party mobile apps and websites. It applies the same people-based marketing logic used in the News Feed — matching ads to audience interests using first-party data — to a much larger surface area across the open web.
With 1.28 billion monthly active users (2022 data), Instagram is one of the more consequential advertising acquisitions in recent memory. Brands and advertisers run Instagram campaigns through Facebook's Ad Manager, making the platform a significant and growing revenue contributor for Meta.
Devices
Facebook doesn't manufacture its own hardware — but it doesn't need to. The Facebook app is present on virtually every device its users own, enabling the platform to serve ads and collect cross-device behavioural data without needing to control the hardware layer.
Apple
Safari
Safari is the second-most popular web browser globally, holding roughly 15% market share. Unlike Google, Apple doesn't own a search engine, so it monetizes Safari's search traffic differently: Google pays to remain the default search engine on iPhones. In 2014, that arrangement reportedly cost Alphabet $1 billion.
Operating Systems
Apple's operating systems — macOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS — are refined, reliable, and designed to keep users within the Apple ecosystem. The integration between Apple devices is intentional; mixing Apple hardware with non-Apple platforms creates enough friction to discourage it.
App Store
Apple's App Store monetization historically relied on app purchases and developer fees rather than advertising, but Apple Search Ads have become an increasingly prominent revenue stream. Search Ads appear at the top of App Store search results with a light blue background and a clear "ad" indicator — useful when well-targeted, less so when mismatched to intent.
Devices
Apple's closed hardware architecture gives the company control over who can develop apps for its operating systems and which devices can run them. Each new Apple product is engineered to integrate seamlessly with existing Apple hardware, reinforcing the ecosystem incentive to stay.
App Analytics
Apple's App Analytics platform is built directly into App Store Connect. Announced at WWDC in 2014 and launched in 2015, it gives developers visibility into how users discover and engage with their apps — another data layer that remains inside Apple's ecosystem.
Chrome
Google Chrome holds a 65.43% global browser market share as of January 2023, making it the dominant window through which most of the world accesses the internet. With Google Search as the default search engine, Chrome simultaneously generates search ad inventory and feeds user behaviour data back into Google's ad targeting systems.
Android
Android is free for device manufacturers like Samsung and HTC to use, but accessing Google Play and core Google applications requires users to log in with a Google account. That login requirement is the gateway to a continuous stream of behavioural data across YouTube, Maps, Gmail, and the broader Google app ecosystem.
Google Account and Applications
Advertising accounts for approximately 84% of Alphabet's total revenue, and Google's first-party data strategy is what sustains that. Through its Google Account infrastructure and consumer-facing applications — Search, YouTube, Maps — Alphabet collects behavioural data across websites and services at a scale few other entities can match.
Advertising and Marketing Products
Google's hold on the advertising stack — ad server, DSP, SSP, measurement — is what truly defines its walled garden status. It's estimated that Google holds approximately 36% of total US digital ad spend, a dominant share in an otherwise fragmented and competitive industry.
Devices
Google has been expanding steadily into hardware — phones (Google Pixel), smart speakers (Google Home) — integrating these products with Google services to deepen Android users' investment in the Google ecosystem and reduce the appeal of switching to an Apple or Amazon device.
Search Ads
Search advertising remains the foundation of Google's revenue. Every query entered into Google Search is a potential ad opportunity, and while users can technically change the default search engine in Chrome, very few do — making the default setting itself a structural competitive advantage.