The Open Garden Framework Explained

Sponsored by AI Digital

Marketers are being pulled in more directions than ever before. Walled gardens are consolidating power, the media landscape is fragmenting at speed, and emerging technologies—from AI-driven buying to new identity solutions—are reshaping the rules faster than teams can rewrite their playbooks. In this environment, clinging to a single platform or closed ecosystem isn't just limiting—it's a strategic liability. The Open Garden Framework offers a way forward.

The Ad Tech Explained team developed this guide in partnership with AI Digital to unpack the Open Garden Framework—what it is, why it's essential in today's landscape, and how brands can put it into practice.

Let’s start with the basics: What is the Open Garden Framework?

AI Digital built the Open Garden Framework on a simple conviction: No single platform should own your strategy. It's a KPI-first approach to programmatic planning, activation, and measurement—one that treats the entire ecosystem as available inventory and selects the best combination of technology, data, and supply for each objective. The brand's goals lead. Everything else follows.

To be clear, the Open Garden is not a DSP, a buying platform, or a proprietary system. It's an operating principle that strips away the forced constraints of minimum spends, platform dependencies, and vendor bias. Every decision, from supply path optimization to audience strategy to cross-channel measurement, is made for one reason: because it's the best way to deliver against the business outcome.

In short, Open Garden is the modern philosophy of programmatic, free from the limitations of walled gardens and powered by the freedom to use the best-in-class technology, data, and inventory across the entire digital ecosystem.

What has changed within the marketing ecosystem that requires a new approach to “business as usual”?

For years, programmatic felt simpler because much of the inventory and audience access could be reached through a small set of platforms. That world is gone. Today, major platforms are closed ecosystems with their own rules and incentives, and cross-channel measurement is harder because data and signals are increasingly siloed or restricted.

At the same time, retail media has exploded into many networks with different logic and reporting. CTV, mobile apps, and the open web often require different buying paths. Ultimately, it can take five to seven tools just to reach consumers where they actually spend time.

In general: Control has consolidated, supply can become commoditized, signals can be unreliable, and intermediaries can skew the bidstream in their favor. The result is less visibility and governance across platforms, less flexibility, and rising operational overhead. Walled gardens still have value, but they can’t be the only answer anymore.

How does the Open Garden Framework solve modern marketing challenges?

Open Garden restores a critical advantage in a fragmented ecosystem: choice. Rather than letting a platform dictate strategy through lock-ins, minimums, or default settings, the approach ensures brand KPIs determine the tech stack and the plan.

Because it operates across channels, DSPs, retail networks, and CTV environments, it helps brands stay resilient when any single platform changes rules, restricts signals, or shifts incentives. It also enables AI-driven planning and optimization to work across the full media mix, not just inside one closed environment.

The practical effect is a simpler operating logic for complex times: Unify around the business goal, then select the best partners and paths to deliver it, with governance and measurement designed to compare performance across the ecosystem.

What are the benefits of the Open Garden Framework for brands and agencies?

The Open Garden Framework, when put into action, creates multiple tangible advantages:

• Cross-platform access: Reach all relevant channels, inventory sources, and data partners without political or commercial constraints.

• Freedom to choose the best: Select partners based on what’s best for the campaign, not what a single platform makes easiest.

• KPI-led decisioning: Start with the business objective and build everything else around it, not the reverse.

• Resilience in a fragmented landscape: Reduce dependence on any one ecosystem, protecting strategy from platform disruption.

• AI-accelerated strategy and execution: Apply AI across planning, supply curation, optimization, and analytics to automate complexity and spot better paths faster.

• Better economics: Reduce overhead and inefficiency, improving outcome per dollar while helping agencies avoid the heavy burden of stitching together fragmented programmatic.

Let’s talk about how AI Digital plans to put the Open Garden Framework into practice. What’s on the horizon?

AI Digital’s vision is an all-in-one AI marketing intelligence platform that puts the Open Garden Framework into motion by connecting research, planning, optimization, and reporting in one place, with no added platform cost. The right platform will be designed to give teams a unified workflow: understand the market and audience, build a cross-channel plan, activate and optimize, then prove impact.

Marketers need a solution that centralizes research and intelligence (audience segments, audience personas, inventory evaluation, competitive analysis). It should support strategic planning with AI-assisted media planning, forecasting, and cookieless targeting workflows. And it should tie in optimization and reporting, including campaign analytics, media mix modeling, brand lift, and path-to-conversion views so teams can move beyond vanity metrics and connect media decisions to real outcomes.

That’s what modern marketers are going to need to operate in today’s fragmented reality, and that’s what we’re building at AI Digital today.

About AI Digital

AI Digital is a AI-native media consultancy and innovation partner powered by an Open Garden Framework. Founded in 2018, AI Digital’s global team of 450 specialists connects clients to audiences through a unique blend of human expertise and advanced technology, delivering unbiased, AI-enhanced media solutions for brands and agencies. The company partners with all major advertising platforms to deliver measurable results aligned with clients’ business objectives and brand KPIs.