“All of the AI companies have a serious problem,” Green said. “Their capex and valuations are massive, and they have really high expectations on the way that they’re going to make money.”
At the heart of the discussion was Amazon’s DSP offering. Green reiterated a view that has stirred debate across ad tech: that Amazon may eventually step back from operating a demand-side platform for the open internet.
The reason, he argued, is antitrust risk. Green pointed to Google’s ongoing regulatory battles as a cautionary tail, suggesting the company’s participation in open web ad tech has been the source of most of its legal troubles. Amazon, he added, has even more at stake because its advertising business intersects with retail, cloud infrastructure, and streaming video.
“It would be a strategic mistake for Amazon,” Green said. “Their role in the open internet will be shorter than Google’s, because of the macro impact on their business.”
Green also pointed to retail media as a major area of opportunity for programmatic platforms—even though The Trade Desk has yet to operate product listing ads at scale, he said. When pressed about whether agency groups such as Dentsu and WPP had moved away from OpenPath—a development previously reported by ADWEEK—Green declined to comment.
