We're gonna get started. I'm Laura Martin. I'm the Senior Media and Internet Analyst at Needham & Company, and I'm here on my stage. Welcome, Michael Barrett-
Hello.
- the CEO of Magnite. And so, the personal question I'm asking every CEO I have on my stage over these two days is: what is the most impactful professional conversation you've ever had, and how did it change your path?
Yeah, great question. So I, as you can tell from the gray hair—I got into the internet relatively early. And it was at The Walt Disney Company, and we started Disney Online. And at the time, we had this vision that we'd take all these wonderful properties and bring them online, and ESPN was one of the marquee properties. And we just bought it back from Starwave, which is a whole 'nother story. But at any rate, we create this beautiful site, this immersive ESPN with rich articles and great analysis. And the Comscore report comes out, and ESPN is, like, ranked the 50th most trafficked sports site, and number one was AP Feeds on Yahoo! And you kinda woke up and said, "The internet's not gonna be exactly like existing media.
Interesting.
Exactly, or back then, ESPN was a magazine, too. And so, it really taught a valuable lesson early on that, just translating magazine articles onto online wasn't going to exactly result in it. It was a different medium. Traffic was gonna be generated differently, and, you know, soon went to a company called GeoCities after that, which was all user-generated content, but became the kinda engine in terms of growth in traffic on the internet.
Oh, very interesting. Yeah, that definitely changed your path, right?
Yeah.
Definitely changed your path. Okay, so, let's talk about your biggest upsides and challenges for—I, I think of your business in two parts, Michael. One is CTV, which I think gets 80% of, of the press, and then DV+, which really, in credit to you, is growing again, 'cause it wasn't growing for a while. So I think you sort of deserve almost more kudos for DV+, because it secularly is troubled, whereas CTV is sort of growing itself, right? So I guess a CEO focuses on his troubled children a little more, just like parents. So let's talk about upsides and challenges in both business, both segments of your business.
Well, yeah, I mean, if you look at DV+, I mean, certainly the upside is, some of the things that we've been doing to bring the company back to growth, and we think there's many, many more. We've talked about it. There's no magic bullet here. When you're processing 1.2 trillion ad requests a day, the littlest things make a big difference, and so we have a dedicated team on that, pounding away, helping that business grow every day. I would also say from a, you know, a macro standpoint, that most people think of DV+ as this legacy business that's sunsetting. It's anything but, and if you look at mobile, which is a big component of it, you look at audio, podcasting, you look at digital out-of-home, there's some real growth pockets that are pretty early on.
Mobile, obviously, much more established, but these have, you know, double-digit carrier growth. And so we think at DV+, obviously, desktop is flat to declining, but there's other segments within DV+ that are becoming the growth engines, and we think it's gonna grow high single digits, low double digits for a long period of time. So, and I think in terms of headwinds in that business, other than, you know, talk about secularly desktop, you know, the headwind, which I think is turning into an opportunity, is Google's dominance. Google has well over 50% market share in that business and has for years and years and years, and we're by far and away the second largest, but we're sub 10%.
And so I think that the trial coming up is gonna be very interesting in the fall about their ad tech, and we're up to it in our eyeballs in terms of being brought in and deposed. And so I think that that's gonna be a very interesting outcome that could really open up that industry to level-footed, fair competition.
So you think the government's gonna get involved and actually-
Oh-
do something that's gonna make you be able to be a better competitor
Well, I
- to Google?
... right now, it's mostly the state AGs. It's Texas that's running it. DOJ is involved.
Uh-huh.
But, yeah, I mean, it is pretty damning, the amount of material they have on it, and anyone can access it and read it. It's not that we're privy to it because we're being deposed, but it is certainly a case where publishers have been underrepresented by the Google stack in terms of monetization, and Google has been overrepresented in terms of their monetization. And so if you have the slightest rebalance, and you have a person with market share approaching 60%, there's nowhere to go but down. And so we think that that could be a real opportunity for us that isn't really being picked up on.
It's hard for me to articulate why that would be, what exactly remedy is going to occur, but it's safe to assume that it's gonna get more open, not less open, and more competitive, not less competitive. So we think that that is a big opportunity for us in 2025.
... Is there not actual secular growth? Let's assume nothing happens at Google.
Yeah.
Is there actually no growth in the overall pie?
No.
I understand your point about it.
The growth would come from emerging segments like, you know, mobile.
Right.
Um-
That's true.
