Slop, the open internet, agentic bits and bobs

Crawler was briefly alarmed over the weekend to learn — via AdTechGod’s new newsletter, The Refresh — that “The Open Web Hits a Breaking Point.” For a moment, Crawler feared she was about to be cut off from her favorite ad tech gossip sites, an outlook too grim to contemplate.

Crawler’s distress levels had not been this high since Mr. Crawler broached the idea of an en suite bathroom. Crawler has no desire to rest her head within a few feet of Mr. Crawler “doing his business” in the wee small hours. He could be in a soundproof bunker five miles from here, and it still wouldn’t be far enough.

Happily, it turns out the sky over the open internet is, in fact, not falling. Reading on, the issue appears to be “programmatic complexity and hidden fees are pushing agencies to demand stronger transparency from SSPs.”

Call Crawler naive — you wouldn’t be the first — but this sounds very much like good news for the open internet. And not for nothing, but Crawler suspects Mike O’Sullivan and the people at Sincera might have a thing or two to say about how we arrived here.

Elsewhere, AdWeek and AdExchanger worked themselves into a lather as The Trade Desk reorganized some parts of its company, which includes hundreds hired this year, but which also saw “less than 1 percent of total staff” leave the company. Crawler wonders why neither pub has bothered to report on much more widespread layoffs (if Crawler’s LinkedIn feed was anything to go by) at Amazon Ads a few weeks ago.

Meanwhile, Ad Age reported on the five biggest ad tech moments of 2025. Number one on the hit list was The Trade Desk for “being in the trenches during all the big moments,” most notably how the company relates to SSPs. Again, call Crawler naive, but something tells me that when we look back on the most pivotal moments of 2025, the Department of Justice reshaping the industry with its landmark win vs. Google might just take the cake.

There was also a lot of heavy breathing in the trades this week about the coming of the agentic era. Indeed, one source confidently announced the industry is “exiting a programmatic era,” with MCPs replacing APIs — raising the ante yet again on ad tech three-letter acronyms. It all sounds terribly exciting, even though what actually happened is somewhat less clear.

Finally, Crawler was tickled to bits this week to learn that Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2025 is “slop.” This, per the new definition, is “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” Crawler can assure her legions of readers that her content will always be slop-free. Quality, however, will always be for you to judge.

Crawler is a satirical take on the biggest ad tech news of the week. It’s penned by editors of The Current, which is owned by The Trade Desk. Have your own take? Reach us at [email protected].