Yahoo is known for many things – search, email, fantasy sports. TV? Not so much.
But the company is on a mission to change that perception. According to Adam Roodman, SVP Ads Product & Strategy at Yahoo, connected TV advertising has been a major growth area for several years – but many outside the CTV ad buying sphere might not realize it.
“One of the best parts about being named Yahoo is because there is such a great brand affinity for the consumer brand,” he said. “But it’s not a CTV brand.”
CTV has been the biggest format growth for our platform for years now.
Roodman says that Yahoo already has integrations with companies such as DirecTV and Samba, and just announced a trio of key partnerships with FreeWheel, Magnite and Publica.
These moves come on the heels of Yahoo launching the product Backstage earlier this year- an effort aimed at bringing brands closer to more premium publishers. inventory. That’s a must in CTV, where the universe is simply smaller (for now). Yahoo has direct deals with roughly 100 publishers on the display side of things, versus 40 for CTV.
Roodman sees that dynamic continuing for the foreseeable future. “I don’t know that we’ll ever see the fragmentation we’ve seen in the display world in CTV,” he said. “The barrier to entry is just night and day.”
by Michael Shields for Beet.TV