Digital Out-of-Home-
Yeah
... podcasting-
Yeah
... all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, audio is crazy growing.
Yeah, yeah. Right.
Is that all podcasting, that's why audio is growing so fast?
By and large, I mean, you know, the streaming audio is kind of owned by the big platforms, and so podcasting is a little bit more democratic, and so, and much more programmatic in terms of advertising now that it's being streamed as opposed to downloaded. When they were being downloaded mostly, it was kind of tough to do programmatic 'cause you never got the signal when they opened it up, but now it's, you know, internet protocol streaming.
Okay, okay. So those areas are... Okay, so let's talk about CTV: challenges and upsides.
Yeah, so upside obviously is consumer behavior. People have voted. They like to take their media in through streaming, sports increasingly. And so, you know, it's just the tailwinds of consumer behavior are tough to beat. And so more eyeballs going over there, advertisers wanna reach the eyeballs, so you'll have that. And of course, greatly benefited by the fact that everyone's changed their business model on the publishing side, and they're leading with their ad-supported version of streaming, where two years ago, Netflix was the model where charge as high as you can on a subscription and pledge that you'll never run ads. So everyone's running ads and that's-
Fib, that you'll never run ads.
Yeah, and you know, Amazon Prime coming into the game, and so all this stuff is, you know, huge tailwinds. I think, you know, if there are any headwinds in CTV, as we've kind of talked about, we're kind of so early stage, and the market's been so dominated by the big broadcast inventory because that's the stuff that the broadcast advertisers want, that that is sold a little bit differently programmatically, where we participate-
We need to define this word, broadcaster, 'cause whenever he uses it, I, of course, think of Sinclair and Gray-
Oh, yeah
... and ABC, and he isn't using the word broadcaster. It's like when people say publishers, I think of newspapers-
Yeah
... and they don't mean newspapers either.
No.
So the digital world takes these words that come from the old media, and they put it in a new and they mean something different. When he says broadcaster, he means Disney, and Hulu, and Paramount+, and so he actually means what I think of the big media conglomerates or the seven big players that sort of matter-
Right
... in streaming. That's what he means by broadcaster. Now-
The new entrants like Amazon and Netflix.
And Roku.
Yeah, exactly.
And, and-
Yeah, Roku, a little less. Like, we think of Roku as, like, made for the medium, right? They, they didn't have a legacy business.
Like OEMs?
They created-
Like, what we're OEMs.
Yeah, I would use them in the OEMs.
OEMs.
Yeah, they would be LG, Vizio, Samsung, Roku.
Okay.
And so those guys, those guys have it now. They have a direct sales team, but they rely heavily on programmatic-
Okay
... they rely heavily on Magnite to bring demand to them because they're like: "Hey, we're not this precious. We need money. Bring it to us." Where if you deal with the legacy media companies-
Yeah
... those guys are much more like: "Hey, we're gonna do this like we did broadcast. We're gonna control it all ourselves. We're gonna carefully bring it to market programmatically, and we're gonna own it completely.
Mm-hmm.
Our point of view is that that is going to... Two years from now, people are gonna look back on that as if they were looking back two years on Netflix with no ads. They're gonna be like: "That's the silliest model. Like, this, this should be 5,000 advertisers, all done automated, just like Meta, just like Alphabet. Like, what are you doing with 500 advertisers?
Let me, let me push on that a little bit, Michael, because I do think we're in the upfront market real time-
Yeah
... right now.
Yeah.
I do think, I've been to a couple of the Upfronts, and what hasn't changed is they really do think of digital as the tail and not the dog. Or said another way, you can't just buy digital from them.
Right.
When you buy a precious digital asset, you have to have bought a bunch of linear TV ad inventory. So they are bundling across pla- so they, but, so the dog is still what I would say, let me call it offline or cable or, you know-
Yeah
... the linear TV ecosystem. And so it makes sense to me that then they are heavily controlling the digital piece because it is part of that overall buy, of which 80% is still the old world, the analog world-
Right
... let's call it.
Well, that's because we're only talking about 500 advertisers. Upfronts is all about... Upfronts is all about those advertisers.
That's true.
And so-
That's true
... when you're in that environment, that's the language you're gonna use, that's the model you're gonna use. You're gonna bundle your... 'Cause you're gonna go to zero here, and you can't replace the economics here. You don't get retrans.
Yes.
You don't have as many avails, and so therefore, you have to balance it. But when you talk about advertiser, you know, 501-5,000, that's an entirely different dialogue, and that-
But do they want those adver-? I'm not sure they want-
Oh, they do.
