After buying and launching new products and services last year, AT&T’s Xandr ad-tech unit plans to more tightly tie everything together in 2020
The division is focused on facilitating premium video and advanced TV ad sales, and is a combination of a variety of acquisitions and launches. Most recently, Xandr acquired clypd late last year.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Xandr head of strategy and corporate development Lauren Wetzel says that, in 2020, the division wants to more closely serve WarnerMedia, the media division of their mutual owner, AT&T.
2019
“(2019 was) a building year. We fully integrated AppNexus in 2019, we relaunched our Invest platform, we relaunched our Monetize platform and we unveiled a marketplace so that it’s not about just our owned assets, but also bringing in premium publishers.
2020
“In 2020, it’s going to be an acceleration year with that. CTV (connected TV) is going to take off in 2020 even more than it has. What you’ll see from Xandr is a more integrated partnership with WarnerMedia. You’re going to continue to see us unifying our platforms and ensuring that it’s about buying and selling across all channels of premium video … linear television and data-driven linear and addressable TV.
Future trends
Wetzel is putting the industry on notice to expect a lot of change, especially around TV ad formats. Like Hulu did last year, Xandr just announced a “pause ad”, which shows ad content when a viewer pauses playback of a show.
Wetzel expects innovation around AVOD, ad-supported video-on-demand services, which are seeing new energy after a few years of industry preoccupation with subscription video.
“As CTV continues to explode in 2020, I think the industry is going to really have to establish those standards so it makes it easier for CTV to be a part of the marketing mix,” she adds.
Lauren Wetzel will be speaking at the Beet Retreat in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on February 5 to 7, 2020.
