• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, June 2, 2024

The open internet is continuing its advance over walled gardens, judging by a variety of measurements. 

For instance, the open internet drew 61% of time spent in 2023, up from 57% the year before and 38% in 2014, according to The Sellers and Publishers Report, a study by The Trade Desk. The walled gardens declined proportionally, based on research by GlobalWebIndex.

Consumers spent more than five hours per day on the open internet in 2023, up from two hours in 2014. 

In addition, Meta and Alphabet’s share of digital ad spending fell from 53.3% in 2019 to 46.6% last year. 

This could hearten opponents of the walled gardens, especially those fighting threats by the giants to block news in states that pass laws requiring that they pay publishers for using their content. 

"The open internet is at a tipping point,” says Jeff Green, founder and CEO of The Trade Desk, “In 2022, Facebook and Google accounted for less than half of all digital advertising spending for the first time in a decade, a trend that accelerated in 2023.”

This comes as “consumers now spend the majority of their time outside these Big Tech walled gardens — increasingly preferring the best of the open internet,” Green continues. “This includes the latest Hollywood movies and popular TV shows, streaming audio, live sports, and trusted journalism."

Big gains were also seen by streaming music and podcasts and connected TV. 

The top 100 publishers were evaluated according to “a range of criteria, including advertising quality (such as viewibility, ads to content ratio and refresh rate), reach, decisioned programmatic inventory, supply path efficiency, and distribution quality,” the study notes. 

The top 10 are: 

1. Hulu
2. Disney+
3. Max
4. ESPN
5. Spotify
6. Peacock TV
7. CNN
8. National Geographic
9. NBC
10. Fox

Legacy news organizations rank further down the list, including The New York Times (51), The Washington Post (56), USA Today (57) and The Wall Street Journal (61). 

Meanwhile, the top 500 digital publishers now account for 50% of advertising revenue on the open internet. 

Advertisers value these publishers for their focus on advertising quality, viewability, reach, decisioning power and supply path efficiency, The Trade Desk notes.