... those advertisers.
Well, if you're Iger and you're yelling at Rita to get your growth rate up on advertising spend, you can't do it by just focusing on 200 advertisers. You have to focus on... You have to look more like Meta and Alphabet than you do Disney.
I so disagree with this. I so disagree with this. I think they are so... Especially using Disney is not a good place to start with this argument. You wanna say Paramount? Okay, or Fox, but, like, the Disney brand is so-- They care so much about not only the content, but the ads sitting in that content as part of the overall user experience. I think they will protect that from... There's no way they're using advertiser 1,000 in the middle of their valuable content.
And I-
My opinion
I completely disagree.
Oh, good.
I think that.
I love that!
Your viewing experience is gonna look a lot more like your Instagram feed, and my viewing experience is gonna look like my Instagram feed. Do you know how much content they have that they have to monetize? You're talking about the big show release-
I am
... the big, bespoke... you know, knit in the great TV commercial-
One or two or something.
But what about the library? I mean, there is just so much content that needs to be monetized, and the only way the economics work is if their ad gross rate starts to look more like a Alphabet or a Meta than it does a broadcaster, legacy broadcaster. 'Cause otherwise, it doesn't work. It's all gonna swirl down the drain. It just... The economics won't support it.
This is, this supports your point then about how the OEMs are different because they don't care about putting the-
Right
... 2,000th advertiser on.
I mean, we look at Amazon Prime. They're going to crush it. They're going to convert every retail media network advertiser in the Amazon Prime-
Yeah
... and bring it onto Amazon Prime TV. Like-
Yeah
... they-
I think part of that is strategically aligned with them thinking their core business is the e-commerce business.
Right.
Advertising, in a way, is an ancillary-
Right
... driver of more sales-
But once those people-
through the e-commerce platform
... get a taste of broadcast and understand it can be performance, a taste of streaming-
Mm-hmm. Yeah
... then they're gonna look for other inventory, and they're-
Yeah
... gonna come knocking on Disney's door. Are you gonna say Disney's not gonna take it?
Yeah.
They're gonna take it.
I'm saying Disney's not gonna take it.
They'll take it. 'Cause with AI, the ads will be a lot better than you think they'll be.
Yeah. Oh, my gosh!
They really will be.
Oh, oh, my... Okay, you know, we're gonna make a $5 bet two years from now. There's no advertiser under the top 500-
God, I'm still here two years from now.
... on any Disney property. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my God, I'm terrified now. I'm not, I'm not gonna... I'm gonna watch Disney+ every day to see if they put an advertiser under the number 500 on their system.
Way we bring in-
See if I owe you $5.
... glorified.
If you get $5 in the mail, it's like, "Oh, Laura saw an advertiser in the top 500 in the..." But I do think the point you're making, which I think is really interesting, is that the OEMs are leading the way. That what we should-
Yes
... look at is the LGs and the Samsungs and the Rokus, 'cause they'll get there. They'll do everything first.
Yes.
To the extent there's pressure... Like, let's say that actually one of these companies buys Paramount that actually does care about revenue. They might be the first, let me call it high-quality legacy content creator, to dip down into those more democratized advertisers and to drive revenue. So and they do need to fund their... They need to fund their content-
Right
... costs. So, yeah, that could be. But so the leaders here are the OEMs, where they're digital first-
They-
... sounds like.
They had been out there. And, you know, some of the FAST services, even though they've been purchased, like Tubi and Pluto, they're out there doing that as well. And they're-
Okay
...within the house of Fox, and they're within the house of Paramount, and so they're the ones that are experimenting with biddable-
Okay
... open auction, different advertisers, because they're just less precious about their inventory.
Yeah, so let's talk about that. For the audience, to level set, because I don't think people... It is so clear that Facebook and Google, everything is sold at auction, all the same self-service platforms. It's sort of super simple, but when we get to connected TV, there's like three main buckets. So why don't you walk us through the three main buckets? And I think the interesting thing from a Magnite prism is how different your pay scale is for each. So let's talk about the three, let's talk about the Magnite pay scale, and then let's talk about trends and how sort of... Somebody asked me the other day: "Is Magnite, it, like, the opposite of peak, so the trough take rate?" And it is my opinion they are. But so why don't you walk, walk the audience through that in CTV, 'cause it is complicated.
