Adtech

Adtech is the collective term for the software, platforms, and data infrastructure that powers digital advertising — the systems that decide which ad you see, when you see it, how much the advertiser paid, and whether it "worked." It encompasses real-time bidding exchanges, demand-side platforms (DSPs), supply-side platforms (SSPs), data management platforms (DMPs), and the tracking infrastructure that measures everything.

What it means

When you visit a website with display ads, an automated auction happens in milliseconds — dozens of companies bid on the right to serve you an ad based on your behavioral profile, demographic data, and browsing history. Google and Meta dominate this market, capturing the majority of global digital ad spending. The infrastructure requires industrial-scale surveillance: tracking cookies, device fingerprinting, cross-site data sharing, and behavioral profiling at population scale.

Adtech is the plumbing of surveillance capitalism. Without it, the behavioral advertising model that funds most of the free internet would collapse.

How it works on Gab

Gab participates in the standard adtech ecosystem through Gab Ads — including third-party ads, programmatic inventory, retargeting, and measurement. Advertisers manage campaigns at grow.gab.com. Gab's differentiation is free-speech moderation and not selling data to brokers, not the absence of advertising technology.

Related terms

Adtech depends on tracking pixels, ad retargeting, third-party cookies, and data brokers. It is the core mechanism of surveillance capitalism.