Hello readers. We took a little break from writing the newsletter for a few weeks. It’s all quality here, not quantity. We are not in the business of news analysis or rehashing other people’s work. Faux zeitgeisty narrative is a definite no. Original ad tech material, only - to paraphrase the lyrical genius of The Streets on Let’s Push Things Forward.

The day-to-day has also been a contributing factor to our mini hiatus: we’ve been busy incubating a bunch of new ad tech businesses, which will be a huge feature of Fund 2 (more on that thesis at a later date). Some exciting left-field solutions are coming your way very soon.

Bedrock Platform: The True (Only) Heir To IPONWEB & AppNexus

The subject of this week’s edition was originally an incubated startup within FPC and is now building the most innovative, bleeding-edge programmatic ad tech in the business. We are, of course, talking about Bedrock Platform.

In case you missed it, Bedrock Platform announced a new innovation in ad tech, the containerised DSP. In partnership with Index Exchange, Bedrock has built a highly efficient, cost-effective way to execute programmatic buys on the sell side.

Now you might be asking: what is containerisation, and why should it matter to buyers? Those would be excellent questions.

Before we tackle those queries, though, it’s important to talk about the collapse of this laughable buyside/sell-side demarcation. SSPs compete with legacy DSPs, and legacy DSPs compete with SSPs. End of.

Just have a cursory look at SSP open roles - mostly demand-focused gigs. The narrative of “one platform” and “mono access” dominates. For SSPs, all the growth is direct access for brands and agencies.

There is a caveat to this trend, though: the modern DSP/buying platform. Instead of a monolithic DSP stack, you have a composable framework where Bedrock Platform becomes the tech layer for its customers’ optimisation or data. In short, it is a malleable technology layer that can run anywhere.

Containerisation is the perfect manifestation of this - especially in the context of DSP/SSP dynamics. Bedrock Platform can now run its bidder within the Index tech stack, hosting the buying logic alongside the inventory.

This allows Index Exchange to remain wholly aligned with the sell-side-first, and Bedrock can independently serve its buy-side customers. It’s a strange ecosystem indeed - but somehow this works.

Containerisation goes way beyond clunky, invariably unworkable DSP-to-SSP deal-ID activation. It is beautifully efficient and performant by comparison.

FPC was going to explain all this with a crude visual, but luckily, Bedrock Platform has done an excellent job in articulating the complexity in this magnificent video explanation (see below).

What This Means For Performance & Margin Retention

This is a big deal. Hosting the Bedrock Platform bidder inside Index’s infrastructure increases performance and win rates for buyers. There is zero latency and data leakage. That has huge implications in ad performance, putting it on par with walled gardens.

A major attraction of containerisation is margin retention. It will be significantly cheaper to use a Bedrock/Index instance than to use a buy-side stack to activate programmatic buys.

Driving down infrastructure costs will have big P&L implications for principal media buyers or ad networks running IOs/deal IDs. Readers might scoff/tut-tut at such a reductive view of the industry. Ultimately, money talks.

When you layer in omnichannel supply access and easy-to-use agentic capabilities, you now have the ultimate trading tool.

Agencies, Ad Nets & Onboarders: Time To Move To Bedrock Platform (Natch!)

If you are in the margin game, it’s hard to see how a legacy DSP can make sense. For a big global FMCG or any scaled global brand, the traditional DSP makes perfect sense. This will always be a huge chunk of the market.

For others, though, like ad nets, principal media buyers or big media cos looking to buy their own supply, the logic isn’t there.

The recent spat between TTD and Publicis was not about “hidden fees”; it was about where the margin will go. Buy-side DSPs plus principal media buying just don’t work - especially if you want campaigns to perform.

Margin is existential for ad nets: they need to optimise for EBIDTA to have any chance of an acquisition; an extra couple of percentage points will make all the difference in a liquidity event.

Media companies buying their own supply (from RMNs to big-scale pubs to streamers to apps) via a DSP will always be constrained by an inflated DSP take rate.

That won’t be the only reason to switch, though: building on legacy solutions with fixed and inflexible product roadmaps makes it harder to stay competitive.

There are very few (if any). solutions built specifically for the “ad tech middle” - a constituency that was once well served by AppNexus and IPONWEB. But no longer.

The “Ad Tech Middle” is frustrated by the lack of innovation and the self-serving business interests of the current ad tech offerings.

The ATM is invariably seen as a “nice to have” customer segment, just not business-critical.

There is a big gap in ad tech capability. Bedrock Platform is filling that void. FPC is excited to see such a real prospect emerge from the European ad tech ecosystem. And the upside has only begun.

The no-brainer move now: test Bedrock Platform offering; start to reclaim agency over your tech and economic future.

It’s all about the Ad Tech Middle FTW.

And on the public service notice, we will leave it there, readers. Have a great ad tech day.

A couple of weeks ago, Mark Carney delivered a seminal speech on the “middle powers” absolute necessity to take greater agency over their geopolitical futures.

The crux of his argument: that there has been an overdependence on the big global powers, and now is the time to untether from overbearing hegemons and build a new partnership of equals - reclaiming some semblance of control.

It’s probably a stretch to use a similar analogy in ad tech, but that’s what we do here on The FPC Newsletter. The tenuous links are expected.

The GAM (Google, Amazon and Meta) Effect

The hyperscalers continue to run roughshod over our great industry (examples are too many to list here). The 20 percenters are under siege.

Through a combination of overwhelming scale, walled-garden shenanigans, and impressive execution, they have taken a sizeable slice of the market. Despite their best efforts, though, the independent ad tech industry is still thriving.

The continued growth of established players and the emergence of new, scaled ad businesses are proving that the world is much bigger than Google, Amazon and Meta.

Maybe it’s best we all acquiesce to these scaled ad tech powers. Seems like a safe partnership, right? Seems like a bullet-proof economic model? Undoubtedly, it’s the partnership your mother would approve of.

Time To Go Your Own Way

In summary, it’s a no-brainer decision to outsource all tech capability to GAM. Sure, right up until your - invariably low margin - dependable business model gets upended by a high-octane Silicon Valley product team or a PowerPoint-loving exec looking to leave a mark. Or worse, a panicked, burn-the-house-down mega-industry pivot.

You could instead take your cue from Mark Carney: go your own way and build something more durable (in cooperation with the best and brightest in ad tech).

FirstPartyCapital believes that owning your commercial and tech future is, in the long term, the inherently more sensible path. And it would seem some of the smartest industry operators agree.

Corporate Partnership Framework Is Resonating

Since launching our new corporate partnership initiative, we have received some interesting outreach. Just a recap on the new corporate offering - in case you haven’t seen it:

• Outsourced R&D: Access our engineers (FirstPartyStudio) to build bespoke data/ad tech solutions without the massive overhead.

• Strategic Equity: Gain a seat at the table and co-invest in category-leading ad tech alongside our 250+ industry LPs.

• Market Intel: Quarterly briefings on AI, M&A, and non-US infrastructure shifts to keep you abreast of industry trends that affect your business.

So why are these strategics looking to work with FPC directly?

An unparalleled - and, yes, unbiased - view of the non-US ad tech world. Product development deep dives. Cutting-edge ad tech co-builds. Unique deal flow. Access to the most innovative ad tech startups. Take your pick.

Ultimately, it boils down to one word: autonomy. That’s what a vibrant industry needs, and that’s what we want to offer our partners.

We are open to speaking with smart, forward-looking corporate investors and partners. If that’s you, drop us a line at contact@firstpartycapital.com.

Sign Up For The Vendi Tech Webinar - March 23

As you know, we are doing a syndicate raise for ad tech HALO champion, Vendi Tech.

The OOH starlet is one of our best prospects for Fund 2.

Here we outline our reasons why this unique OOH and retail media crossover solution is very investible: https://newsletter.firstpartycapital.com/p/ad-tech-value-investment-why-we-are.

We will be hosting a webinar with Vendi Tech CEO, Harry Maitland-Titterton, on Mar 23. He will give a deep dive on the Vendi Tech opportunity and will field questions from potential investors. You can sign up here to book your Vendi Tech spot: https://tinyurl.com/VendiTech.

And that’s it for this edition. Have a great ad tech day.

Hello readers, and welcome to another edition of the FirstPartyCapital newsletter. The SaaSpocalypse has had a huge impact on software company valuations. This collapse in value happened mostly because of tools released by Claude and other LLMs, which automated tasks, reduced headcount needs, and forced a pivot toward AI-driven efficiency.

The public markets have taken a chainsaw to companies perceived to be at risk from the rise of vibe-coded dopplegangers. The rationale: with Claude and other LLMs, it’s now relatively easy to build software that can scale to the size of Salesforce et al.

