LONDON, UK — What will the TV commercial break look like in five years?
If James Wilhite gets his way, it will include more innovative formats delivered thanks to ad server-side technology.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Wilhite, Head of Product, Publica, explains how he thinks the traditional commercial break could soon be re-invented.
New-look break
Speaking with me at Beet.TV’s London summit in December, Wilhite said streaming TV services could take a leaf out of linear’s new playbook.
“If you look at what they’re doing on social platforms right now, it’s not a video ad break, but the ads are something useful to the user and I’ll stop scrolling and I’ll watch an ad because it’s something that I’m interested in that I’ve never seen before,” he said. “We have that ability to do that in connected television – to me, it’s a pretty big change that can happen.
“You can still have the three-ads-in-a-break, the five-ads-in-a-break, and still have that traditional break.
“But I think we’re going see a lot more of the picture-in-picture, the side-by-sides, these different formats that are innovative that are already happening in traditional linear that we’re not seeing in streaming today.”
Server-side tricks
Publica is a connected TV ad-serving company.
It employs server-side ad insertion, as oppose to playing out ads from client devices themselves.
It built its technology with header bidding from the start. That is the technology that lets publishers entertain bids from multiple demand sources simultaneously, rather than in a “waterfall” fashion, thereby reaping a better yield from a larger auction.
In 2021, Publica was acquired by IAS, with Wilhite saying the subsequent integration has been “great”, allowing Publica to “stay separate and equal”.
Four Reasons Why IAS Is Buying Publica: IAS CEO Utzschneider
At your service
Wilhite says ad server technology can guarantee deduplication of ad exposures. “If we got that across the entire ecosystem, we wouldn’t have as many frustrated users that are using CTV today,” he says.
Still, not all ad servers are equal. some have emerged into streaming TV and video, others – like Publica – started there first. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wilhite thinks his company has a unique advantage.
“You can tell a lot of the time when a platform started out as desktop-first or mobile-first, because they aren’t thinking about how to maximise that podded break, the ad break itself, making sure that everything is de-duplicated, maximising on CPM per second instead of just a flat CPM,” he told me.
“These are the things that we’re trying to teach the industry. At the end of the day, a rising tide raises all ships and, and we want to help the CTV industry succeed.”
You’re watching “Looking Ahead: TV in Europe 2025” a Beet.TV Leadership Summit presented by Magnite & Publica, in partnership with egta. All videos were filmed on-site at our event at London’s Soho Hotel. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
