LONDON — In what is beginning to look like a season of exits for video ad-tech startups, addressable TV specialist INVIDI was last month acquired by AT&T, DISH and WPP.
The 16-year-old company has come in to its own of late, by helping advertisers serve household-targeted ads in to TV streams in the two minutes per hour of programming available to MVPDs, as well as gaining traction overseas.
But why did ad agency holding group WPP buy a stake in the company? Irwin Gotlieb, chairman of WPP’s leading GroupM, tells Beet.TV in this video interview.
“We entered in to INVIDI in the first place not because we wanted to control addressability, but we wanted to be inside the tent and we wanted to have influence on how the ecosystem involves,” he says.
“We never had any intentions of keeping our competitors out or of making anything exclusive to GroupM. We just wanted to be there at the table when the ecosystem was formed, and we wanted to ensure that that ecosystem serves the best interest of our clients.
“We retained our position in iNVIDI for exactly the same reasons.”
We spoke with Gotlieb at the Future of TV Advertising Forum in London. Beet.TV’s coverage is presented by the 605. For other videos from the series, please visit this page.
