2025 really is shaping up to be the year of the SSP.
Continuing that trend, Media.net, an SSP and contextual advertising company, has announced a partnership with Claritas, a marketing data and analytics company, to drive greater performance on the sell-side through a new solution called ELEVATE.
According to the company’s press release, ELEVATE is “the first sell-side measurement, attribution, and optimization solution for the open web.” Basically, ELEVATE marries Media.net’s data—think signals from publisher inventory, real-time context, supply path details, ad environment—with Claritas’ deterministic audience data built on its proprietary ID graph, AND its attribution tech, which they say is powered by AI and machine learning.
What makes this unique is that measurement and optimization have traditionally lived on the buy-side. ELEVATE sets a new precedent by offering these capabilities natively in an SSP.
Why This Matters:
Over the last few years, SSPs have been evolving and innovating in some pretty interesting ways. Last year, for example, we saw the rise of programmatic curation which carried over into 2025. That trend helped to position SSPs as more than “just” an access point to inventory. Now, they’re re-framing themselves, taking on a more active role in providing data and targeting capabilities. This creates new opportunities to differentiate, not just among SSPs, but among other media-buying platforms.
With ELEVATE, Media.net continues this trend of curation and SSP empowerment, albeit with different datasets and tools. They’re leveraging their contextual and SSP data with Claritas’ audience data, plus its AI attribution, to curate inventory based on those signals and better support performance.
Experts React:
We asked U of Digital’s founder, Shiv Gupta, for his take on the Media.net and Claritas partnership, and he said it highlights just how SSPs are evolving.
According to Gupta, “why is an SSP hooking up with a measurement solution?” It’s because “they want to go directly to buyers,” which can also benefit them via curation fees, says Gupta. He added that this broader trend likely puts pressure on buy-side platforms as SSPs take on more functions.
To that point, in its press release, Media.net says ELEVATE addresses “long-standing programmatic inefficiencies,” such as high-performing inventory being overlooked, cookieless traffic being deprioritized, and algos favoring scale over quality. The company says ELEVATE tries to solve these issues by giving buyers more visibility into supply, restoring access to cookieless audiences through contextual (Media.net) and alternative IDs (Claritas), and prioritizing quality over volume.
Our Take:
Performance TV/CTV is up there as the top trend for 2025, but it’s also proving to be the year of the SSP. The role of SSPs continues to shift beyond pipes. SSPs, like Media.net, are increasingly positioning themselves as data-rich, decisioning platforms that help shape campaigns upstream either through curation, targeting, or having measurement directly in the supply path. We are seeing the rise of the “full-stack” SSP, perhaps.
Media.net seems to be leaning into that change. This year, the company has announced a partnership with Symitri to integrate their “real-time data cleanroom” into its SSP and an integration with Experian to make its audiences data available “to create and curate premium supply with precise targeting.” This all seems to underscore how SSPs are pushing into data and other areas to allow for “smarter” media-buying overall.
AdTechRadar is owned by Chris Harihar, who leads PR at Mod Op. Media.net is a Mod Op client.
