stage, the CEO of Magnite, Michael Barrett. Michael has been the CEO of Magnite, formerly Rubicon Project, since March of 2017. Prior, prior to that, Michael was the CEO and president of Millennial Media, a leading independent mobile ad technology company, which was acquired by AOL Verizon in October of 2015. Before that, Michael served as the founder and president of Ichabod Farm Ventures, a private investment firm he established after working as EVP and chief revenue officer at Yahoo! Before Yahoo, he worked at Google, where he led integration efforts following the acquisition of Admeld, where he'd been the CEO. Michael began his career as EVP and chief revenue officer at Fox Interactive Media, vice president of sales and partnerships at AOL, and he held senior sales positions at GeoCities and Disney Online. Like, you worked everywhere in media, man.
Man can't hold a job, huh?
I don't know. I'd say a long and distinguished career.
Yeah.
But, like-
Long.
Look, they're all surviving.
Yeah.
Broker-dealers. I've worked at, like, five broker-dealers that don't exist anymore.
Yes.
At least all these companies still exist. Okay, so I wanna start... My favorite questions for you are, like, culture and leadership. We're gonna start with leadership this year. So, you know, as we know, you-- we track productivity per FTEs, and Magnite has had really nice growth in revenue per FTE or full-time employee. So when you think about culture, tell me what you're trying to achieve in your culture, and what are the metrics you use to figure out whether it's actually infiltrating the day-to-day operations of your people?
Yeah, that's a great question in considering some of the extraordinary events of the last several years, right? The pandemic being the major one, and us embarking on a acquisition spree that may have caused the pandemic. I'm not sure, but,
Yeah. I blame you.
Yeah. That's exactly right. But yeah, it was a real challenge. It was a real bear. I mean, David and Nick are sitting here, and it was. We were told by the bankers as we completed the last acquisition, that the soft issues, the people issues, are what is gonna kill this, not the logic of the deal, right?
Okay.
Because when you buy two competitors and try to bring them together virtually-
Telaria and SpotX.
It's just. Exactly.
Mm-hmm.
It was really hard. So I gotta say, it was not the easiest of times, right? And so we were hitting all our marks on cost cutting. We were hitting all our marks on terms of integration product.
Okay.
And yet it was. It just seemed like we just couldn't get out of our own way in terms of energizing the people and creating a culture. And I think what we learned was, we were trying to do it way too top down. We were trying to say: "This is our culture. This was the Rubicon culture, and we're gonna tweak it, and this is what our culture is gonna be for Magnite." And we finally got the hell out of the way and let the senior level, that next tier of leaders, activated them, and it became much more of an organic process, and it was a lot less about we and them. And it became more like we've talked to everyone at the company, and we feel as though this is what is appropriate.
So what's the culture today, then?
The culture today is one of, radical transparency.
Okay.
It's a customer first philosophy, and it's one of, you know, be kind to one another, because boy, oh, boy, do we need that, coming out of that period we were in, and it's really phenomenal. To this day, we were all bogged down in vocabulary about legacy this, legacy that. Legacy Rubicon, legacy Telaria-
Mm-hmm
...legacy SpotX, and now it's all about Magnite. In fact, the largest cohort in the company today is Magnite first. They never worked at SpotX. They never worked at Rubicon. They never worked at Telaria, and that has had a sea change as well because they look at us like, "Legacy what?
Yeah.
So that's out of the vocabulary now, and it's been a sea change, and we're getting everyone together in two weeks. First time everyone in the whole company will be together in one place, and couldn't be more excited about that.
I know it's hitting your P&L.
Yeah, well, you know-
David's told us about the cost of this get-together.
It's an invest-
Like, I want to come-
It's an investment.
... What the heck?
We should bring you, Laura.
Yeah.
It'd be great.
You absolutely should bring me.
You should bring-
It's gonna be a great party from the cost estimates.
You could be a keynote. I mean, we invited Dan. We should have thought of inviting you.
We should have invited you! Dan's coming. Okay. Okay, so that's the first answer I've gotten where culture didn't come from the top.
Yeah.
I walked into this question thinking culture came from the top.
Well, I can appreciate that in some companies where it's founder led and founder driven, and-
Sure
... people look at that, but,
That's fair
... ours was different, and,
Yeah
... I think we had to handle it differently.
It's more of a roll-up, and so you had to-
Yeah, that's right.
... like, come organically.
That's exactly right.
Okay. Yeah. No, very interesting. Let's move that into work from home. How many days, I think I actually know this. Your current policy, I think, is three days per week?
Yeah, and it's-
I had two CEOs that said they had to change that and lessen it by a day in the last month, wherever they were-
That's crazy. We're going the other way.
Really?
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, at least we tell people we're going the other way-
Okay
... so they don't bitch about the three.