HALO

Obviously, if you discount the deep integrations into some of the biggest companies in the world, the army of salespeople (to sell it), the army of developers (to develop and maintain it), the marketing, and all the rest of the things that go into running a multi-billion dollar software company, that would be a very sound thesis. But it isn’t.

Regardless, investors are rotating aggressively out of traditional SaaS stocks and into more durable assets. This investment trend even has a new acronym, HALO. No, not the Texas MOR pop gem from the late 90s.

HALO stands for Heavy Assets, Low Obsolescence. The crux of this new Wall Street thesis is the following: the market has shifted from “asset-light” software companies toward “real-world” infrastructure, and while AI can replace code, it cannot replace a physical railroad, power grid, or oil refinery. Heavy infrastructure-based stuff wins basically.

Could this happen in ad tech? In this newsletter, we discuss the HALO effect, why OOH is the trade and why we are investing in startups like Vendi.

OOH, The Ultimate HALO Play

You could argue, right now, that OOH is a far more interesting channel than CTV. Web-based ad tech has packed up shop and bet the farm on winning a share of the CTV ad pie. It’s become a massively overcrowded space that’s increasingly dominated by the hyperscalers.

OOH, on the other hand, has not seen the same level of hype as CTV, despite seeing over $2 billion in M&A in 2025 and expected growth of 7%-8% per year until the mid-2030s. It’s still relatively open in terms of opportunity. Innovation can still win.

But what’s really interesting is the channel’s robustness in the face of AI disruption. It is the ultimate HALO channel. Here are a few snackable reasons as to why it’s an essential go-to for marketers in an age of unpredictable AI change:

• Real-world scarcity FTW: AI can create infinite websites and digital ads instantly, but it cannot vibe-code a new junction, making existing physical signs more valuable as digital space collapses.

• The trusted channel: In a world flooded with fake AI-slop content and growing trust issues, owning a massive physical billboard signals that a brand is legitimate, solvent, and has the resources to operate offline.

• The emotional quotient: In a media landscape fragmented into a million pieces, brand equity is hard to come by. The billboard becomes a watercooler moment - the ultimate mid-to-upper funnel moment that drives the user to the prompt. The ultimate brand building and HALO crossover.

• Part of our real-world landscape: While AI agents now automatically hide or summarise digital ads for users, they cannot “block” a massive physical structure standing in the real world as you pass.

• Infrastructure built over decades: While social media apps and websites go viral and die within months, these steel-and-glass structures are integrated into infrastructure, providing a predictable source of longevity for media buyers.

Vendi - Our Latest HALO investment

This, of course, segues beautifully into the syndicate fund raise we are currently running for Vendi Tech. Vendi provides “smart” vending machines to some of the UK’s largest pub, gym, and retail brands.

It produces automated product dispensers and works with brands to distribute physical products to targeted audiences. It then uses this first-party data to power a DOOH offering.

Fixed physical asset - with utility - serving a non-intrusive DOOH display. Vendi is the ultimate HALO play. The more you think about this, the more you realise how valuable companies like Vendi will become - as people seek out real-world spaces (pubs, gyms and retail) to escape the AI-powered digital pollution that dominates daily life.

The Vendi Tech deal is now live here: https://investors.firstpartycapital.com/deal/detail/bf795272-1906-42b1-b223-630dc2563820. It’s time,e you had an AI hedge.

FPC Fund 2 will be making an investment after we finish this syndicate round. Here are the reasons why we are investing:

• Vendi sits at the intersection of retail media and OOH. It is already working with major gym, pub, and retail brands, helping build new incremental revenue streams through its automated vending machines. Its product-dispensing solution enables brands to engage a targeted audience. Layer on top of that a data-driven OOH ad network, and you have a sticky, profitable ad tech play. Once embedded, it’s hard to displace.

• The Vendi Team: Harry Maitland-Titterton, Vendi CEO, has extensive experience in the retail sector. This led him to identify a significant market gap in the automated vending machine space. He launched Vendi in 2023 and has since signed several major retail brands. As the product evolved to a first-party data and OOH solution, Harry surrounded himself with some of the smartest people in ad tech.

• Vendi is primed for scale. The company has nailed the unit economics on its machines and has built its ad stack to help brands reach new audiences. Now its core customers want it to expand into Europe and beyond. Honestly, it is hard not to get excited about Vendi - and the opportunity that lies ahead for Harry and team. This is a proper, moat-heavy industrial ad tech. Steel, glass, product and OOH ads. Ridiculously investable.

• The best companies in ad tech are utility solutions with a margin-heavy and scalable ad business bolted on. Think Uber and PayPal - but for OOH. As with its peers, Vendi’s utility feeds into its advertising offering.

• Vendi is quintessential ad tech value investing. With a unique fixed supply and proprietary party data, Vendi is a business with a higher likelihood of delivering a return to investors.

• From an M&A perspective, the OOH space is buoyant. In 2025, there were over $2 billion in transactions. OOH is a growing sector. In the age of chatbots and Q&A search engines, OOH becomes existential for brand building as the lower funnel collapses into a prompt.

• EIS cover on this deal for UK investors. Tax rebates are available on this raise.

Access The Vendi Deal Here

And that’s it, readers. Have a great weekend. Stay safe.

The FPC Podcast timeline:

00:00 Introduction to FPC and Corporate Innovation

02:08 The FPC Stack and Its Evolution

06:07 Corporate Partnerships and Innovation Strategies

09:55 Market Intelligence and Insights

17:59 Addressing Challenges in Ad Tech and Publishing

22:08 Incubation and Future Innovations

It would be fair to say that ad tech investment remains concentrated and consolidated. From the outside looking in, the same insiders continue to be masters at capturing the lion’s share of the upside.

Celebrity bankers, influencers, and ad tech OGs skillfully leverage influence, networks and capital to build success. Nothing wrong with that, of course. We continue to see it as a great framework for building something new.

New Fund, New Blueprint

Taking these learnings, FPC set out from the start to optimise ad tech investment - deliberately opening up to a broader cohort and investing in undervalued areas.

We chose the road NEVER travelled: a vertical fund investing in pre-seed & seed stage non-US ad tech. And we looked at this untapped opportunity through the analytical lens of seasoned operators.

FPC built one of the largest community investment entities ever conceived. We had no right to - and the odds certainly didn’t favour it - but we did it anyway.

We now have over 250 LPs (and counting) from across our sprawling industry. The idea: to get as many inside the ad tech tent so we all can benefit. The ultimate community fund.

As we reach the business end of Fund 1, we are laser-focused on rewarding that faith and laying the foundations for the next decade of ad tech prosperity that’s open to a larger chunk of the industry.

Giving Corporate Investors Agency Over Their Futures

What we have done with individual investors, we would like to do with corporate investors. Brands, agencies, ad tech and media companies must keep pace in a head-spinning, hyper-evolving sector.

From investing in R&D to reading the industry tea leaves to partnering with bleeding-edge ad tech, staying competitive can be a Herculean task. And as for investing in ad tech, that’s often one board approval too far.

Some manage to do it; most sadly acquiesce to the hyperscalers, outsourcing all commercial and technical autonomy. Nobody gets fired for choosing Google, right? Always a great decision in the very short term - right up until your company becomes a cautionary tale for overdependence and irrelevance.

But it doesn’t need to be thus. What if you could have it all? What if you could access a focused ad tech development team, unbiased market intelligence that actually moves the needle, and exposure to high-growth ad tech businesses?

A New Way To Innovate: What We Are Offering Corporate Investors

Today, FPC is unveiling a new strategy for our corporate partners: packaging the unique capabilities of both FirstPartyCapital and FirstPartyStudio.

Download The One Pager

Our objective with this initiative is to offer a structured, accessible way for brands, agencies, ad tech, and publishers to navigate an increasingly opaque, self-serving ad tech market. We are doing this through three specific mechanisms:

• Technical Execution: Experienced ad tech engineers and product specialists embed directly with the strategic leadership team. Think of it as outsourced R&D, saving on high costs and resource issues.

• Market Intelligence: Corporate partners receive structured quarterly briefings on AI, data and infrastructure shifts, global media buying trends, M&A activity, and regulatory developments. This is the edge you need to stay ahead.

• Strategic Equity Participation: Partners gain structured access to co-invest alongside FirstPartyCapital in category-leading ad tech companies. This lets you bypass the difficult board-level town halls and the awkward balance-sheet discussions.

