In an advertising landscape defined by fragmentation, siloed workflows, and platform sprawl, Frost & Sullivan has named Basis its 2025 Customer Value Leader for the global demand-side platform (DSP) market—an award reserved for vendors who don’t just move with the industry but help rewrite its rules. The consulting firm argues that Basis’ unified, AI-driven platform tackles one of modern advertising’s biggest headaches: the chaos created when marketers must stitch together CTV, DOOH, social, search, display, audio, and more without a single pane of glass.

The award underscores a trend that has been bubbling for years but is now impossible to ignore: Advertisers are tired of juggling point solutions. They want orchestration. They want automation. They want transparency. And critically—they want all of that without losing performance.

Frost & Sullivan’s full analysis is available via Basis, but the summary is clear: the company’s platform and operating philosophy represent a meaningful shift in how DSPs are expected to serve brands and agencies in a multi-channel world.

DSPs Are Being Forced to Grow Up—and Fast

The DSP market didn’t start out fragmented; it became fragmented. As new channels emerged—CTV, streaming audio, in-game ads, DOOH—the tech stack ballooned. Instead of unifying, most vendors built add-ons and extensions, leaving buyers to navigate a maze of interfaces, workflows, and attribution blind spots.

Frost & Sullivan doesn’t mince words in its report:

“It is no longer sufficient for a DSP to excel in a single channel. Brands and agencies now demand a single, cohesive interface to orchestrate, measure, and optimize cross-channel and cross-device campaigns harmoniously.”

This is the problem Basis claims to have solved. While many DSPs are busy playing channel catch-up, Basis has spent years building (and rebuilding) an operating system that automates everything from planning and media buying to reconciliation, invoices, reporting, and analytics.

The result: a workflow that resembles a true full-lifecycle advertising platform rather than a patchwork of vendors strapped together with spreadsheets.

Why Frost & Sullivan Picked Basis

To win Frost & Sullivan’s Customer Value Leadership award, companies must excel not only in product innovation but also in measurable customer success, ROI, and long-term partnership value. Basis checked boxes across all criteria—and then some.

Three themes stood out:

1. A Unified, Modular Media Environment

Basis brings planning, execution, optimization, financial operations, and analytics under one roof. No hopping between ad servers, billing systems, DSPs, social dashboards, and spreadsheets.

This centralization matters more in 2025 than ever. As marketers adopt signal diversity strategies (post-cookie), first-party data enrichment, and advanced audience modeling, the ability to manage campaigns across the full journey becomes a competitive advantage.

2. AI That Thinks in Customer Context

Not all AI in ad tech is created equal. Many platforms stitch in AI tactically—an optimization toggle here, an automated bid model there.

Basis takes a different tack. According to Frost & Sullivan, the platform analyzes over 30 brand-level targeting parameters every six hours, re-optimizing against models trained on each client's business.

That means the machine isn’t just predicting who will click—it’s evaluating who drives value.

3. A Customer Philosophy Built for Longevity

One of the most overlooked frustrations among enterprise advertisers is losing historical campaign intelligence when switching agencies or tools. Basis aims to solve this by allowing customers to own their full tech stack and their media data outright.

This gives marketers control over long-term learnings—critical for brands that juggle multiple agencies or rely on in-house teams.

Inside Basis' Platform: What Makes It Different

Basis markets itself as the industry's leading advertising automation platform, and in this context “automation” isn’t shorthand for bidding algorithms. It’s a structural overhaul of the digital advertising supply chain.

Planning & Media Activation in One Place

Marketers can build media plans—across programmatic, direct, search, and social—without leaving the platform. The handoff from plan to execution happens instantly, killing the spreadsheet bottleneck that plagues agencies everywhere.

Intelligent Targeting & Optimization

Basis' AI engine pulls from:

• proprietary optimization models

• 30+ real-time targeting dimensions

• brand-specific performance signals

• cross-channel device and audience mapping

Frost & Sullivan highlighted that this cadence of recalibration (every six hours) is unusually aggressive compared to traditional DSP cycles.

Financial Actualization & Reconciliation

This is the part no marketer loves but every CFO obsesses over. Basis automates invoice matching, reconciliation, vendor payments, and the financial chain that typically eats up weeks of manual labor.

Analytics & Transparency

All campaign data—across channels, formats, and teams—lives in one interoperable environment, avoiding the disconnected dashboards that plague most operations.

Customer Partnerships as a Strategic Pillar

One of Frost & Sullivan’s strongest compliments centers around Basis’ service model.

Because advertisers own their historical media data, the platform isn’t a lock-in tool—it’s a partner enabler. Marketers can switch agencies, build hybrid teams, or bring operations in-house without losing institutional knowledge.

This philosophy is one reason Basis has maintained strong renewals and deep multi-year enterprise relationships in an industry notorious for churn.

“Automation is about empowering people to work more effectively by simplifying and streamlining repetitive and complex tasks,” said Grace Briscoe, EVP of client development at Basis. “Frost & Sullivan’s recognition… underscores the value we have been delivering to marketers for more than two decades.”

Programmatic’s Broader Shift: The Market Wants Fewer Silos, More Intelligence

Basis' win reflects a macro shift happening across the advertising ecosystem:

1. The Consolidation Wave Is Accelerating

Agencies and brands are replacing six or seven-point tools with unified platforms. Not because consolidation is trendy—but because operational drag kills ROI.

2. AI Is Becoming the Differentiator Among DSPs

Bid shading and pacing algorithms used to be the bragging point. Now it’s enterprise-grade intelligence capable of analyzing:

• brand-specific outcomes

• signal decay

• creative impact

• multi-touch attribution

• real-time contextual trends

DSPs that can’t evolve beyond tactical AI are already falling behind.

3. Transparency Is No Longer Optional

The market has grown intolerant of black-box AI, opaque fees, and limited data portability. Basis’ open, customer-owned data model aligns directly with this trend.

4. Cross-Channel Integration Is the New Table Stakes

A DSP limited to programmatic is as outdated as a CRM that only stores email addresses. Brands want search, social, display, audio, DOOH, CTV, and direct buys in one orchestrate-and-optimize environment.

What This Recognition Means for the DSP Market

Frost & Sullivan’s award doesn’t just validate Basis; it spotlights a broader redefinition of what a DSP must be in 2025 and beyond.

Basis Raises the Bar for Competitors

Legacy DSPs now face pressure to:

• unify workflows

• invest in brand-specific AI

• deliver transparent data models

• simplify financial operations

• prioritize customer ownership over vendor lock-in

Most will need substantial rebuilding to catch up.

Agencies Gain Leverage

Agencies frustrated with tool fragmentation may see Basis as an opportunity to modernize operations without adding more software—and without sacrificing performance.

Brands Get a Blueprint for Modern Ad Ops

Enterprise advertisers looking to cut inefficiencies (and headcount bloat) may see Basis as a template for how to run leaner, smarter media organizations.

The Bottom Line

Frost & Sullivan’s 2025 Customer Value Leadership award places Basis at the center of the conversation about the future of DSPs—one where automation, transparency, and unified operations matter more than bid mechanics or channel bragging rights.

By centralizing planning, activation, optimization, financial workflows, and analytics in one AI-powered environment, Basis isn’t simply offering a DSP. It’s selling an operating system for modern advertising—one built to survive the next decade of channel proliferation, signal loss, and measurement disruption.

For a market desperate for simplification and intelligence, Basis’ approach is increasingly hard to ignore.

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