Explorers

The Explorers section hosts ATDb's specialized navigation tools. A single network graph can't serve every research question, so each explorer is built around one specific data shape and one job-to-be-done.

What's available

• Agency Holdco Map (/explorers/agencies) — deterministic parent-child tree of the post-merger ad agency industry. Best for: sales reps mapping who owns what across WPP, Omnicom, Publicis, Dentsu, Havas, Stagwell, and IPG. Compare-mode supports up to four holdcos side-by-side; time-scrubber rewinds the org structure to any year via ?as_of=YYYY.
• AdTech Stack Atlas (/explorers/atlas) — tiled view of 9 canonical stack layers (DSPs, SSPs, DMPs/CDPs, ad servers, identity, measurement, creative, programmatic-adjacent, agency-tech) with the leading vendors visible at a glance. Click any layer to drill into its full vendor list, tier-grouped (S → D). Click any vendor card to open an inline detail panel with quick stats, summary, and top connections.
• M&A Timeline (/explorers/timeline) — scrubbable timeline of mergers, acquisitions, IPOs, rebrands, and shutdowns. Filter by event type, deal size, and year range.
• Geographic Vendor Map (/explorers/geo) — world map of AdTech vendor headquarters with regional concentration overlays.
• Ecosystem Graph (/explorers/graph) — force-directed network graph of every relationship in the AdTech ecosystem. Best for: open-ended exploration, finding non-obvious connections, n-hop discovery.

Atlas — drill-down and deep-linking

• Click any of the 9 layer cells on the Atlas grid to drill into that layer's full vendor list.
• Inside a layer, click a vendor card to open the right-side detail panel (or ?vendor=<slug> to deep-link directly).
• The panel shows: tier badge, operational status, headquarters, founded year, industry, a short summary, and the top connections (with a flag affordance per row — see below).
• Cmd-click (or Ctrl-click on Windows/Linux) on a vendor card opens its full company profile in a new tab without opening the panel.
• Close the panel via the X button (top-right of the panel) or press Escape. The ?vendor= URL parameter clears on close so deep-links can be shared cleanly.
• Share any Atlas state via the URL — ?layer=dsp opens the layer view, and ?layer=dsp&vendor=the-trade-desk opens the layer with The Trade Desk's detail panel already loaded.

Filters

Inside a layer, the Has CEO listed checkbox (next to the search box) filters the vendor list down to entities where ATDb knows the current CEO (via a ceo_of relationship in the database). Useful when you want to scope down to "live" companies a sales rep can actually pitch to or whose leadership ATDb has researched in depth. Toggling the filter syncs to the URL as ?has_ceo=1 — share-links round-trip the filter state.

When the filter is on, a counter next to the checkbox shows "X of Y matched" so you can see how much of the layer survives the filter.

Inline accuracy reporting (flag affordance)

Across all Explorers, individual relationship rows expose a small flag icon (visible on hover on desktop, always-visible on touch). Clicking it opens the “Report this relationship” modal pre-filled with the edge context. Use this when you spot a wrong parent-of, competitor-of, or integrates-with edge — admins triage these reports in the Content Review queue and update or reject the underlying data.

Start here — pick a question

The Explorers hub at /explorers opens with a "Start here" matrix that maps common questions directly to the right tool with the right initial state. If you know what you want to learn but not which explorer to use, scan that list first.

• "Who owns this agency?" → Holdco Map
• "What's in the AdTech stack?" → Atlas
• "When did this deal close?" → Timeline
• "Where is this vendor based?" → Geo
• "How does an ad dollar flow?" → Programmatic Flow
• "Show me how X connects to Y" → Ecosystem Graph

Picking the right explorer

Match your question to the data shape:

The Explorers hub at /explorers lists every available tool with a short description.