Yeah, it's a little nuanced. And simply put, there's three buckets that we generally operate in, and let's not talk about ad serving because that's just ad serving, right?
Well, no, disagree. It's their 2% business-
Yeah
... or their 1% business, and it touches-
Yeah
... every single ad that FreeWheel doesn't touch. There's only two of them.
Yeah. So-
That's a cool industry design-
Yeah
... two competitors.
So ad serving carries the lowest fee 'cause it's like a utility. Generally speaking, it's a software, and ads are inserted, and it has logic to it to serve ads at the right time, but it's not terribly optimizing things. It's just absolutely, it's forecasting-
But there's 2 of you-
Yeah
... which is a cool industry-
Correct
... structure.
And it gives us a big advantage for the other pieces of the business-
Yeah
... too.
I agree with that.
So ad serving is the lowest take rate. The next lowest take rate would be what I described or what we've described as Disney's approach, and that is: we care about 500 advertisers and 500 advertisers only. I wanna know every one of those advertisers. I wanna cut the deal with that advertiser. I wanna create the price point, and I wanna sell the audience package. In Magnite, you're my plumbing, just make it happen.
Mm-hmm. Which is like ad serving a little bit.
Just a little bit elevated because there's a little bit more logic to it and a little bit more complexity. But long story short, that's what has been the story since the whoosh of this premium plus content and the ad inventory that comes with it. That's kind of been the story the last several quarters, that this has consumed the market. It's hurt the growth rate of a Vizio, it's hurt the growth rate of a Tubi, of a Pluto, because marketers are like: "Hey, I'm familiar with that stuff. I want in. I wanna, I want to only buy that." So when that used to be, like, 40% of our business, it shifted significantly to 60%-70% of the business. Leaving, crowding out what we used to do, like, 40% of the time, which was bring deals to publishers.
So bring a deal to Vizio and say, "Hey, I got this advertiser, State Farm. Would you like some dollars from them? We cut a deal with them with your inventory." And they're like: "Yeah, I'll do it." If I'm bringing demand, I get paid at a higher take rate.
Makes sense
And then lastly, our highest take rate is our managed service business, where we're actually going out to middle market, you know, going to the Texas Tourism Board, and Texas Tourism Board says, "Hey, we wanna be on streaming. We don't know how to do it. Here's $1 million. Can you make it stream?" And we then go inside and make it possible, and that carries with it kind of a managed service take rate, which is significantly higher. And that business has been squeezed out a little bit, too, by the growth of the publisher sold direct.
Mm-hmm.
So that's kind of how we look at the landscape. And as you said, from a trend line, because of Amazon Prime coming on, Netflix ads coming on, Disney+ coming in with ads, that has been the surge of premium inventory that has been the desired by the broadcast advertisers.
But also, it's putting downward pricing pressure on CPMs and connected television, right?
You'd be surprised, that's a little bit less of the story. Again, these guys, it's not a perfect market. They have floor pricing that they won't go below.
Right.
And so therefore, you've seen, there's definitely been erosion in Tier Two pricing.
Tier two-
I would say, is the OEMs.
Oh.
They're not the broadcasters.
Oh.
So, let's just say their advertising pricing band is, like, $9-$18.
Okay.
the Tier Ones,
Disney, who-
... media companies, the Disneys, they would more look like mid-20s to mid-40s.
Okay.
That's relatively unchanged, and maybe a percentage point here or there down. Keep in mind, we've been working with a you know, lousy ad market.
Yeah.
This hasn't been a good macro, and so that has had more pressure on it as well.
Okay. When you talk about trends, one of the things you said, this, like, let's call it the Disney effect, crowded out some of the other stuff you were doing. Is that transitioning now? Are we leaving? Is it getting less so the take rates, the average take rate can move up in your business?
So, what we're seeing is a strengthening in the macros, so that's good, right? And then we're also seeing a slight change for the better. Well, not for the better, just a slight change in mix. So we're still, that segment is still, the ad spend is growing, but the mix is starting to come back a little bit to be more balanced.
Okay. All right. 'Cause you would say, like, historically, the mix was... I'm trying to think of how the revenue, so-
It was, like, 40, 40, 20. 40% publisher sold, 40% Magnite sold, 20% managed media.
Okay, but where is the ad server?
That's over 15, like-
Where's the ad server?
We don't ever really break it out.
In the lows.
In the lows.
Okay-
Yes
... so that first 40%.
Yeah.
