In the face of the digital ad duopoly, many rival publishers in parts of Europe and South America have, over the last three years, began begun putting aside their differences.

In search of bigger audience scale and more user detail, they have began pooling audience ad data, in a bid to impress ad buyers who are getting high on Facebook and Google’s unrivalled offering.

In the US, by contrast, such cooperation has been relatively absent.

Until now. 24/7 RealMedia founder and WPP executive David J. Moore just became CEO of BritePool, an off-shoot of Sonobi which aims to bring to market an identity graph system for the open web.

“The problem for the industry outside the wall of gardens has been that last year in North America 91% of the increase in digital spending, 2018 over 2017, went to Facebook, Google, and Amazon,” says Moore in this video interview with Beet.TV.

“Now, that’s because their have a more effective platform than the rest of the ecosystem. Arguably, they deserve that much money. The key to the future is cooperation in the open web outside of those walled gardens.”

Many tech vendors in the ecosystem, of course, now offer identity graph systems, claiming to bring together user data from disparate sources.

Moore wants publishers to get involved.

“In discussing my new venture with a number of publishers overall, I’ve never seen more desire for cooperation in the history of my time in this industry than I find today,” he says.

“This a call to action for all publishers to work together to share identities with one another so that we, too, can create an ecosystem that is every bit as effective as those as the walled gardens.

“It’s the way of the future and if we don’t work together here, the future for content and publishers in the way that they have operated in the past is not too bright.”

By Robert Andrews on    @robertandrews