Okay. That's fair. That's fair.
They're like, "Ah-
That's good strategy.
... oh, we... Oh, wow, we're only three. No, we're killing it in terms of the attendance stats. It's... You know, I think one of the fallacies was no one really knew what, right, attendance was, and if you look at the big guys, the badge swipe guys, they said it was never more than 75%, even at the height of everyone going in five days a week.
Okay.
So if you start with that-
Okay
... as a basis, I mean, our worst company, like, on a given week, is, like, mid-sixty. So, I think it's people are really feeling the benefit of being together.
Okay, so you're three days a week. You think you have 60% attendance at three days a week, and you, and you actually are going to four, or you're just- Are you playing with the idea of four?
Playing with the idea, yeah.
Okay. Okay, and you don't think you'll have rioting in the streets if you-
I'm telling you, that is just so, I don't know, 2021 logic. I mean, I don't know who could look around and say there's alternatives out there for me to forever work from home. I mean,
I have a lot of guys at two days a week.
... I'm glad we compete with them.
Yeah. So you think it actually drives productivity?
Oh, my-
It definitely drives culture.
God, yes!
That's why I linked it to culture.
We couldn't have done any of what we just accomplished last year if we weren't all together.
Okay. All right, so you think it's more productive together?
Oh, yeah.
Okay, interesting. And the three days a week, do the team gets to decide when they're in, or is it the whole company comes in?
No, the whole idea was we kept our real estate footprint. We could have shaved a lot of money off-
Yeah, you could have.
But we kept it, and everyone's in Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursdays.
Okay, which is sort of our policy, but nobody actually obeys it at my firm. Okay, great. So let's talk about, let's do some Magnite-specific questions. Let's talk about goals. 2024, you're gonna be sitting right there. I want you to give me goals that I'm gonna hold up this document and say, "Okay, Michael, here's what you said a year ago that are your goals." What are you gonna achieve in the next 12 months before I see you again a year from now?
Well, hopefully, hit the numbers that David held out.
Okay. Well, you gave really specific numbers for 2024.
Yeah, no, I think that this time I would, if we're sitting here in 2025, and I'm still have the privilege of being the CEO, obviously from a financial standpoint, I think that's a no-brainer.
Okay.
I think, increasing productivity per head and not having to-
Okay
... increase the workforce, is a no-brainer. And in terms of-
Higher revenue-
Yes
... same FTEs.
Correct. And then, in terms of from a product roadmap, tighter integration between our ad-serving business and the streaming business, so that you're entering into 2025, where it feels like a more unified product.
What's the advantage? Is it a cost advantage or a new business advantage? Why is tighter integration a goal?
The advantage to us is that, as you know, not too many folks own an Ad server in the space.
Mm-hmm.
The closer we can couple that to our streaming service, the SSP piece of the business-
Yes
... gives us a decided advantage when it comes time for people considering whether or not to use us versus someone else. It helps our clients in terms of monetization, having it more closely linked.
Okay.
An example of that is intelligence that comes from an Ad server for direct sold deals versus programmatic deals. If it's separated, you can't always make the best optimization decision-
Right
... but if it's connected, you can. You can also fill pods more easily because you know that two of those pods are already filled by automotive, and you can't put a third in there.
Yeah.
Why waste your time bidding to get into it when you know it's gonna be declined? So if you own the Ad server, you can figure that out.
Got you.
There's real monetization benefits to doing it.
Okay.
And then there's efficiency benefits. You don't have to have two UIs anymore, so you don't have to have two UI teams.
Yeah.
Uh...
Okay.
So very exciting. It's -- we're not going to rush it, largely because we just asked our clients to go with us on a very arduous transition-
Right
... deprecating one of the platforms and streaming and going to the new platform, and-
Yeah
... it wasn't without its bumps, like any transition.
Yeah.
Therefore, this is gonna be much more subtle, require very little work for our clients.
Yeah.
Ergo, will take a little bit longer, but,
Okay
... it's gonna be worth it.
Do you think you can get it done in 24, though?
I think that-
Since that's the question we're addressing.
When, when we're sitting here in 25, we'll talk about some of the great lengths that we did regarding it.
Okay.
But we don't think it's a one and done in 12 months, especially when you consider when you get into Q4 of any year, you freeze all development because it's too-
Yeah
... big a quarter.
Yeah. Okay. Not at all. Okay. Okay, great. Interesting. Okay, fair enough. So those are our goals. Let's go to CTV. I think it's 40% of your business these days. And, yeah, 42%, I think, is what we thought it would be for all of 2023. Customers three to four years ago for CTV ads were probably mostly TV broadcasters and smaller ad players. But in 2023, really, Magnite did this big transition to Disney, Warner Bros., Roku, Paramount, really big. All of these are additive. Can you talk about size, scale, and other implications of this shift for Magnite?
