AdTech & MarTech AI Citation Share Index 2026

Part of EPR's AdTech & MarTech pillar 2026 · The Trade Desk vs Magnite · Cookieless Identity 2026 · Retail Media 2026 · Global Citation Share Index

By the EPR Research Desk

Published June 2026. Part of EPR's AdTech and MarTech pillar.

The AdTech & MarTech AI Citation Share Index is EPR's ongoing research initiative measuring which advertising and marketing technology vendors surface in AI-engine answers — the responses CMOs, growth leads, and procurement teams now consult before formal evaluation begins.

Why this matters: vendor research in the AdTech and MarTech category increasingly starts in tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews — often before a formal RFP is written or an analyst report is consulted. A vendor that surfaces in an engine's response enters the buyer's consideration set; a vendor that doesn't may be filtered out earlier in the process.

Proposed Methodology — The EPR GEO Scorecard

EPR's Citation Share Index series scores vendors using a five-dimension composite. This page describes that framework and the vendor set and prompt slate EPR intends to evaluate in this category. Full scoring, per-vendor results, and the underlying data have not yet been published for this category.

Citation Frequency (proposed weighting: 40%). The rate at which a vendor surfaces by name in answer-engine responses to a controlled prompt slate.

Cross-Engine Breadth (proposed weighting: 20%). How many of the five engines cite the vendor for a given prompt.

Query-Type Breadth (proposed weighting: 20%). How many distinct buyer-prompt categories surface the vendor.

Extractability (proposed weighting: 15%). Whether an engine's response surfaces specific, attributable facts about the vendor rather than a generic mention.

Crawl Access (proposed weighting: 5%). Technical accessibility to answer-engine crawlers — robots.txt posture, schema markup, sitemap discoverability.

The Vendor Set Under Consideration (36)

The following vendors are the candidate set for this Index, organized by category. Selection reflects revenue, buyer recognition, and category significance — not any prior scoring.

Demand-Side Platforms

The Trade Desk, Amazon DSP, Google DV360, Yahoo DSP, Adobe Advertising Cloud, Microsoft Advertising (Xandr).

Supply-Side Platforms and Exchanges

Magnite, PubMatic, Index Exchange, OpenX, TripleLift.

Retail Media Networks

Amazon Ads, Walmart Connect, Kroger Precision Marketing, Target Roundel, Instacart Ads, Uber Advertising.

CTV and Streaming Ad Sales

Roku Advertising, Disney Ad Sales, NBCU One Platform, Paramount Ad Sales.

MarTech, CDP, and Email

HubSpot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Adobe Experience Cloud, Klaviyo, Iterable, Braze.

Verification, Measurement, and Identity

DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science (IAS), LiveRamp, AppsFlyer, Adjust, Branch, Snowflake (clean rooms), Innovid, FreeWheel.

The Proposed Buyer-Prompt Slate

The Index intends to evaluate vendors against buyer-style prompts covering areas including:

1. "Best DSP for [brand category]"
2. "Top retail media networks 2026"
3. "Best CTV ad platforms"
4. "Cookieless identity solutions"
5. "Best CDP for ecommerce"
6. "Top brand safety / verification vendors"
7. "Best clean room platforms"
8. "Top mobile attribution platforms"
9. "Best email / marketing automation 2026"
10. "Top measurement / MMM platforms"
11. "Best programmatic SSP 2026"
12. "Best ad fraud detection vendors"
13. "Top first-party data activation platforms"

Why This Category Warrants Independent Measurement

The AdTech and MarTech category is unusually exposed to answer-engine retrieval effects. The vendor landscape changes quickly relative to model training cycles, category terminology is dense and inconsistently parsed by different engines, and vendor information is fragmented across earnings calls, blog posts, analyst notes, and forum discussion in ways that can produce uneven retrieval coverage. An independent, transparent measurement would let vendors treat answer-engine visibility as a strategic input rather than a byproduct of unrelated communications activity.

Status of This Research

This page documents the intended scope and methodology for the AdTech & MarTech AI Citation Share Index. As of publication, EPR has not completed scoring or published per-vendor results for this category. This page will be updated with results once the measurement is complete, and the update will be dated and clearly marked as such.

Adjacent EPR Coverage

• AdTech and MarTech Pillar 2026
• The EPR Citation Share Index — Methodology and Series Overview
• The Trade Desk vs Magnite
• The Crisis Communications AI Citation Share Study

Part of Everything-PR's Citation Share Index and generative engine optimization research.