Empowering The Strategic

What does this mean for the ambitious, forward-looking companies we are looking to work with? Let’s go through how this will benefit the 4 key strategic players:

• Brands

We are focused on in-house brands. Our offering looks to act as a trusted tech partner - from data orchestration to media execution to measurement. Our portfolio of 20+ companies offers a modular tech stack that provides new avenues for innovation for in-house brands looking to deliver performance. We are the ultimate unbiased filter for a fragmented ad tech marketplace.

• Agencies

Agencies are under severe commercial pressure (fee compression, decline in traditional revenue lines, etc.). This is hitting indies particularly hard. We are looking to work with savvy agencies eager to build sustainable capabilities. That could be anything from a bespoke data/ad tech solution or maintaining a cutting-edge profitable principal buying offering. FPC deliberately offers a malleable framework to accommodate the wide-ranging requirements of agencies. Also, this cohort is bankrolling much of ad tech’s success - with zero financial upside. By working with FirstPartyStudio, FPC offers the most efficient way to invest in the fund. No difficult chats with the CFO necessary - the perfect onboarding mechanism.

• Ad tech

Maintaining a development team is expensive. Integrations globally can be overwhelming and resource-heavy. Understanding what comes next, especially from a non-US perspective, can be daunting. Make your life easier by partnering with FPC on R&D, market intelligence (the global view) and investing in cutting-edge ad tech.

• Media

Media is probably the most squeezed in this cohort. Content creators are having to tackle zero traffic and AI macro trends. R&D costs are escalating as publishers explore new growth areas, while traditional revenue declines. Despite the new opportunities, how do you decide what to build and where to allocate R&D budgets? These are existential questions. Our new offering is purposefully built for these scenarios. We offer the full suite of development and market intelligence to help publishers and media companies navigate this new, complicated reality.

We are keen to speak with companies of all shapes and sizes that prioritise innovation and want to stay ahead of the competition. Get in touch if interested: contact@firstpartycapital.com.

Remember: this framework is deliberately flexible. It’s a conversation starter. Every company has its own unique strategic objectives. So, come and talk to us. Outlandish ideas encouraged!

Don't Forget To Read One-Pager

As always, thanks for reading. Have a great ad tech day.

They say necessity is the mother of all invention. Circumstances and environment invariably dictate outcomes. A non-US-based ad tech company starting out today will have a very different trajectory than a US-based one. Different markets. Different funding requirements. Different macroeconomic hurdles to navigate. Different buyers.

This also applies to capital allocators - albeit in a very different way. In this edition of The FPC Newsletter, we discuss the evolution of FirstPartyCapital - and how we operate as a multi-faceted fund.

The FPC Stack

FPC has never just engaged in passive investing. From day one, we have been evolving our investment model. We are very much a fund of one in an ocean of generalists (outside the US).

The opportunity in our vertical is significant; the specialism is finite. That has shaped a lot of our thinking and strategy thus far.

We have travelled a long way since the investment syndicate launched all those years ago. During FPC’s brief but eventful lifetime, we have had to build our own quasi-stack with a different set of capabilities that enables us to invest, position, scale, and make money for founders, LPs, and, of course, ourselves.

We call it The FPC Stack (see graphic below), and we break it into four constituent parts: FirstPartyCapital Fund; FirstPartyStudio; FirstPartyFinance; and FirstPartyCapital M&A. Let’s dig into those parts.

FirstPartyCapital Fund: Where It All Starts

FirstPartyCapital Fund 1 raised over $18 million and invested in 19 startups. We are now onto our second fund, looking to raise £50 million. The focus is still on the seed/pre-seed range, with room for follow-ons if necessary.

The investment thesis, as always, is framed around the vertical in which we operate. Fund 1 was very much about 1PD, signal and infrastructure. Fund 2 is more closely aligned with our ADO (AI, Data and Outcomes) positioning.

Through our investments and unabashed ad tech evangelism (via our newsletter, podcast, conference, etc.), we are changing entrenched views around ad tech investment.

Educating the market about the critical role ad tech plays in powering a $1 trillion ad business is paying off.

We now have a growing and influential group of co-investors that we can bring into our deals - something that we have successfully built out.

The fund continues to be the key part of the overall stack, underpinning everything we do at FPC.

The Studio: The Hub Of Innovation & Utility

FirstPartyStudio was established about a year ago to provide a dedicated technology resource for our portfolio companies and third-party partners. It has since expanded its scope to support incubation launches. We have already completed 4 incubations, with 2 more scheduled for this year.

We will be announcing something pretty innovative for corporates that combines the best bits of FPS and FPC without requiring a direct equity investment. Most brands, agencies, ad tech companies, and media businesses often struggle to secure investment funds.

By combining a commitment with FirstPartyStudio (offsetting expansive Capex), we give them access to the fund. More on this next week (stay tuned).

FirstPartyFinance: Financial Oxygen For Scale

Cash flow management is a huge issue in ad tech. Payment terms (anything up to 180 days) can cripple growth and expansion, jeopardising future raises. Startups are often forced to raise money to cover the float. That is an unacceptable position for us as a fund.

Our primary motivation for FPF: we wanted to provide easy access to the private credit market, helping our portcos scale without diluting. Cash is king. It oxygenates growth - and gives our startups agency over their fundraising timeline.

FirstPartyFinance is also looking to flip the script on financing overall, turning a reactive process into a more proactive one. In short, how can we weaponise it to help our portcos win more business and accelerate revenue growth? We have a few ideas on that one.

Someone recently asked FPC whether we were serious about our FPF business. We are very serious. An announcement outlining a partnership with a big US lender will be made in a few weeks’ time.

FirstPartyCapital M&A: Selling The Ad Tech Dream

The last part of The FPC Stack is our M&A offering. Important to note here that we are not running an M&A shop - and have no interest in competing with seasoned bankers.

The M&A service we offer is exclusively internal; it is available only to portfolio companies with a valuation below $50 million. There is no mandate from FPC either. It is the prerogative of the management teams and boards to work with us.

We know we can sell these sub-50-million companies. We know the buyers. We have the infrastructure. And we possess a very large megaphone to shape the narrative that (fairly) amplifies strategic value.

The FPC Stack keeps evolving. We have the requisite toolkit now to help us build and scale great companies outside the US. It’s an ongoing decades-long process. But the flywheel is starting to spin.

And that’s it for this edition, dear reader. Thanks for stopping by. Have a great ad tech day.

We call it “industrial” ad tech: the wonderful collision of glass, steel, ads and first-party data. More details on that thesis here.

The pod outlines the Vendi “syndicate” investment deal and how to get involved in this funding round.

The FPC Podcast timeline:

00:00 Introduction to Vendi and ‘Industrial’ Ad Tech

03:03 The Intersection of Out of Home and Retail Media

05:58 Vendi’s Unique Business Model and Case Studies

09:00 Insights from the First Party Team

11:53 The Future of Out of Home Advertising

14:58 Consumer Psychology and Brand Engagement

18:02 Scaling Vendi’s Operations

21:01 Potential Acquirers and Market Positioning

Hello readers, in this edition, we will attempt a “Being A John Malcovitch” and try to live vicariously through the eyes of a strategic ad tech acquirer. What exactly are they looking to buy - and why? These are the questions preoccupying the minds of founders and VCs alike. Liquidity is very much top of mind. So let’s dive in - but as ever let’s caveat all this as the opinion of FPC. We generally see everything from a non-US lens.

AI Ad Tech: Is Value In The Service Layer?

Anyone proffering a negative view on AI is typecast as a Luddite. Even holding a middle-of-the-road, pragmatic view on the application of the technology in ad tech is frowned upon.

The issue, though, is that nobody is buying the zeitgeist: AdCP, “agentics” and the AI industry scapes are not enticing buyers.

Maybe it’s a bit too early in the cycle. Maybe it’s the market.

Or maybe just maybe, none of these solutions have any real moats or longevity. Does the world really need another automated media buying tool? Prompt-based planning and buying is a feature - not a defensible solution.

Big tech will own the models, and the models are fast becoming commoditised. Signal remains the only differentiator in this game - a narrative FPC continues to hammer.

Will there be any splashy acquisitions in this congested AI ad tech category? It’s probable but highly unlikely in the short term, given the chunky valuation and the wait-and-see strategy adopted by strategics.

Where M&A could get interesting - in the very short term - is at the service layer. AI has been beneficial to the agency/consulting business. Panicked brands are increasingly leaning on specialist vendors and repositioned incumbents.

From workflow orchestration solutions to custom AI builders, new players are filling a big capability gap. There will definitely be some M&A activity here.