Yeah, so that was a kind of a consumer shift, right? All of a sudden, you had all of these plus services come out in the last several years, and then everyone said: "Oh, we need an ad tier." And so it was like this almost phenomenon in 2023, where in a muted spend environment, the macros weren't great. You had a flood of new inventory come out to the market from these highly attractive- highly appealing for advertiser services, and they really did steal from some of the streaming-first services, some of the FAST guys
Mm-hmm.
Some of the OEM guys. I think you're gonna see that rebalance this year. I think you're gonna see a stronger spend, macro spend environment. And I think that folks will go back to testing new entrants, testing startups that are, you know, streaming-first kind of players. I think it'll rebalance itself more so this year.
Just 'cause there's gonna be more demand in part.
That, that's exactly right. Yeah.
I expect Amazon Prime has just defaulted everybody into an ad tier-
Yes.
So as of, I think, next week.
Yeah.
So that's gonna add a bunch of new CTV ad inventory that wasn't there in 2023, and Netflix is bringing its price point down from that $65 guaranteed price for Microsoft down towards the, like, more normal in the market range, in the 40s.
Right.
I would expect that that actually is gonna bring a lot more ad inventory into this. So doesn't that put CPM pressure in your world?
Well, I think that, to your point, some of the CPMs were a bit artificial, like when you were being-
CPM is pricing, cost per thousand.
Yeah, the cost per thousand for an ad unit. You know, so when Netflix went out with a six-handle or even-
Yeah
A 7-handle, they were the new kids on the block. There weren't a lot of alternatives.
Mm-hmm.
You know, I think they found-
Tiny inventory.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They found that, you know, there were some first mover advertisers that were like, "I'll be in at any cost.
Yeah.
But that wasn't gonna be sustainable, so I think it's coming back down to market. And I think Amazon's pricing their inventory with a three-handle, I think—
Mm
... on the upward threes.
Probably.
Um-
I mean, I assume it's gonna be tied to the retail media network and tied to sales, so it's a different kind of ad unit than we've seen before.
Yeah, I think it's a different budget. It's a shopper budget.
Yeah.
I mean, to put perspective, so, the numbers are astounding, you know?
Yeah.
So, U.S. alone, they haven't, Amazon hasn't officially said it, but they claim there's over 200 million U.S. Prime.
Yeah.
Most people are saying it's 160 million-170 million.
Okay.
That's still huge.
Yeah, huge.
Overnight, in a week from now, Amazon-
Yeah
... Prime will be the largest-
Like, the largest CTV advertiser.
subscription ad-supported service, period.
Mm-hmm.
And so that could be catastrophic. But I think if you double-click on that a little bit, if you look at Nielsen, and, you know, Nielsen just doesn't do show ratings. They do kind of overall consumption. And so the last one I saw, 37% of all content in the U.S. was consumed by streamers. So the rest being cable and broadcast-
Yeah
... and a slice of other. So 37% was streamed, and of that 37%, 3.8% was Amazon Prime.
Mm-hmm.
We're talking about a service that, although it has gaudy subscription numbers, most of those folks are subscribing.
Mm-hmm
... for two-day delivery, and they get video. And they obviously aren't watching it a lot because 3.6% isn't huge.
Mm-hmm.
Furthermore, I don't know about your household, but our household would probably spend the extra $2 a month not to get the ads. I know it's not good-
Mm-hmm
... because I make a living off of ads, but I have kids who hate ads. At any rate, let's say 50% of the people do that. Now you're talking about, you know, a smaller number, and I think, too, the most important part that you brought up is they'll kill it. They'll slay it in retail media network.
Mm-hmm.
They will get those shopper dollars, and they will convert, and they will bring so many more advertisers into CTV that have never advertised on TV. So it's all a good thing for the ecosystem. Maybe not great if you're a standalone retail media network play, but it's awesome for the ecosystem. They've struggled with brand advertising since they've started doing advertising. And so if you talk to the Disneys, you talk to the Paramounts, you talk to the Warners, they're like: "Hey, bring it on. We've been doing brand advertising with these guys for 50 years. We like our chances going up against you guys head-to-head," 'cause brand is entirely different. It's not about whether I sold, you know, a roll of, you know, a paper towel today.
It's about building the image of Bounty so that I will pay $3 more for Bounty when I actually do buy it. And so those are different dollars. You're gonna have to use Amazon's DSP.
Mm-hmm.
