LONDON, UK — At the turn of another year, 2023 is on the horizon.
But what do the next 12 months hold in a space which has already seen so much innovation?
In this fireside with Beet.TV’s Jon Watts, Sean Buckley, Chief Revenue Officer, Magnite, explains what developments are most exciting.
Personalization taking off
Buckley says 2022 was the first year that addressable, biddable inventory, but in a private marketplace, became a full reality in streaming TV, creating the “opportunity for a whole new host of advertisers where perhaps national television was just not economical”.
It’s a trend he sees continuing next year, bringing new targeting capabilities to new kinds of TV ad buyers.
Buckley says it could be: “A buyer who’s looking for a user in a specific geography, like a specific set of zip codes or in a certain state, a small- or medium-sized enterprise alongside perhaps a buyer or buyers who are present in the national TV marketplace and are sort of moving spend into this streaming ecosystem.”
He sees personalization taking off, including the ability to truncate an ad break for viewers new to a show.
“And then perhaps evolving that over time as they get more comfortable with the programming,” he says. “We think that items like that present huge opportunity and are unique to streaming in terms of what the consumer experience can be like.”
Comfort for programmatic
Buckley and Watts say programmatic technology has been slower to roll out with European broadcasters, whilst US providers in 2022 began adopting the technique with gusto.
That is something most people put down to overcoming programmatic’s historical associations. When the tech first rolled out, it was used to sell remnant inventory in open auctions.
That is like kryptonite to the TV business, where broadcasters want to retain more control over the experience and the buyers. So ad-tech suppliers have worked hard to extend various kinds of private marketplace into TV ad software, and to recognise the need for guard rails that guarantee the experience remains familiar.
Programmatic and direct
Buckley understands why broadcasters are “cautious” to transitioning to programmatic. But he says programmatic does not have to be such a big shift.
“Programmatic and direct sales are not at odds,” he says. “They’re not mutually exclusive, even though they’re phrased that way in the industry sometimes. With a sizeable sales team, those teams can go out and use programmatic as a transaction model for direct relationships with buyers.
“We certainly see programmatic for connected TV and television more broadly being constructed entirely differently – different workflows, different ways of interacting, it’s a really different experience than other areas of digital media. And it’s tailor-built for the way the television business or connected TV, more specifically, operates.”
Partner consolidation
One thing is for sure – in 2023, broadcasters won’t want to work with a long list of tech suppliers in order to make headway in this space.
“The buy side is being more and more vocal about their interest in consolidating the partners in the space,” says Magnite’s Buckley. “I don’t think they’re super excited about working with 15 or 20 distinct downstream technology partners.
“They want to consolidate that list down to far fewer and then go deeper with those partners. And so we’re seeing that as a major trend.
“It’s certainly not inexpensive to build your own technology from the ground up, wire to wire. There may be certain components of the technology that it makes sense to develop and manage in-house, but to do it end to end in my view doesn’t make a lot of sense.
“And I think we’re headed into an economic environment where the pressures around those costs will become even more acute. And so I feel really good about where Magnite is positioned.”
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.