Strategic tuck-ins versus big ticket buys

There is always debate over the value of big acquisitions. Will they ever realise their expected accretive value is a bone of contention? The answers to that can be highly subjective. After all, nobody is going to issue a mea culpa for wasting $400 million on a generic ad network, are they? Of course not.

The number of buyers for anything over $150 million in ad tech is finite. The Goldilocks range remains between $25 and $150 million. Not too cheap. Not too expensive. Just about right to get board approval or avoid the board altogether.

Given the turmoil in public markets, there could be a freeze on larger deals until some form of normalcy returns (whatever that is). FPC is hearing of a few transactions about to be completed - but that’s very much the tail end of the 2025 vintage.

At the other end of the M&A scale, the sub $50 million market is relatively buoyant. We tracked a number of these deals in 2025 - and more are coming. It might not make the trades, but it is generally good for founders and investors.

Good outcomes for founders and investors is very much dependent on a) whether the acquired co was capital efficient and didn’t raise stupid amounts of money and b) whether you got in at a sensible valuation.

FPC is optimised for this type of scenario. We invest early to lock in value and have a significant portion of the portfolio positioned for this outcome. In the long run, these smaller deals (in aggregate) are likely to return more to LPs than the 150 million+ headline grabbers.

Not Cheap - Pure Strategy

The “tuck-in” is often perceived as a cheap opportunistic buying opportunity. It is not. Most big strategics have strict, and often prohibitive, revenue and EBITDA thresholds for M&A processes. The rationale needs to be compelling.

And it often is. Whether it’s global expansion or a unique technology that can accelerate revenue, the motivation for buying is less about the “bargain bucket” and more about the intrinsic strategic value.

Some of the best examples of non-US “tuck-ins” acquisitions, such as Adbrain and ADmantX, have been transformational, adding significant value for their buyers.

Right now, we have a few sub-50 processes in play, and much of the buyers’ calculus centres on expansion and the core tech asset.

Deals are happening in the space, just not the ones you expected. Here is a TL;DR summary for those special watercooler moments with colleagues and midweek pints at the local watering hole.

• Ad tech AI: No real ad tech acquisitions in the short term. Mostly because the tech has no real moat. The action will all be on the service side. New workflow orchestration and custom AI consulting services are gaining traction.

• >$150M: This will be a challenging segment of the market given public-market turmoil and valuation recalibration.

• $25M-$150M Goldilocks range: This will remain the busiest segment of the market.

• Sub-$50M: There will be lots of deals (mostly under-the-radar). The strategic “tuck-ins” are in vogue,

And that’s it for another edition. Have a great ad tech day.

Your LinkedIn feed has doubtless been heaving with ARTF/AdCP chat and press releases this week, given the recent ad tech jamboree in Palm Springs. The prevailing sentiment across the industry is one of befuddlement, as no one has any idea how this will pan out.

The most likely scenario for the “programmatic” open internet is that the buy- and sell-side tech consolidate into a handful of low-take rate, scaled platforms.

Ad Tech Value Investing

These consolidated plays will have open APIs, enabling agencies, brands, publishers, and “feature ad tech” to build on top of them. The agentics (sounds like a 2nd rate Motown band, right?) will be additive, workflow automation for repetitive tasks - ops, curated deal building, etc.

The winners will have very deep moats: unique supply, cheap compute, “ad tech banking” services and exceptionally low take rates. We made one bet, Bedrock Platform, in this media execution segment.

Its raison d’être: not to go head-to-head with these all-conquering platforms, but to build bespoke offerings (a la Beeswax/IPONWEB/early AppNexus) for smart, forward-thinking buyers, and provide bidding capabilities within progressive SSPs looking to compete for demand. Bedrock Platform is very much in a category of its own - more on that at a later date.

Other than Bedrock, our investment thesis remains wholly focused on first-party data solutions, data infrastructure, supply-focused ad nets and PBTs that address the entire $1 trillion ad ecosystem - not just the programmatic subsection.

We call it ad tech value investing: allocating investment to capital-efficient startups that create real utility in overlooked parts of the ad ecosystem.

OOH FTW

One overlooked area that has significant upside for ad tech is OOH. This is a $40 billion ad market and still growing (expected to compound at around 8%-10% until the early-2030s). OOH-related M&A totalled $2 billion+ in 2025. There are active buyers willing to pay a premium. We are so long on the space.

And what’s even more interesting about OOH is its ever-increasing importance for brand-building. As consumer behaviour shifts and the lower funnel collapses (thanks to the rise of chatbots & Q&A search), OOH becomes a requisite go-to for big brands.

Building a successful scaled ad net/ad tech solution in OOH is very possible - as long as you have proprietary supply and a first-party data asset. AI might hollow out the open web and other digital channels; it’s another thing for it to disrupt fixed-screen assets that underpin a $40 billion (and growing) ad business. OOH will play an integral role in a redrawn media landscape.

FPC will make two OOH investments in 2026. Both fit the mould for what FPC considers the perfect mix for success: O&O ad supply and a proprietary data asset.

Utility + Ads = Great Ad Tech Business

The first of these investments will be into a startup called Vendi Tech. Vendi provides automated vending machines to some of the UK’s largest pub, gym, and retail brands.

Did you say vending machine? WTAF is an acceptable answer. But here is where the FPC value investment thesis kicks in - expanding beyond the narrow, myopic view of ad tech.

Vendi produces automated product dispensers and works with brands to distribute physical products to targeted audiences. It then uses this first-party data to power a DOOH offering.

The best ad offerings are utility solutions with adjacent and complementary ad businesses bolted on - think Uber, PayPal, Deliveroo, Instacart et al.

Vendi has nailed the unit economics on its machines, enabling it to make much-needed incremental revenue for partners and a decent margin for itself.

It is the kind of industrial ad tech that makes real money. Steel, glass, products, and ads combine to make all your value-investment ambitions realisable.

This could easily be a scaled global business, carving out a lucrative piece of the OOH market. It’s certainly what Vendi’s partners want to do. This fund raise will help to put that strategy into action.

We are making this round available for individual investors. The deal goes live on our syndicate platform next week. In the meantime, you can express your interest in investing here: https://f7q0l.share-eu1.hsforms.com/2TJW6Bk8QSTCgotsLnHlnCA.

Why We Are Investing

We will be investing from Fund 2 alongside the syndicate (later in the year). To summarise our thinking, here are 7 reasons why we are investing in Vendi:

• Vendi sits at the intersection of retail media and OOH. It is already working with major gym, pub, and retail brands, helping build new incremental revenue streams through its automated vending machines. Its product-dispensing solution enables brands to engage a targeted audience. Layer on top of that a data-driven OOH ad network, and you have a sticky, profitable ad tech play. Once embedded, it’s hard to displace.

• The Vendi Team: Harry Maitland-Titterton, Vendi CEO, has extensive experience in the retail sector. This led him to identify a significant market gap in the automated vending machine space. He launched Vendi in 2023 and has since signed several major retail brands. As the product evolved to a first-party data and OOH solution, Harry surrounded himself with some of the smartest people in ad tech.

• Vendi is primed for scale. The company has nailed the unit economics on its machines and has built its ad stack to help brands reach new audiences. Now its core customers want it to expand into Europe and beyond. Honestly, it is hard not to get excited about Vendi - and the opportunity that lies ahead for Harry and team. This is a proper, moat-heavy industrial ad tech. Steel, glass, product and OOH ads. Ridiculously investable.

• The best companies in ad tech are utility solutions with a margin-heavy and scalable ad business bolted on. Think Uber and PayPal - but for OOH. As with its peers, Vendi’s utility feeds into its advertising offering.

• Vendi is quintessential ad tech value investing. With a unique fixed supply and proprietary party data, Vendi is a business with a higher likelihood of delivering a return to investors.

• From an M&A perspective, the OOH space is buoyant. In 2025, there were over $2 billion in transactions. OOH is a growing sector. In the age of chatbots and Q&A search engines, OOH becomes existential for brand building as the lower funnel collapses into a prompt.

• EIS cover on this deal for UK investors. Tax rebates are available on this raise.

This is a strong investment opportunity to start the year with. More details will be available on the platform soon, including a video interview with Harry and specific investor details. And that’s it for this edition. Have a great ad tech day.

It’s been a mixed week, readers. The positive news first: everyone under 30 is now into Aphex Twin. The bearded Cornish minimalist techno genius is more popular than Taylor Swift. The kids are alright.

On the negative front, the geo-economic landscape remains ugly, with ever-increasing brinkmanship over tariffs and the continued balkanisation of the global economy.

The America-first doctrine is now being aped and aggressively pushed in other large economies. China-first. Europe-first. India-first. Data sovereignty and regional “tech native” strategies are now top of mind for big global brands.