You can't bring in your own DSP. So there will be some challenges for them to crack the brand world. So I don't think it's gonna be Armageddon for everyone. I don't think it's gonna be this total CPM collapse. But I think long term, short term, mid-term, it's gonna be very... It's gonna be additive for the ecosystem. Just more ad avails, more streaming ad avails, more programmatic streaming ad avails. It's gonna-
So for the ecosystem, because Amazon is gonna bring in all this inventory that will be tied to a bottom-of-funnel, like, purchase, do you think that creates this gravitational pull of connected television from the top of funnel, where it was really a pure substitute for linear, down towards what is the competitive advantage of digital, which is down towards performance? Do you think we're gonna see advertisers trying to drive CTV down towards performance?
No, but it's awesome that you're bringing in a class of advertisers that are performing.
Okay. Okay.
I just think it's another class of advertisers, and it's gonna bring the CTV world from 500 advertisers to 5,000 advertisers, to 10,000 advertisers.
Okay.
Some of those guys will spill over from Amazon and use other services 'cause they've figured out how to do a TV ad and sell stuff.
Okay.
No one's ever gonna be as good as Amazon at it-
So it's gonna be a new place.
but I think it's
Yeah
... gonna bring in just new advertisers to the ecosystem.
Okay. It's a valid point. I wouldn't have guessed that, but that's interesting. So one of the things, just since David's in the front row, you gave much more precise guidance in 2024.
David did. I did not.
Yeah, David. We blame David. We blame David. But you allowed it, 'cause we know from your leadership style question last year that the buck stops right there in that chair. So, my question is, why the precise guidance, given it feels like there's still a lot of uncertainty, and what gives you the confidence that you can do that in 2024 year?
... Well,
You need David to answer?
That's a secret, David. I think it was, I don't know, I'm so sure it was that much more detailed. But I do think that we wanted to let folks know that we had a handle on the cost side of the operations-
Okay
... and that we could, with, a degree of confidence, comment about our annual costs.
Okay.
We, like anyone else, have a murky crystal ball, and it's hard for us to predict macros.
Yeah.
I know we'll talk about CES, but-
Yeah
... there does seem to be a kind of freshening and optimism among,
Yeah
... folks in the industry re the prospects of 2024. So, I think that's kind of where we were thinking when the guys-
On the concept. So, Michael, just uncertainty, macro. If actually ad grew, had a big rebound, 15%-20% growth, what happens to the economics? What's the operating leverage in the Magnite business model?
It's always been incredibly appealing. Our business is kind of a fixed cost structure, and so in times where spending goes down 60%, we have always been, I think, good fiduciaries in terms of, you know, throttling back on people. But, you know, our fixed costs are people and equipment, and we don't really need to increase our CapEx or OpEx if we're using the cloud. We don't need to double our capacity to handle another $1 billion in spend. That $1 billion in spend just drops onto the platform, and it all trickles down. And so Q4 is a good example of that. Look at our margin profile in a Q4, when you have increased total ad spend across the platform-
Mm-hmm
... it all just drops to the bottom line.
So, I mean, is it like a, just, so probably not all. Typically, advertising has, like, 80% gross margins. But you're just saying that disproportionate—like, does 60% of revenue fall to the EBITDA? Let's call it free cash flow or EBITDA-
Right
... I don't know which way you think about the world. But does 60% of it flow down, or 50% of the extra growth after you hit break even? What are the-
I'm looking for...
Yeah, higher than 60. Yeah, higher than 60.
Higher than 60, below 80. Okay.
You cover inflation and raises for people-
Yeah
... and so you have a smaller flow through at that level. And then once you hit the next incremental dollar, it's much, much higher flow through.
Okay. Okay, great. So just in case, 'cause he wasn't Mike, he's basically saying above 60, below 80, once you hit the, like, break even, where you've handled people's raises and benefit increases-
Right
... then, and R&D increases, then it just flows to the bottom line, 60%-80%.
Right.
Over 60, below 80. Okay, totally fine. Let's talk about CES takeaways. What, what'd you learn at CES that was. I had to skip this year. Lots of announcements coming out.
Lucky you.
I love CES. I love the parties.
You're a sadist.
I did five parties a night. But tell me what you learned at CES this year?
I again, I think the overall theme, we met with a ton of our partners-
Yeah
... and, you know, optimism, I think that,
Okay
... if you recall, the last couple of Decembers haven't really behaved like normal Decembers.
Sure.
There was always a shock to the system. Not getting into specifics, certainly from a Magnite standpoint, but in talking to our partners, everyone kind of felt good about how-
Twenty twenty-four
... 2023 ended, and-
Part of it is political.
Yeah, I think-
Big political upside.
Yeah, there's no question about that. You have Olympics or some guys, that's a big thing.
Yeah.
