Five years ago this week… Luxembourg-based media firm RTL Group underwent a long-awaited facelift, featuring a major ad technology overhaul. It took RTL years to put together a team worthy of overseeing its ad tech clout, which included the acquisitions of US ad-serving platform SpotX, programmatic ad sales platform Smartclip, and server-side ad insertion vendor Yospace. The RTL Deutschland division was put in charge of all advanced advertising technology across Europe, bundled under the Smartclip brand, with the exception of the UK. It said SpotX and Smartclip would continue to deliver technology to European clients, and RTL planned to build an open ad tech development unit based around Smartclip, tailored for the needs of European broadcasters and streaming services. In 2021, RTL sold SpotX to sell-side…