FPC is flagging this because it will have a profound effect on our industry, blindsiding the majority (not FPC, obviously) - more on this in a future issue.

Today, we are going super micro, not macro, getting back in the ops weeds. We have built an investment thesis around first-party data and the underlying infrastructure that segments and activates. We continue to believe strongly in that narrative.

But with a new caveat: if you want to scale this type of business, the signal needs to be omnichannel.

Feature Ad Tech Under Strain

We are currently in a race to the bottom for ad tech middleware. AI is effectively democratising the software layer in ad tech. Claude and vibing are very much in vogue.

The pile of moatless AI ad tech grows by the day. And the hype kindled by ad tech influencers and builders appears highly speculative.

Everyone is joining the ad tech AI party. A billion-dollar run rate with three lads and a laptop is the ultimate flex.

Economic fundamentals still apply, though. Whoever has the demand wins. The problem for ad tech: agencies are not sitting this one out. Most are building their own platforms, making many 3rd-party solutions redundant.

Paul Silver, an ad tech show-business friend and FPC LP, articulates this very challenge for vertical AI in a recent LinkedIn post.

Banking, Supply & Signal

As Paul points out, this will not be an absolute rule. There will be exceptions with a small handful of big winners.

Of course, this is a very subjective take on the post. Buyers will always want access to a unique supply. And the scaled bank-like services (extended payment terms on huge chunks of media spend) offered by big ad tech - that very few can offer.

It’s worth noting that this is a big trend at holdcos - much of the independent agency landscape is still open for business.

You might also (rightly) say ideas are ten a penny and execution is everything. The problem is that the execution part is getting easier.

If this is a tad hyperbolic, then look at the strategies of the holdcos and some of the big indies. All are investing heavily in their own data assets/infrastructure to support models that build customised algorithms and optimise media. All want proprietary signals and O&O supply from 3rd-party ad tech partners.

Signal, The Real Differentiator - But Omnichannel Ready

FPC has been investing heavily in signal since we started the fund. We asserted that buyers would want more signal, not less. And that is panning out now.

Publicis, WPP and Omnicom have made huge bets on AI - and they are hungry for first-party data assets and ID graphs. Going forward, it will be less about the pipes and more about the signal.

Here’s how FPC thinks about the future ad tech/agency media execution relationship (sidestepped the creative piece here):

Signal alone will not be enough. Vendors will need to offer omnichannel capabilities to gain meaningful traction with large buyers. You can read the PBT (Platform-Based Technology) issue for a deeper dive.

TLDR: Walled gardens dominate the media plan; you have to build for buyers who allocate the majority of media budgets to YouTube, Meta, TikTok and Amazon. It’s not anything you don’t already know. For partners and potential acquirers, though, mono-channel won’t cut it - especially if the signal is over-indexed to the open web.

It is an evolution of our SSA narrative from last year; it needed a timely update.

And that’s it from us. Have a great ad tech day.

Hello readers. Welcome to our regular biased view of the trillion-dollar ad business. As you know, we are all about ad tech and martech investment at FPC. We invest. We build. We scale. The goal, of course, is to achieve an outcome and return money to our LPs. We operate in a BIG market. Ad tech powers this trillion-dollar business. That’s correct. But don’t the walled gardens control 80% of that? Correct. And ad tech builds for that? Uhm, sort of.

For all its innovation, ad tech has a huge blind spot - namely, the walled gardens where consumers spend the majority of their free time. There are companies helping agencies and marketers navigate these standalone ecosystems. We are calling them PBTs (Platform-Based Technologies) - essentially native ad tech for YouTube or a TikTok built on the platform’s O&O APIs.

FPC believes it is a massively underserved part of the ad tech market. In this edition, we are talking about the humble PBT - what they are and how they can make you money.

The Legacy Of Open Web Thinking

There was an interesting exchange on a recent episode of Marketecture between Jim Payne and hosts Ari Paparo and Eric Franchi. Jim, a prolific builder of mobile-based ad tech and current CEO at CloudX, joked that Ari and Eric were “open web ad tech guys” - which, to be fair to both, is not really the case.

The awkward banter did provoke a bigger thought in FPC’s scrappy brain: does the industry suffer from some sort of myopia when it comes to building tech? Are we a web-first sector? Most of the standards we have are grounded in the open web. The programmatic ecosystem, for the most part, has been built to monetise open web inventory - and that technology is now being graphed onto other channels with varying degrees of success.

Now that the open web is declining (referral traffic down, changed consumer behaviour, shifting budgets) amid the rise of chatbots and Q&A search engines, a rethink is happening. App, OOH, audio, and CTV will be major focuses for ad tech. But why not walled gardens?

There seems to be an aversion to building for walled gardens; FPC can see why. Nobody wants their destiny controlled by Google (certainly not) or TikTok. Trading RTB for native API integrations requires significant investment and a major mindset shift. Data and measurement are also huge issues. It is one giant, convoluted “black box” that you could argue serves only its master.

Regardless, this walled-garden ad-tech market (PBTs) is an untapped opportunity. Like it or not, walled gardens keep growing in terms of user engagement and ad spend.

For marketers and agencies, walled gardens continue to be difficult to navigate across targeting, measurement, brand safety and inventory curation. Buyers need to do all of this at scale. And they need 3rd parties to fill that capability gap.

The Walled Garden: More Ecosystem Than Supply Partner

The raging hot takes around YouTube’s TV credentials pollute the LinkedIn news feed. Industry leaders and influencers get themselves into such a lather about “the quality” of YouTube inventory. It is such a reductive debate. What’s TV anyway these days?

YouTube is not just a supply of online video/CTV inventory; it is a living, breathing ad ecosystem. Ad spend is expected to reach $45 billion this year, nearly on par with OOH.

Agencies spend big on YouTube. But it remains a messy process, trying to buy and optimise for quality on a platform dominated by garbage content and, increasingly, AI-generated slop. Google wants the money but, in many respects, doesn’t care how it pockets that media spend. Not helpful to buyers.

It is not just the buyside that needs help. Increasingly, top-tier publishers and broadcasters are using YT to distribute their premium content. The problem is that they are not getting premium prices. The YT algo on the platform invariably commoditises premium content, valuing it similarly to UGC.

PBTs like FPC portco, ContxtMedia, are helping pubs increase YT ad yield. Its video metadata solution ingests content at scale to provide better signals, custom inclusion lists, and brand-safe inventory. This is a boring (we love boring) backend company that doesn’t take a position in the media - just supercharges the buying signal so partners can make more money. Buyers want quality and performance; ContxtMedia provides both.

A YouTube PBT Ecosystem Map

There are 3rd-party ad tech vendors making decent money and garnering big valuations by focusing heavily on YouTube - thinking about the likes of Channel Factory and Zefr. Within the YT ecosystem, there are a bunch of specific categories PBTs are building solutions for.

To illustrate the opportunity, FPC has put together a crude visual overview of the YouTube PBT category landscape:

The Investment Rationale

The walled garden penetration is more pronounced outside the US. The further east you go, the more dependent marketers and agencies become on YT/Google/Amazon/Meta/TikTok/Snap.

There are two ways to invest for this: 1) invest in solutions building for omnichannel; and 2) fund platform native ad tech.

You’ll be glad to hear we are doing both. On the first one, we have already made significant bets (cc Lumen, the omnichannel attention company) and have a bunch of incubations that will be backing (startups like MedMerge, a non-US pharma/health targeting solution for walled gardens).

On the native ad tech builds, we are already into the likes of ContxtMedia, and are lining up investment in TikTok and YT solutions.

Having a nuanced view of ad tech is requisite if you want to thrive and survive. FPC has adopted that view from day 1. Remember again, this is not the US. You do not have the luxury of a single deep and liquid ad market that can support an open web investment thesis.

The PBT is a thriving (and very investable) ad tech category - and we are making sure our LPs have decent exposure to this outrageously overlooked segment of the market.

And that’s it, readers. Another TLA (oh, yeah) is born. Have a great ad tech day.

Greetings readers. FPC hopes you have recovered from your CES travels. Apparently, agentic ad tech is hot, and these automated agents will increase the advertising TAM from $1 trillion to $2 trillion (time period unknown). The less said about that, the better - but keep on building and shipping people.

In this week’s edition, we are going to focus on a small but significant piece of M&A that will have a big impact on one of our portfolio companies going forward. FPC is, of course, referring to the Rayn and digitalAudience deal that was announced this week.

There has been a lot of debate (arguments) about the use of ID-based targeting. Publicis and WPP have had an interesting back-and-forth on probabilistic versus deterministic approaches.

