Making sense of the allegations and defenses in the Colossus ad tech controversy

In ad tech, nothing is ever straightforward – not even the perennial snafus. What seemed like a clear case of an ad tech vendor being shady is actually a lot more layered. The ad tech vendor in question is the Colossus supply-side platform owned by Digital Holdings Group. 

According to ad transparency startup Adalytics, there were repeated instances of user IDs being misrepresented in its programmatic marketplace. Moreover, the altered ID information consistently mimicked cookie IDs that had attracted high bids from The Trade Desk, the DSP utilized by Adalytics in their analysis.

The implication being that this pattern of behavior looks a lot like fraud. 

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