Skip to content
ATDbbeta

Getting Started

What is ATDb?

The AdTech Database (ATDb) is a comprehensive directory of the advertising technology ecosystem — think of it as "IMDb for AdTech." ATDb catalogs companies, people, deals, and news across the industry, making it easy to research the landscape, track competitors, and stay informed.

What You'll Find

  • Companies — detailed profiles of AdTech companies with business models, funding, features, and competitive positioning
  • People — industry professionals and their roles across companies
  • Deals & Moves — acquisitions, funding rounds, partnerships, IPOs, and leadership changes
  • News — curated articles from across the industry
  • Insights — AI-generated weekly analysis of trends and notable developments
  • Ecosystem Graph — visual map of how companies and people are connected
  • Explorers — specialized maps and timelines, such as the agency holdco map and the M&A timeline
  • Learn — sourced explainers for AdTech terms and laws

Creating an Account

  1. Visit the registration page at /register
  2. Enter your email address and choose a password
  3. Complete the CAPTCHA verification
  4. Check your email for a confirmation link
  5. Click the link to verify your account

Beta Access

ATDb is currently in private beta. To edit pages, add companies and use Ask ATDb, you'll need a beta invite code:

  1. Get an invite code from an existing member or the ATDb team
  2. Visit /join and enter your code (it looks like ATDB-XXXXXXXX; older codes have 4 characters after the dash)
  3. Beta features are available right away

Without beta access, you can still browse and search the entire database freely. You can also join the waitlist on the Beta page to be notified when more spots open.

Welcome

Right after you confirm your email, a short welcome asks three optional questions: what brings you to ATDb, which companies you'd like to follow, and how you heard about us. The companies you pick go straight onto your watchlist. You can skip it and change everything later in Settings.

Beta Badges

  • Founding Contributor — permanent badge for Wave 1 beta members. Displayed on your contributor profile and in the Founders page.
  • Early Adopter — permanent badge for Wave 2 beta members.

Sharing Invite Codes

Wave 1 (Founding Contributor) members receive 3 invite codes to share with colleagues. Find your codes in Settings under "Your Invite Codes." Each code is single-use and opens a Wave 2 (Early Adopter) spot.

Navigation

Global Header

The header appears on every page with:

  • ATDb logo — click to return to the homepage. The small beta pill next to it opens the Beta page.
  • Companies, People, Deals & Moves, News — the main directories
  • Explore menu — Explorers, Categories, Compare, Evolution, Weekly insights, and Learn
  • Ask ATDb — natural language Q&A powered by AI
  • Search (magnifier icon) — opens the full search page
  • Log in / Sign up free, or your user menu once you're signed in (watchlist, contributions, settings, Help Center)

On a phone, these all live behind the menu button.

Homepage

The homepage is a live view of the AdTech ecosystem:

  • Search bar with a few example searches, next to an interactive map of the landscape you can filter by segment
  • What's moving — recent deals and moves, with the biggest ones first
  • This Week in AdTech — the latest AI-generated weekly insight
  • Trending now — most-mentioned companies in the last 30 days
  • Latest news — curated industry articles
  • Six degrees of AdTech — pick two companies and see how they connect
  • Power players — the most-connected companies, with a link to open the graph
  • Browse by category — quick links to industry segments

Directory Pages

Browse entities from the main directories:

  • /companies — all companies, opening on the most prominent first. Filter by category, tier, region, or founding decade, sort (Most prominent, A-Z, Newest, Recently Updated), switch the Operating only toggle to hide defunct, rebranded, and merged companies, and flip between grid and list views. You can also browse by type or location.
  • /people — industry professionals
  • /events — Deals & Moves: acquisitions, funding, IPOs, and other moves
  • /news — curated industry articles

Each directory supports pagination (24 items per page), search, and sorting.

Other Pages

  • /insights — weekly AI analysis and category spotlights
  • /graph — interactive ecosystem visualization (how to use it)
  • /explorers — specialized maps and timelines (overview)
  • /compare — put up to three records side by side
  • /evolution — who became who: acquired, rebranded, merged, and shut-down companies with their successors
  • /learn — sourced explainers for AdTech terms and laws
  • /contributors — community leaderboard
  • /activity — Recent Activity: the latest sourced moves, plus the newest companies we've mapped
  • /categories — browse all industry categories

Search

Quick Search

Use the search box on the homepage, or the magnifier icon in the header, to find any entity by name. Results appear across all types (companies, people, deals & moves, news).

Full Search

The dedicated search page (/search) offers advanced filtering:

  • Type filter — narrow results to companies, people, deals & moves, or news
  • Status filter — show operating companies only (hides defunct, rebranded, and merged ones)
  • Category filter — limit to specific industry segments
  • Activity filter — show only entities updated in the last 7, 30, or 90 days

Search uses full-text matching with fuzzy results, so partial names and slight misspellings still return relevant results.

Ask ATDb

The Ask feature (/ask) lets you ask natural-language questions about the AdTech ecosystem:

  • "Which DSPs are growing fastest?"
  • "Who are the major players in retail media?"
  • "What acquisitions happened in programmatic this year?"

Answers are grounded in ATDb data with citations linking to specific entity profiles. Company profiles also have an Ask ATDb about this shortcut.

Data Freshness

ATDb's data is kept current by a mix of community contributions and automated agents:

  • M&A scan — twice a day, an automated agent reads dozens of AdTech RSS feeds, identifies acquisition / merger / IPO / shutdown signals, and adds high-confidence multi-source findings either directly to the timeline or sends them to the editors for review.
  • Periodic enrichment — companies are refreshed automatically when their data gets old. The most influential companies (S tier) are refreshed about every month, A tier about every two months, B tier about every three months, and the rest about twice a year, to keep descriptions and metadata in sync with their public sources.
  • Manual research ingest — for historical events that pre-date our RSS coverage (e.g., 2007-era acquisitions), we periodically run cross-engine research workflows to backfill the timeline.

If you notice outdated, missing, or wrong data on any entity — particularly on a fast-moving area like pending M&A — please use Spotted an error? at the bottom of the page, flag it with Report (in the ... menu on the affected page when you're signed in), or email admin@theatdb.com. Every report is reviewed by an admin before anything changes.