The simple truth is: you cannot operate in this business without an ID graph - especially in a highly fragmented market like Europe. Publicis bought Lotame to fill that capability gap. Liveramp has some coverage, but not meaningful. Big in the US, granted, but struggles elsewhere.

Data Meshing FTW

We invested in digitalAudience because we knew there was an issue across Europe. DA has been quietly building its ID graph in Northern Europe and Scandinavia.

It’s now in the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy. And will soon announce a huge data deal that will cement it as Europe’s go-to ID graph.

Built as a privacy- and European-first solution, DA’s platform has been thoroughly road-tested for a future that will ultimately be dominated by data sovereignty (more on that later) and tighter data legislation.

Europe is a market you can not operate in without a company like digitalAudience.

Rayn Brings New Scale Capabilities

That’s what makes its recently announced acquisition of Rayn all the more interesting.

Rayn was founded and built by industry stalwarts, Tim Geenen and Niels Baarsma. Both have had stellar careers in ad tech and sold their last company to Liveramp.

Rayn adds serious firepower (technology and talent) to digitalAudience’s already impressive platform, enabling it to model synthetic audience personas using DA’s extensive ID graph.

Why is this important? Well, you kind of need some probabilistic magic in environments where there is a dearth of cookies and IDs for scaled data-driven buys.

Unlike traditional probabilistic methodologies, though, Rayn does not stitch together a bunch of personally identifiable information to reconstruct users across different channels.

When integrated with digitalAudience’s ID graph, Rayn probabilistically infers user matches and audience behaviour.

Rayn isn’t trying to guess the user; it’s trying to guess the user behaviour. Below is a crude visual of how digitalAudience and Rayn.io will work together.

Data Sovereignty Is Top Of Mind

In the last two weeks, FPC has fielded questions from strategic investors about data sovereignty amid heightened tensions between the US and Europe - economic and geopolitical. What can you say? Who knew we all cared about the independence of Greenland?

Now you might be thinking this is a little extreme. It’s not. These are now boardroom discussions among European-based brands, and it’s a very real concern.

Geopolitical risks will also lead to fresh litigation in 2026 around the transfer of European citizens’ data to the US. This isn’t idle speculation. Max Schrems, the crown prince of data privacy activism, is preparing himself for another battle over the practice. The man has a track record of winning these cases.

Because Rayn is not an ID-based solution, there is no need to employ US ID graphs or cloud infrastructure for matching. Rayn is all about signal - not ID.

This enables European brands to keep data regional, making it less exposed to any ugly data sovereignty issues.

This is a solid piece of M&A, making digitalAudience even more strategic to its customers (publishers, brands, and agencies) and, of course, to potential acquirers. With several major client wins to be announced, digitalAudience is primed for a strong 2026.

And that’s it for this week, readers. Have a great ad tech day and weekend.

Happy New Year, readers. Hope you feel rested and are ready to go. If you are reading this in Vegas, you should really be questioning your life choices right now (joking, of course). While compiling a new Spotify playlist of 2-minute songs, FPC has been ruminating on the past 12 months and looking forward to the year ahead.

The word of 2025 was very much “meh” for many. 2025 was a mix of tepid growth, monopolists getting stronger, macroeconomic headwinds and false tech dawns.

If this sounds downcast and depressing, it’s not supposed to be. The above really is an opportunity to reset and rethink how we all approach 2026.

We operate in a $1 trillion media market and a $5 trillion marketing market, so the opportunity to build great scaled businesses remains infinite.

The following is a sample of what we are looking forward to. This is not a list of predictions, just a quick overview of where FPC will be focusing its time and (LP) money.

Love OOH

Last year, we saw several billion in M&A in the category. OOH has huge potential, especially as consumer behaviour upends traditional marketing. The lower funnel gets disrupted for everyone. But who captures all the value? Sam? Sundar?

While the “bleeding edge” of ad tech pushes the idea of bot-to-bot marketing (which is just affiliate marketing by another name), the mid-to-upper funnel takes on even more importance for brand equity, as brands look to stimulate prompt activity from real-life humans.

For all the AI in the world, it’s going to be impossible to disrupt physical screens and billboards. Real-world branding (data-driven, of course) will become critical as the digital world drowns in SLOP.

We LOVE closed OOH ad nets with proprietary data and O&O inventory - and so do strategic buyers. We are investing in at least 2 OOH ad nets this year. We will also look at OOH measurement and targeting solutions. Some might call it an AI hedge; FPC calls it common sense investing.

Omnichannel Or Die (Maybe)

Omnichannel will be top of the marketer’s wish list. Media fragmentation is becoming more pronounced. Scale becomes trickier - and buying open channels becomes impossible. Nobody can just buy Google and Meta, though.

If you are a signal-focused vendor, having a signal that works across open web, OOH, in-app, TV/CTV, audio, retail media and the multitude of walled gardens will be a requisite for differentiation. How many solutions can do that? Very few.

FPC has a number of omnichannel signal vendors in its portfolio, but Lumen stands out. It is 100% the leader in omnichannel attention. Nobody can do what it does. It’s pretty easy when you own data and technology - and can build a “run anywhere” signal.

Omnichannel is the winner in 2026.

Holistic TV Buying

In 2026, we are going to see a greater industry adoption of holistic TV buying - especially from agency buyers.

The TV landscape continues to be a fragmented mess - and it’s only getting more complicated. Instagram Reels (and possibly TikTok) is launching a TV app. There will be a bunch of new walled gardens to factor into TV planning.

Linear is in decline, but not yet in an existential freefall. Chunky budgets are still being allocated there - even as YouTube and CTV grow. You cannot plan in isolation for TV, randomly allocating ad budgets across disparate pots of long-form and short-form content.

We will see a bigger conversation about TV planning and execution. LightBoxTV is the only vendor outside the US building a holistic platform - and continues to lead the charge in helping buyers navigate the mayhem of TV.

2026 is very much a less CTV-solves-for-everything year, and more HTV-is-the-reality.

AI: Rules-Based Solutions Break New Ground

It’s very fashionable right now to go negative on AI. We live in such a feckless media environment. Regardless, ad tech has very much gone all in on it. Old-timer ad tech stalwarts, bankers, and armchair pundits are pushing the narrative HARD. Froth can be measured by the number of AI-specific marketing events that are popping up. Let’s just say it is getting frothy out there.

FPC can’t help but think that this is all still way too early in the AI tech cycle. The landscape is dominated by ANWAWs (ad-nets-with-a-wrapper). That’s ok. We love a good ad net. But is ad mediation the sweet spot? And will anyone want to buy these companies? The jury is still out.

We are placing a few AI-related bets on rules-based platforms that solve specific problems - very boring problems. No agentics. No bot-to-bot marketing; just mind-numbingly boring solutions that can scale. Because we love boring, it makes money.

We think there is a broader application for AI in marketing beyond automated planning, optimisation and bot-powered buying. AI will break new ground in ad tech.

Signal & Data Architecture

We continue to believe strongly in the “signal’ narrative. First-party data is the key differentiator in an LLM-first world. SSAs (Super Signal Aggregators) will need to acquire more signals to stay relevant in a competitive space.

We have some of the best signal-based companies in the industry, and we are reasonably confident that a few of them will be acquired in the coming 12 months.

Data architecture will also remain crucial. From data management and activation to permissioning to understanding data provenance/quality, these solutions will have no shortage of demand. Throughout the year, we will be investing heavily in this segment.

2026: Action Packed

2026 is the year FPC rolls out a bunch of new incubated businesses from FirstPartyStudio, some of the areas of focus we discussed above.

FPC expects to do more bespoke ad tech projects and builds with our strategic investment partners, centred on our portfolio companies. Yet another reason to consider an investment in our fund.

We will also announce a major global partnership for FirstPartyFinance (Q1), and launch a reseller solution for our portfolio companies (Q2). So it’s going to be a busy one.

We look forward to the year ahead. Thanks for reading. And see you next time.

The FPC Podcast timeline:

00:00 Introduction to digitalAudience and Its Journey

02:50 Ruben Niet’s Background and Insights

05:54 The Concept of Data Collaboration

08:59 Market Dynamics and Competition

11:56 Growth and Expansion Plans

15:00 Retail Media and Case Studies

17:58 Amazon’s Market Influence

21:02 Google’s Antitrust Trial and Industry Impact

In the second part of our three-parter on the types of corporate investors now putting money into FPC, we focus on the platform strategic.

The platform strategic is a broad church as it covers everything from data vendors to publishers to agencies to OOH networks to TV companies - and much much more. It is the category most susceptible to changes in the ad tech ecosystem.