But I think just generally speaking, even in talking to agencies about, you know, depressed ad verticals that haven't been, you know, firing on all cylinders in a while, they're feeling much better about the outlook from the CMOs that they're talking about, about, you know, increased spend. And I, and I think that it's one of those kind of cascading effects, that when someone jumps their budget in a certain category and starts spending more, everyone else recognizes it and like, "Hey, we can't get caught behind.
Got to keep up.
And so there hasn't really been that catalyst, and I think you're gonna start to see that as we start to wind into... You know, a lot of the TV nets haven't run, even though the SAG-AFTRA has been settled-
Mm-hmm
... screenwriters, it's, they still haven't launched their new stuff.
Mm-hmm.
The new stuff is gonna be coming out this quarter and next quarter.
Mm-hmm.
And, that'll spur, I think,
More spending
... more spending.
Well, and autos were on strike last year.
Correct.
Right, for 7 months-
Yeah
... like, the box office was shut down, essentially.
That's exactly right.
... because you had the writers-
Yeah
... and then the actors on strike. So all of those don't recur this year. All of that should bring back more-
Yes
... advertising off last year's benchmark.
Yeah, even from a spend category, like, movies working their way through the system, now getting into post-production, now being relaunched, those will be big budgets that'll spend behind them, so.
Yeah. So there's some visible things.
Yeah.
Okay, great. That was a learning from CES. The mood was a lot better.
It was
... feels like spending is coming back, which is a helpful macro driver-
Yeah
... 'cause you get paid as a % of ad spend. Okay.
Yeah, and some really cool innovation, too, on the kind of the OEM front, on the TV side. I mean, I think they realized that a lot of those guys are working in a world of, like, zero margin on the hardware side of it.
Mm-hmm.
There's no shortage of new entrants, you know, Walmart coming up with their own TVs, you know, folks that are assembling TVs. So, you know, you look at the LGs and the Samsungs and the innovation that they're going to have to do to separate their pricing, and they had some really cool stuff that we're able to see.
Does that affect the Magnite, or is it just an observation?
Yeah, ultimately, they're going to be, you know, we're their ad partner, so the more units they sell-
Mm-hmm
... the better off it is for us,
I see. Yeah, I think a lot of people don't know that, that really, you're the number one ad partner for all these OEMs.
Yes, yeah.
Meaning Roku and-
That's correct
... and, LG and Samsung, so it does-
Vizio
... affect you.
Yeah.
Vizio, too, yeah. Basically, yeah. Okay, fantastic. Okay. So we already did Prime Video, so we're working through these. Great. Pricing issues. Can you talk about take rate trends? I know you've said you have no take rate pressure, but one of the things I always harass you about on stage with me is this step-down in services, how we sort of feel like Trade Desk has sort of kept its 15%, but you had, like, 14% for DV+ kind of product, which is non-CTV, and then 8% for Telaria, and these are my numbers, and then the ad servers, too. So we were stepping down. There was a 4%-- it sort of felt like more and more of your services kept stepping down the take rate tier.
So can you talk about one of the points you made last year, is you sort of hope like a gateway drug, that if people come to the ad server at 2%, then maybe they do the 4% product. Disney has said it's gonna be 50% programmatic by 2025, so they're gonna need more of that 8% take rate product as you add decisioning. Can you talk about that process, and where are we in that process? Has Magnite started to move up the take rate curve rather than this pressure moving down the take rate curve?
Yeah, and again, semantics, right? But pressure isn't the word we use. It's product shift.
That's fair.
So it's-
Product shift is better.
... it's product mix.
Yes.
And so-
Okay.
So, again, you know, 2023, end of 2022, saw just a whoosh-
Yeah
... of the big premium plus services come to market-
Yep
... with an ad tier. Those folks have been selling ads for 50 years.
Yep.
They want to continue to sell the ads. Buyers want to do it more programmatically-
Mm-hmm
... but the last thing Disney wants to do is anyone slide in between them and the buyer. They want to negotiate the price. They want to negotiate who it is. They want to look at the ad creative, and if they want to execute it programmatically and use data to do so, either Disney data or their data, terrific. It makes it even more effective. But, so we're still very much in that era with the big plus guys. They-
Okay
have the relationships in place, so they utilize us as the plumber. We're the guys that can make the ad appear on Hulu. We're the guys that can make the ad appear on Paramount+.
Which is the Ad server.
Correct. And they, they're the ones that negotiate the pricing, and they're the ones that cut the deal.
Okay.
Now, if you look at folks that are more, CTV first, streaming first, you know, the FAST channel folks, the Tubis, the Plutos
Mm-hmm
... the OEMs, they don't have a 50-year legacy of selling, and they need a lot more help on demand facilitation-
Uh-huh
... the traditional role of an SSP. So for those guys, we're not just the plumbing, we're not just the ad server, we're the guy that shows up with a bag of money, a bunch of advertisers, and they're like: "Awesome, you're selling our inventory.
