The fall of our "digital Rome"

The Google antitrust ruling 🎁🔗 will reshape digital advertising. But what would breaking apart Google's ad tech business actually mean for publishers?

An intriguing perspective from ad ops executive whether you find yourself nodding along or not:

What happens next? We rebuild. But the rebuild is going to be messy. The biggest risk isn’t just lost revenue; it’s increased costs, increased complexity and lost efficiency. Higher barriers for new publishers. That’s the part that will hit the hardest.

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Big publishers will be fine. They have the scale. They have the leverage. They already work directly with DSPs and have tech stacks with built-in flexibility.

But small pubs? The ones serving real communities, telling niche stories, entertaining passionate audiences? They’re the ones who might get left behind.

That he framed by first positioning Google as our digital Rome:

Google didn’t invent the internet, just like Rome didn’t invent roads. But they built a system that connected everything. They made it easier for creators, storytellers, entertainers, journalists and niche publishers to enter the space and survive—sometimes even thrive—on their own terms.