Maybe they watched too many dystopian movies like I Robot, or perhaps as an AdMonsters and Pubmatic study concluded, there are intrinsic qualities to the European ad markets that make it more difficult to invade the media buying space with real-time bidding ad exchanges. Econsultancy wraps up a few of these ideas in an attempt to make sense of them.

While the analysis identifies four probable factors…

• The omnipresent European market fragmentation
• Dearth of resources
• More privacy concerns
• Long-term contract lock-in

… the obvious missing factor is the fact that major U.S. publishers jumped into these waters first and appear to be in the process of being eaten by market sharks.

Regardless whether or not that market recalibration is deserved, and merely a correcting process for over-priced media, European publishers may be intelligent enough to wish to avoid that as long as they can.