Mm-hmm.
I'll pay you more for that.
Okay.
So where in the life cycle are we from a plus service getting to that level? Anything happening next quarter, but over time, I'll give you an example of a category. Most of those entertainment companies have really toed a very fine line in political. They've-
Okay
... a lot of them just don't take political advertising.
Yeah. Yeah.
Now that they have streaming, they're all more open to it, and they have no wherewithal to sell political advertising. They don't have a sales guy that does it. They don't-
I see.
Now they're a lot more inclined to say: "Hey, bring me some political. I understand you guys do that pretty well.
Even the big guys. Even the big plus services-
Correct.
That's the point you're making.
And so I think that that's going to be the way it's gonna work with the plus guys, that-
Okay
... top 500 advertisers, it's gonna be a long time before they get out of the way of the transaction. Now, the transaction can move to biddable in an invite-only auction, and that moves us up the scale.
Okay.
But it's gonna be a long time before I bring Procter & Gamble advertising to a Disney and say: "Hey-
Yeah. Yeah.
... do you know these guys?
They already have a direct relationship-
Um
... for 50 years.
Now you start to look at the small to medium-sized businesses coming in. You look at the DSPs that are specializing in that and doing very well.
Okay.
You look at DSPs specializing in healthcare.
Yep.
And all of a sudden, that's demand, where they might be like: "Huh, I'm not hiring a bunch of sales guys to go after that.
Yeah.
Yeah, you bring it to me.
Yeah.
So I think we'll see that evolution over time. It's not gonna be, you know, one quarter, it flicks on. But I think we'll also see the growth of the FAST services and the growth of the free TV areas on the OEMs, the tile ads that we power, all of those things will be programmatic 100%. So-
Okay
... I think that long way of saying, I think we're at the historic low of our take rate in CTV, not-
Okay
... it's our take rate's here and going further down.
Okay, that's fair. That's answers exactly my question. Okay, we're at the historic low, and now we're moving back up. Questions from the audience. We've got a lot of people in this room. How about some questions? Okay, let's do DV+. So you sat on this stage, I think it was two years ago now. It's about 40% of your total 2023 net revenue, and you said: "DV+ is broken. I have to go to work." And you know, sort of you went to the green room, and you sat in the room until you fixed DV+, and DV+ grew really nicely last year. So what did you change? Why is it growing, and will it continue in 2024? Have we fixed it structurally?
Yeah, it's fixed structurally. I mean-
Basically, this is all their non-CTV business-
Yeah
... essentially.
Yeah, very complicated business, right? I mean, on any given day, we'll see 1 trillion ad requests hit the platform. That's a big number, and if just one little thing is wrong, one little signal's off, one little pipe is broken with a DSP, it could have a dramatic impact. And it's hard to sometimes get that signal from all the noise of 1 trillion, right?
Yeah.
And I think the mistake we made, and we're very honest about it, is that we kinda set it and forget it. We're like: "Look, header bidding has come to the DV+ world.
Yeah.
It's not going away.
Yeah.
As long as we're invited to the party, and no one in their right mind wouldn't invite Magnite-
Mm-hmm
... as being part of the header bidding, our work is done. Like, let's just let it run, 'cause we have this wonderful platform." And what we learned is that every DSP changes their algos. Every DSP has a different strategy, advertisers have different strategies, publisher have different strategies. So you really have to work it. You really have to roll up the sleeves, and it's never done.
Okay.
The next 100 problems that you have, there's gonna be another 100 behind that. And so-
Okay
... we just put a dedicated team on it and, you know, increased our learning, brought in some key hires. We just have a gentleman joining us to run the DV+ business, who came from Google.
Okay.
It's an area of investment for us. So to your point about growth, we fully expect to outgrow market.
Okay
... and that means take share.
Okay.
And, we take share from our direct competitors, and we take share from 1,000 ankle biters that are still out there, duplicating bids, arbitraging-
Mm-hmm
... bringing no value. And I think that that might be the silver lining as it relates to the cookie deprecation from Chrome. It's the stakes are really high in challenging to participate in Privacy Sandbox. You have to have real tech to be able to participate with the Chrome team in their journey to what a post-cookie world looks like. That's you can count on one hand the number of SSPs that can do that.
Okay.
That's gonna be a killing-
We have to slow that down-
Yeah
... into two pieces. The first one is, the cookie thing-
And another thing.
... is really important.
Yeah.
But I wanna do OpenPath, and what's the name of yours that goes direct?
Uh, ClearLine.
