Podcast #25 – Magnite deep dive

Superbowl Sunday has some of the most coveted ad spaces in the business, with 30-second slots commanding over $5M each. But what if advertisers could target their spend, and viewers at home could see different adverts depending on their interests? In this week’s episode, we talk about programmatic advertising, and deep dive into a fast-growing player in this space, Magnite.

  • The loss of live sports during the pandemic has accelerated cord-cutting and the move from linear TV to connected TV, which is driving the adoption of programmatic advertising, as ad-supported services complement subscription services
  • It’s not just connected TV that can benefit from programmatic advertising – desktop, mobile, podcasts, and potentially video games, virtual reality and augmented reality could offer ad-supported models for consumers to receive free content in exchange for receiving adverts tailored to their interests
  • Magnite is the world’s largest independent supply-side platform (SSP) for programmatic advertising, which holds auctions for ad space in real-time, allowing publishers to maximise their ad revenue, advertisers to reach their target audience, and consumers to see more relevant ads
  • Publishers and advertisers are increasingly turning to independent platforms to avoid conflicts of interest with the ad platform itself. Walled gardens such as Google and Amazon often have their own products and services to promote
  • Working with the leading demand-side programmatic ad platform, The Trade Desk, Magnite will adopt Unified Id 2.0 to allow targeted ads in exchange for free content, bypassing the need for 3rd-party cookies, and protecting user privacy
  • In 2020, CTV accounted for 29% of TV viewing in the US but only captured 3% of the total TV ad budget. With CTV viewing increasing and linear TV decreasing, this gap is not likely to hold for long, and the recent acquisition of SpotX enhances Magnite’s presence in the connected TV advertising market, especially in live sports and live news

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