When Conflict Becomes A Big Problem

It’s difficult to “truly” trust big players like Google and Amazon when they are so conflicted.

Amazon, for instance, is having a moment. It is the darling of the ad tech community. It’s not Google. It’s not TTD (the independent everyone loves to kick). Amazon wants to be the ad tech layer for the open internet, hammering aggressively at TTD and Google market share.

Weirdly, ad tech seems to have forgotten that Amazon owns the biggest e-commerce site in the world, competing against most - if not all brands - in some fashion. Conflicted? Definitely.

It owns a chunk of CTV inventory, so you have to wonder whether or not it will favour its O&O supply via its DSP. And it also extracts a juicy chunk of “cloud tax” from everyone. Double-dipping on media and cloud? Obviously.

This is not a gripe against Amazon per se as the industry needs these big players; FPC is just pointing out the difficulty the platform strategic has in terms of navigating what strategy to employ. It’s a jungle out there.

Keeping The Moat Wide

Whether it is AI or direct integration, disintermediation is a genuine concern for many platform strategics. How do you preserve that moat when the industry moves at breakneck speed?

FirstPartyCapital is now serving as an outsourced R&D lab for strategics. It can be expensive and time-consuming trying to read the tea leaves and executing accordingly; that’s why we exist.

Our operator-led fund is at the bleeding edge of ad tech. And the reason we have such a large LP base of smart insiders is that we can lean into “the wisdom” of the ad tech crowd.

It is the secret weapon of our fund: having so many decision makers connected to FPC.

The fund and portcos work alongside strategics to build tech, product and commercial strategy to keep them ahead of the hungry pack.

Becoming a cog in a giant stack with no agency over your commercial future is not where anyone wants to be stuck.

We will gladly dig that moat.

We Chose The Independent Path

We are not a virtuous play. This is a calculated strategy on our part. We know there is huge upside in helping the platform strategics forge an independent path.

Let’s consider the 50 billion dollar OOH space. It seems a nice, idyllic, well-insulated channel, free of the encroaching ad tech behemoths. OOH platforms have control over supply and data. But for how long?

The reality is that the rise of POOH means that OOH networks can be bought around. Direct integrations eliminate the need for exchanges and SSPs. It’s happening in CTV and on the open web. How do you prepare for the eventuality? Because it is coming to OOH and other channels.

Nuanced strategies to counter this are thin on the ground. FPC applies our portfolio stack to address these big problems. And we have some interesting OOH investments already in the pipeline for Fund 2.

This is also applicable to the much derided agency model. The holdcos are either consolidating or aggressively pivoting. The indies are mopping up business, but are facing similar headwinds. How does an agency fit into this new ecosystem? AI is eating into the FTE margin. And clients are asking for more tech driven solutions.

We have partnered with agency investors to figure out these big existential business issues. Off the back of that we are launching a new solution in Q1 next year, making it easier to access the FPC tech stack at scale - without having multiple points of contact and head-spinning contractual issues. The idea is to provide an easy-to-use tech framework for agencies looking to stay competitive and relevant.

Making Sense Of it All

These are confusing times. You have trusted partners that are monopolists. You have new ad tech agentic protocols being pushed out every other week. You have ad tech influencers cheerleading questionable “AY EYE” innovation. You have bankers and ad tech companies releasing AI vendor scapes, which for the most part are a collection of thinly veiled ad nets with an LLM wrapper and attractive rebates. Trusting in anything at the minute is a problem.

What you need is people who live and breathe this space, understanding what is bullshit and what has value. That becomes almost impossible in a global context. Not for FPC.

We are offering the counter balance to unchecked hype. No doubt, AI is going to overhaul workflows and accelerate automation. If AI is embedded in your product, it’s likely to have significant upside for the business. If AI is the stand alone solution, you will have difficulty defending it in the age of Claude, Gemini and OpenAI.

It is important to note here that we are leaning heavily into AI. We have an AI consultancy - Carpio - within our portfolio building enterprise solutions for an array of customers (brands, agencies, tech and utility businesses). We are also using Carpio to road test new ideas. In some cases the differentiated ideas with real merit and utility are getting spun out and funded.

We see so so so many pitches in ad tech AI (the usual automated planning, ad ops and optimisation patter). 99% of them could be vibe-coded in a pair of hours by Carpio. It’s the ultimate filter that makes FPC essential in the industry.

Our goal is to work with great strategics to cut through the noise, building for longevity not for the latest ad tech hype cycle. That’s why we are top of the list for the smarter corporates. And we look forward to working with more of them as we roll out Fund 2.

Talk to you next week readers. Thanks for reading and do share with your peers. Have a great ad tech day.

Hello, dear readers - and a special welcome to our first-time subscribers. It’s been a while since we pushed out some world-class insights on ad tech, martech and the $5 trillion marketing sector. FPC hopes you are having a gangbuster Q4. Let’s get into it.

The Global Strategics & FirstPartyCapital

This edition is part of a three-part series focused on the types of strategic investors looking to invest in the FirstPartyCapital fund. Index Exchange and DV are just two of the growing number of corporate investors investing in FPC.

We see three specific types looking to partner with FPC: 1) the global strategic; 2) the platform strategic; and 3) the ad tech strategic.

In the first part of the series, we will take a deep dive into why global corporate investors (number 1 on the list above) are looking to bet on FPC.

America Versus ROW

Nobody should kid themselves into thinking that the US isn’t the centre of marketing spend globally. As a standalone, you have to be there. And that is NOT going to change anytime soon.

The non-US (including China) market is a headache to navigate and scale. It’s a fragmented mess - technologically, economically, politically and culturally. But in aggregate, it’s a huge prize (significantly bigger than the US).

If you are serious about being global, you cannot ignore it. Demographics and socio-economic shifts demand it. TTT (Trump, tariffs, and technology) is only exacerbating this economic necessity.

The partners at FPC and their portfolio companies have spent their working lives building and selling into this maelstrom - and have evolved a multi-decade strategy to knit this chaos together.

A Stack Built For The Non-US Market

US companies often struggle to bring their ad tech solutions to Europe and elsewhere. Stringent privacy regulation is the primary reason.

The legal risks often outweigh the rewards. However, this inevitably has significant revenue implications for partners, particularly for any company sitting on a proprietary first-party data asset that can’t be activated globally.

What ad tech can they use without transgressing local privacy legislation? And what solutions can work at scale in a privacy-first way outside the US? Not apparent to most, but very much front-of-mind for FPC.

Sure, there are some household-name ad tech options (the usual DSPs and onboarders), but they invariably fail to scale data across Europe and other large non-US markets effectively. It’s the reason why Publicis acquired Lotame to help build its global spine - a strategy that’s winning.

Industry “experts” threw shade on the “data sausage factory” Lotame built globally. The company put in the gruesome hard yards to do local data deals for the better part of a decade, creating arguably the best data meshing platform in the business.

These are the dirty realities of global ad trading. And privacy is really only the start of it.

There is significant upside in aggregating these markets - but you need a smart ad tech stack to navigate it all. Luckily for our current and future corporate investors, FPC has invested in the best tech solutions in the business.

As a handy overview, we have created a visual guide on how “global strategics” can increase non-US revenue via the FPC stack of companies.

Understanding Non-US Industry Economics

It is essential to understand that US ad tech doesn’t travel very well. The tech chat on LinkedIn and the myopic ad ops spats are very much localised to the NYC boroughs - and do not represent the realities of trading outside the US.

Economics plays a huge role in the day-to-day business outside of the homogeneous US market. From rebates to taxation to take rates, the non-uniform process can send vendors into a tail spin.

There is no vertical fund in this industry (or any industry) that understands these intricacies as well as FirstPartyCapital.

For instance, ask yourself how you would trade in Brazil? It’s a sizeable ad market, and one that any ambitious global player cannot ignore. The simple answer is that it’s difficult to operate in Brazil without incurring huge tax liabilities. But through our reseller team (a portfolio company) and global infrastructure, we can make it market work.

Also, how do you negotiate regional trading deals and understand localised trading processes? Again, there is no plug-and-play solution - and it’s a problem that only compounds when you introduce ad tech that is not built for these specific economic realities.

Our portfolio companies understand these market quirks instinctively. They productise and build features in their tech solutions so that these unique dynamics become less of a problem and more of an opportunity.

We have seen wave after wave of US ad tech try to push models that are not suited to other markets.

FPC collaborates with leading corporate investors to develop strategies and products with its portfolio companies. The objective is to help these strategics maximise revenue-generating opportunities in local markets, optimising for the fun problems that everyone seems to hate - except us.