ClearLine. So one of the things we're trying to do is get rid of some of these ankle biter D-
Yes
...your word, ankle-biter SSPs that are just arbitraging and not actually adding value. Doesn't that put some of those out of business, or are you saying: "Well, that's tiny compared to what's about to happen with cookies?" Is that your-
Oh, yeah. No, no, it's just a continual... It's a whack-a-mole game. You...
Okay
... 10 of them die, 10 of them, you know, pop up.
Okay
... publishers are just some of the most ill-informed people in the world. They'll be like: "Oh, 20 DSPs, 20 SSPs, it's better than 10, because it'll trick a DSP, and I'll get an extra buck out of it.
Okay
... or they're just arbitraging traffic that doesn't even have a sales team. It just-
Okay
... you know, it's bad for the industry, it's bad for the environment.
Okay.
The CPUs that we're going through, the number, the amount of electricity being used-
Right, right, right
... to run these data centers is horrible.
What might mean to climate change.
It's horrible.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay, great.
It's horrible.
Okay. All right, so let's now go to cookies. So, cookie deprecation. So, a, how does cookie deprecation affect the open internet? I would say this is a big worry for investors who aren't in ad tech already. Doesn't cookie deprecation disrupt the open internet, and drive ad spending to walled gardens just in 2024 until we get a new baseline? Can you speak to that first?
Well, it'd be pretty hard to drive more spend to the walled gardens. I mean, like, if $0.80 of every dollar you spend goes to walled gardens, I don't think it's gonna be $0.99 . That's a little glib. That's certainly a concern, right? Why would more spend go to the walled gardens? Well, because-
Just for a year.
... it's a walled garden, and they have identity, and they're able to-
Yeah, first-party identity
... do the targeting. Correct.
Okay, so tell me about cookie deprecation in Chrome, impact on the open internet ecosystem in 2024.
So disruptive.
Okay.
I would say that, you're not gonna see a massive shift to walled gardens.
Okay.
I would think that what you're gonna see is there'll be winners and losers. The losers, unfortunately, will be a lot of the publishers in the open internet who are used to selling a user that's a Chrome user for $1, and all of a sudden now, it's gonna be worth $0.10.
Wow!
That's not gonna be fun.
For a short period, doesn't this adjust?
Yeah, I'll give you an example of that. When Safari deprecated cookies-
Mm-hmm
... 3.5 years ago-
Okay, go ahead.
The value of a Safari user was always 2x the value of a Chrome user. Largely, because if the signal was, they own an iPhone.
Yeah, they're rich.
They're rich. All of a sudden, you lose that signal, and they went from being half the value of a Chrome user overnight.
Okay, from 2x to 4x, so they cut it by 80%.
In about six months, they became at par with a Chrome user, and today, they're back to 2x. No cookies, no nothing.
Mm.
People learn how to use other signals. So it's not a signal-less world that we're gonna be in.
Mm-hmm.
You know, even when we say our exposure to Chrome is blank, well, we don't even know that because a cookie's in it, but there also could be other identifiers in it that they're using other than just the cookie. So-
Right
... I think that as long as budgets, Budgets weren't cut during the Safari era. Budgets weren't cut during GDPR.
Yeah.
Budgets weren't cut for ITT. So all I'm saying is that if budgets aren't cut, we'll sell more inventory at a less of a price, but we'll be fine. Magnite will be fine.
But your percent of total revenue will be the same?
Unfortunately, for some publishers, they won't have enough inventory to sell more at $0.10, and that won't be good for them. But at Magnite, as long as budgets remain the same, and as long as they all don't whoosh to the walled gardens, I think life goes on pretty. We just sell more.
Right. And it sounds like if, even if it is disruptive, it's the first six months.
That's correct.
Or the first nine months, and then we use other signals-
People normalize. They use it. Yeah.
It's shocking how little preparation has been done since Google first announced this in 2019.
Yeah.
Keeps putting it off. It's 2024, they're finally deprecating-
Yeah
... and everyone's like: "What?
Yeah.
Do we need to worry about this?
Well, Google, I mean, don't get me started.
Okay, we won't get started on Google. Yeah. Okay. You and every regulator and legislator in the world feel the same about Google.
Yeah, but they're between a rock and a hard place, right? You go to the CMA, and we've been working with them, that's the competition authority in the U.K., and they have two masters to serve. They've pledged that they're getting rid of cookies for consumer privacy reasons, and they've also said: "Hey, this Google, that could be a monopoly. We gotta watch it." You can't have both. You can't have both, and they're choosing-
What's the inconsistency?
The inconsistency is if you deprecate the cookie and they don't really have a plan that helps you open internet.
The Sandbox doesn't really work?
All the money goes to Google anyway.
Yeah.
And so it just- And they're choosing to deprecate the cookie because they've told consumers-
Privacy
... for privacy purposes.
Yeah. Yikes. Okay, fair enough. Generative AI, how are you guys using it today?