Okay, and now tell me that 40, 40, 20, with 20 being the highest take rate, tell me what's happening. The 20 is probably staying... The 15, 20 is probably staying the same. This second 40 that has a higher take rate is getting bigger, and it's taking out of the cheapest, the lowest take rate, 40%? Is that how it's going? We're looking at David Day, who's the CFO-
Yes
... who's sitting in the front. Both of us are.
He gets to go.
So, the highest rate in managed service is continuing to reduce, so that's what was at 12%.
Okay 12% managed service
... first quarter.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, and then that, that mid-tier has grown dramatically, right? The 40, 40 was, you know, 2 years ago, and now-
Mm-hmm
... the lowest tier has grown to, you know, closer to, you know, 65%-70% of the business today.
Okay.
So the-
Okay. Are we seeing a reversal? Is that bottom tier-
Stabilized now. I would still expect slight uptick.
Okay.
But the rate of uptick has-
Okay
... decreased significantly.
Okay.
So we're gonna hit a stabilizing phase, and then it will turn.
And then it'll turn and move into that middle bucket, if you will, which is now down at the-
Yeah
... 12 plus 65 is, you know, the whatever the rest is.
Carry the three.
The 30% one. Okay, okay. You know, and I do think what this helps explain is a question that I get the most often, which is, "Why is Trade Desk have a $42 billion market cap, and Magnite's, you know, under $2 billion?" I think is... And I think it's because of this take rate difference, because Trade Desk just keeps charging 15%. Whether it's a dumb pipe or whether it's a smart pipe, it gets its 15%. So can you speak to that? Like, I don't understand. I, and I don't understand, and I think a lot of people... How can a DSP that requires on the open internet, which requires trading with SSPs, have such a big difference with the biggest SSP? Because you guys are the biggest open internet SSP.
Yeah, well, I mean, you can't discount the fact that they've done a wonderful job executing-
Yeah
... right? And, that they're stealing share-
From Google
... not stealing share, just, you know, suffocating the DSP marketplace. So they've been brilliant executors, built a really good product. You know, if you ask an agency what they think they pay for a DSP-
Uh-huh
... they'll come back and say: We don't pay more than $5.
Percent?
Yeah.
Jeff says he gets 20%.
Correct. I mean, he does. Look at the, look at the results.
Financials, financials tell you what he gets.
But this is how agencies think-
That's right
... because they're like, "That's our rate." But then, when they go into the system, they're like: "Yeah, why? Yeah, of course, I want to target moms with young kids. Click. I'll put that in the shopping cart. Oh, and I want to try," click, click, and then all the data charges add up when you check out, and next thing you know, now your effective rate is 20%. So what we feel that you're gonna see in connected television, particularly, is the power of first-party data, the power of Disney's data, the power of Paramount's data. Every person that subscribes to a Plus service is logged in.
That's true.
You have their email address.
Mm-hmm.
You have their credit card.
You have their address, address.
You have their address, address.
Yeah.
That is super powerful, and that is no longer gonna sit in a shopping cart at the DSP side because the publishers will want to keep that very close, and they want to participate in the economics or not participate in the economics and just have their CPM reflected in the fact that it's data rich. So, I think that the change that you'll see is that we've gone from this cookie world-
Mm-hmm
... where it's all third-party data, and the third-party data economy has benefited third-party data companies and buyers, like the DSP-
Yeah
... to a world that shifts with the deprecation of cookies, which will finally happen maybe next year-
Maybe, maybe.
that you start to see publishers-
Okay
... gaining more leverage as it relates to data and participating in those economics. And as their SSP, we believe we have an ability to participate in those economics.
Okay, so please, so one of the things you did a really nice job on, on the most recent call, is talking about why SSPs survive and thrive, rather than being disintermediated. Why don't you... Let's talk to this audience about that, because I think the market cap reflects that people, that investors are really worried that SSPs just disappear, that they aren't necessary. So let's go over that rapidly.
Yeah, and I think, you know, okay, so that the, it's all about disintermediation, right? And the idea would be that if The Trade Desk can go directly to a publisher-
Mm-hmm
... well, then we become worthless. Why would an SSP even have to exist? And there's a couple answers to that. Number one, although The Trade Desk has done a wonderful job, there are probably 300 global DSPs. So Trade Desk may not be dominant in Germany, but there are four local DSPs that are. And if you have inventory that's being monetized by Germans, you're gonna want that demand.
Okay.