Fund 2 is well and truly up and running. Big conversations are ongoing. If you would like to discuss a corporate investment opportunity with the FPC team, please do not hesitate to get in touch. You can contact us here: contact@firstpartycapital.com.

Next week, we will discuss “the platform strategic” and how FPC is helping to build the technology moat for their business to survive and thrive.

Until then, readers, have a great ad tech day/weekend.

The FPC Podcast timeline:

00:00 Introduction and Background of Vibe

02:57 Recent Developments in AdTech

06:06 Arthur’s Entrepreneurial Journey

09:02 Vibe’s Growth Strategy and Funding

12:03 Fixing Ad Tech: A New Approach

14:57 Targeting the Long Tail of Advertisers

18:02 Growth Metrics and Strategies

21:04 Future Trajectory and Investor Expectations

24:12 Hiring and Company Culture

27:06 Parting Thoughts and Key Takeaways

POWA Ad Tech Breakfast With A Side Of Data

We are hosting another quarterly Spotlight breakfast event on Thursday, November 06. We will be digging into the meaty topic of data collaboration and why it’s a requisite in scaling campaigns across a hugely fragmented market like Europe.

The panel makeup includes: ​Rachel Smith, ExchangeWire (moderator); ​Ruben Niet, digitalAudience; ​Remco Steen, Mediahuis Nederland; and ​Bedir Aydemir, News UK.

Here is an overview of what we will be discussing in that morning session:

• Privacy and regulatory complexity: Navigating diverse data laws across markets, from the EU’s GDPR to the US’s fragmented regulatory landscape.

• The importance of local context: Leveraging cultural, linguistic, and regional expertise to ensure data is accurately interpreted and locally relevant.

• Fragmentation in Europe: Why privacy-by-design and native ecosystem integration are essential for scalable, trusted data collaboration.

• Building a collaborative ecosystem: How trusted local networks of brands, publishers, and technology partners can bridge global ambition with regional realities.

Now you might be thinking that is old hat. Well, you’d be wrong. Widely used ID graphs offered by LiveRamp or TTD have “patchy” scale (at best) in Europe.

This is the primary reason Publicis bought Lotame. Lotame spent the better part of a decade building a consortium of local data partners to help scale its graph. It was dirty, back-breaking work.

Lotame is now part of the Publicis mothership, and that ID spine is unavailable to other agencies and third parties.

Our portfolio company, digitalAudience, has since stepped into the role, offering buyers the ability to scale data-driven programmatic. DA is a hot company right now in Europe and is signing some massive customers.

You can see how DA is achieving this via its framework with the aid of the ExchangeWire MadTech Sketch below.

Places are limited for this event, so make sure you sign up. Register your place here: https://luma.com/25ykiey2.

AdCP: A Terrible Name, But Interesting Initiative

It’s easy to be massively cynical about AdCP. Like, who appointed these people to dream up a bunch of new protocols that the industry didn’t ask for?

Why wasn’t it done through IAB Tech Lab or one of the many industry bodies? Stepping back from what you might think of it all, you can see the true merit and ambition of the AdCP project.

The adoption of autonomous agents is inevitable for managing media-buying workflows, and as buyers lean into them, rules will need to be established. It was smart for independent ad tech to get ahead of it, rather than being dictated by what Google, Meta, and Amazon might do.

Maybe an independent committee was needed to get things moving after all, due to the influence of these three companies on industry bodies.

There will be opportunities related to this, so an open mind on AdCP is required. Our own AI specialist, Carpio, is already starting to work with brands and agencies on AdCP.

In the next few weeks, we will host a portfolio AdCP workshop to discuss the potential application of the protocol. Let’s test and learn to see where this will end up. Overall, it’s an interesting and valuable play to build a framework for an (inevitable) AI-first media buying landscape.

And that’s the newsletter for this week, readers. Have a great ad tech day.

Before we jump into this edition of the newsletter, we are hosting a networking event during Ad Week New York. The event will take place at Tír na nÓg on Thursday, October 09. You can sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/firstpartycapital-nyc-happy-hour-tickets-1581824482609?aff=oddtdtcreator. Space is limited, so be sure to sign up today.

Why The IAS Deal Is Great For Ad Tech

Novacap announced this week that it is taking IAS, the publicly listed SSA (Super Signal Aggregator), private for $1.9 billion. Novacap is a Canadian-based PE firm with $8 billion AUM, focusing on mid-market deals.

The PE firm likes ad tech, having invested in CTV solutions like Cadent and Ad Theorent (a possible home for Publica, perhaps) . Novacap spent the guts of a billion on both of those deals.

So what’s next for IAS? Overall, this was a smart move. The quarterly grind of being a public company was weighing on IAS’s potential.

The stock has been hammered over the past few years, and undoubtedly, the short-termism of Wall Street was strangling long-term strategic objectives.

Going private enables IAS to become the leading SSA (Super Signal Aggregator) and move beyond vanilla ad verification and brand safety.

What would be on the IAS shopping list? It probably needs to acquire more signal-focused companies (ahem), a custom algorithm solution, and a measurement layer, not necessarily in that order. The SSA stack is never complete, so this list is likely to have many more items.

From a purely selfish point of view, FirstPartyCapital is delighted to see this happen. We have the weaponry SSAs need to survive and thrive. It would be great to see more proactive and forward-looking M&A in the space.

IAS, as a private company, now has the time and resources to develop this end-to-end SSA solution.

OOH To Go To $100 Billion By End Of Decade

A few weeks back, ExchangeWire’s CEO, Rachel Smith, presented a MadTech Sketch (see below) to over 650 attendees as part of her excellent ATS London/MadTechMoney preamble, putting forward a compelling thesis that mid-to-upper funnel advertising will be in the ascendancy in the age of disruptive search AI and chatbots.

The link to the MTS can be found here: https://www.exchangewire.com/blog/2025/09/24/what-happens-to-the-funnel-when-ai-takes-over/.

The argument is based on the assumption that the marketing funnel could contract as people move directly to chatbots to seek out specific information, thereby avoiding traditional search ads, retargeting, and lower-funnel advertising in the process.

Mid-to-upper funnel ads become even more critical in a world where chatbots “compress the purchase journey” and brand awareness is core to conversions within search AI and chatbots.

The idea that humans initiate the prompt underlies the importance of the mid-to-upper funnel. One of the key channels going forward will be OOH.

The global OOH ad market is 40 to 50 billion dollars. Given the enormous changes to consumer behaviour being driven by AI search, you could make the case for a $100 billion OOH ad market by the end of the decade.

You might well be choking on your bowl of Frosties after reading that last statement. Fair, but let’s consider the following: AI will disrupt a lot of the ad tech ecosystem, specifically the lower funnel, where the ground is shifting aggressively.

DOOH/OOH inventory is fixed, brand-safe and will seed the necessary brand awareness before any individual moves to a prompt.

FPC will be making several bets in the DOOH space. And not primarily because of AI.

There is so much room for innovation around signal, platforms and measurement. And let’s not forget the tasty M&A deals in the space over the past 18 months.

As a standalone category, OOH/DOOH is ripe for even more investment. As a hedge (critical for Fund 2 and our LPs) against AI mania, chaos and disruption, it is a no-brainer.

Lots Of M&A Chat On The Pod

The FPC Podcast returns this week with an M&A focused episode. You can listen to the full episode here:

We discussed the big Deep Intent deal and the opportunity in the area of pharma marketing. We are incubating a business built for the non-US market.

The discussion then moved to Bending Spoons, the Italian company that’s quietly aggregating a bunch of impressive tech assets. The company just recently acquired Vimeo, an undervalued video streaming platform, for $1.38 billion.

Bending Spoons just announced a €500 million debt deal, and indicated more deals are coming. It is reported to be considering an IPO in 2026 with a potential valuation of over $5 billion.

It has a strong subscription story. But given the first-party assets and O&O ad inventory at its disposal, it’s going to need an ad strategy for Wall Street. The pod discusses this in detail and even offers to put the plan together for Bending Spoons. Stay tuned on that one.

Until the next edition, readers. Have a great ad tech day.

The FPC Podcast timeline:

00:00 Introduction and Overview of Recent M&A Activity

02:49 Deep Intent’s Acquisition and the Healthcare Ad Tech Landscape

09:15 Bending Spoons Acquires Vimeo: A Strategic Move

17:48 Digiseq’s Acquisition by Hawk Infinity: A New Player in Ad Tech

24:22 Streamr’s Acquisition by Magnite: Expanding Creative Solutions

26:50 Spaceback and Rembrandt Merger: Ambitious Plans Ahead

28:44 Captify’s Acquisition by Verve: Analyzing the Deal