ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 describes the shifts from marketing in the mass media era to the contemporary media-marketing ecology. The period from the birth of the commercial internet in 1994 to the present ecosystem, is one in which a transformation from a dominant triad to a more complex sextet has occurred. We provide a mapping of the shift from a core triad (marketers, marketing agencies, media) to a sextet in which all the core remain, in expanded forms, but are joined by three novel and transforming elements, creators (extending beyond the intra-institutional-professional focus of the core to a professional-amateur spectrum), platforms, and (advertising technology) adtech. The sextet identifies key actor types, but the benefit of this mapping lies in exploring their dynamic interaction, including the changing relationships between media and marketing. This chapter provides an account of these transformations with sections on ‘Platforms and platformisation’ and ‘Adtech and programmatic’ and finishes with the ongoing changes (and interconnections across the sextet) occurring in latest phase of the digital advertising ecosystem with the ‘AI Umbrella’.