Well, we have a machine learning team. We have a data science team. You know, I gave that example before about 1 trillion ad requests that hit the platform, hit the front door. If I'm doing my job right, if our team did their job right, 700 billion of them won't even go to auction.
Okay.
'Cause no one's gonna buy them. They're not in the right location. They're... It's someone on a mobile phone, but they're not on Wi-Fi. It won't load in time. All of that logic makes the 350 billion that we take to auction make it much more valuable to our buyers. And so we constantly do that every day. We-
This sounds like old AI. I'm asking about generative AI.
Yeah, and so now, more from a generative standpoint, you know, the old stuff is good. The machine learning will always be a backbone of ours. From a generative standpoint, you're starting to see it creep into products like our Demand Manager product, which is-
Okay.
It's software that helps our publishers run their header bidding. And they've always been challenged with where to set price floors. And when they do set price floors, they kinda set it and forget it, and what might have been a good price floor for Tuesday morning at 10:00 A.M. might be a horrible price floor-
Right
... Wednesday at. So we built a price floor tool.
Okay
... that you would think of it as more generative AI 'cause it can be interacted with our publisher, that can utilize it to say, "Hey, what if I did this? What if I did this?" And it can generate that kind of flooring.
Okay.
So we think there's going to be a plethora of applications-
Okay
... that we are able to bring to our end customer to make them smarter, to make them more efficient. I mean, it's not getting easier being a publisher, right? The economics are really, really tough.
Yeah.
If they can get by with, you know, a handful of ad operations people, as opposed to an army of ad operations people-
Mm-hmm.
... we're helping them, you know, be able to stay alive and stay afloat. And so I think our mission there is to be able to take all that machine learning that's behind the curtain-
Mm-hmm
... bring it forward, and make it much more, customer-accessible.
Okay. Questions? Okay, I wanna ask about political. So political, they, GroupM, newest estimate last week, $17 billion, up from $15 billion, up from $12 billion. So the numbers just keep getting bigger and bigger. Does Magnite benefit from political in any, in 2024?
Yeah, I mean, the numbers we've talked about loosely.
Non-presidential $11 million in revenue in 2022. If that doubled to $20 million in next year, it'd be 3%-3.5%.
Okay, so if it goes to $20 million, it's 3.5% of revenue. The budgets are saying this $17 billion would be up 34% over the two year ago, and it'd be up 24% from the last presidential. So, I mean, it is possible they just run out of broadcast room, and so it just flows to other places. It's gonna be such a big number. But anyway, 3% of revenue sound additive. Okay.
Yeah, and CTV was nascent in 2020.
Yeah, yeah. That's true.
Now it's much more established.
That's true.
We have a dedicated team in Washington that does political all year round.
Okay.
So we're talking to all the right people, and-
Okay
... our managed service business will benefit from that because their feet on the ground. They're in a lot of the swing states, and they're gonna be able to present media options where they can instantly get your ad on CTV, utilizing our DSP.
And yet, managed service runs around 15% of total revenue, ish, 10%-15%? Do you think that will grow faster or slower than your self-service?
Of the CTV, it's of our 40% of CTV-
Mm-hmm
... 15%-ish is managed-
Okay
… from early standpoint.
Do you think that grows faster or slower than self-service in 2024?
Do I think that grows faster or slower than-
Slower than that.
Slower.
Slower. Okay.
Slower.
Self-service is growing faster.
Yes.
So that 15% of the 40%-
Yes
... is shrinking over time?
Yeah.
Okay. CTV, okay.
Laurie, I think you had a question behind you.
Yeah, yeah, go.
Yeah. Historically, political has been on linear TV, and I know you guys are CTV. I know CTV doesn't have amazing targeting yet, so how do you think the political spend will affect CTV this year? Because, you know, targeting is bad, you may be showing, you know, ad to the wrong person or-
Yeah, no, it's a great question. Actually, geo-targeting is quite simple in CTV 'cause of IP, and that's kind of what our managed guys do when we go into a market like, you know, Spokane. And, most of the people in that market are looking-- Let's say, it's a regional healthcare chain. They wanna advertise to the people in the DMA of Spokane, and so what we do is we take their dollars that they normally would just hand to the local TV-
Broadcaster
... and we automatically make it digital, and it runs on the streaming service just in that area. What you do is, like, the minute you start to really micro-target in, because of the lack of inventory in CTV, you know, you keep it down to six households. So that's really where you kind of rub... you hit the rub. But, you know, we rep all the services, so we're able to bundle a Vizio with a LG, with a Hulu-
Samsung
... with a Samsung, and so our footprint tends to be pretty big in those markets.
Any other questions before we call it? Okay, we're out of time, so thank you very much.