Publishers can't possibly integrate 300... They can't possibly integrate 3. It's a heavy lift to integrate a DSP, where you feel as though you're on equal footing, where you're not bleeding data left and right, and that you feel as though you have price awareness, where you're pricing your inventory correctly, and you're not losing to a DSP. Which, let's be completely fair, The Trade Desk and every DSP gets paid by the buyer, and their job-
The auction.
Correct, but their job is also to make sure that their, the performance of the campaign is where they want it to be, that they're getting the cheapest possible price. So a publisher generally leans to their agent, the SSP, and says: "Hey, help me out here. You guys know a lot more about pricing than I do. You can plug into all the world's demand. You are on the hook for reconciliation. You're on the hook for fraud. You're on the hook for all collections. You provide me with a lot of services." So I think in rare instances, a Trade Desk is big enough and has enough spend power to go direct. We saw that in DV Plus, our DV Plus business. But our DV Plus business has thrived in the last two years, ever since OpenPath was...
I think you're gonna see a world where there will be a two-pipe strategy. Google will have two pipes. One will go through an SSP, one will go direct-
Okay
... but it'll be to a handful of publishers that can do the lift, which is a heavy lift from an engineering standpoint.
Saying Trade Desk.
Correct.
Trade Desk will have that privilege.
Correct.
No one else.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's right.
But that doesn't argue why SSPs need to exist.
Well, again, as an agent of the publisher, you're ensuring that they're monetizing as well as they possibly can. You're making life easy by being able to plug in all this world global demand, and all these companies are global companies. Like, again, if you look in Japan, the DSPs that are dominant in North America aren't dominant in the APAC area. So, we bring this diversity of demand across the... We do all the heavy lifting, and we provide all the services, and ultimately make sure that the publisher is getting the best deal they possibly can for that impression. That's a lot different than plugging in direct. That's how an SSP came around.
Mm-hmm.
When I was at MySpace and running sales there, we had 300 ad networks.
Okay.
And we did it on an Excel spreadsheet-
Wow
... and we figured there had to be a better way. And so the idea of unwinding all this 20 years of doing that and going back to that, publishers don't want that.
Yeah, no, I agree. Well, speaking of OpenPath and DSPs tying in direct, let's talk about ClearLine, which is your, like, direct path to buy-side demand. So why don't you update the audience on ClearLine and, and how you get paid for that, and what's going on. Does that disintermediate DSPs?
Yeah. So ClearLine is our buy-side facing tool. We actually built ClearLine for our internal use, for our managed service business. So when we took that Texas Tourism-
Yeah
... million-dollar insertion, we had to run it through something to get it to streaming.
Okay.
We built a buy-side interface.
Okay.
And one of our major agencies, mid-tier agencies, said, "Hey, can I use that tool? Because that looks good." And they started to dog food it, and they liked it, and so we said, "Hey, maybe there's a business model here." But here's why we built ClearLine: largely to go after dollars that are not in the programmatic ecosystem. So it isn't to go after a DSP and say, "Hey, we're a DSP," 'cause we're not. It, it is a slimmed-down version of what a DSP can offer. But for the use case that we're presenting, which is CTV-
Mm-hmm
... and in an instance where the publisher is determining what the price is-
Mm-hmm
... and what the audience package looks like, it's a super low-fee, easy way to gain access to that inventory. And so if you look at our Mediaocean deal-
Mm-hmm
... where we've partnered with Mediaocean, and we're the buy-side interface within their Prisma planning tool-
Okay
... there's $60 billion still being done, insertion order, with the publisher.
Insertion Order is a piece of paper.
Yeah, literally.
From-
Sending a reel of creative-
A reel
... in the mail.
A physical reel of creative in the mail.
To the compliance department, so that they can spend two weeks looking at it and saying, "Okay, this is good." So this stuff can be automated. It is automated.
I remember being at the Universal lot, and they had reel barrels, and I'm like: "What's that?" And they're like: "That's Jurassic Park." And you realize this is the master reel for Jurassic Park on its way to editing.
Yeah.
And you're like... And you don't know what Jurassic Park is when they tell you, 'cause it hasn't-
Yeah
... been released. But you're like, you're looking back, going, "If somebody had lost a reel—or started a fire nearby, and, you know, that was it.
Yeah, that was it.
It wasn't getting released-
Plus-
’cause that was the master-
Yeah
... in the barrel. That's how they got things around from editing to post-production to
Yeah, and it's still-
Now marketing. How crazy!
Still crazy on ad approval.
But still being done.
It's crazy. They have two floors. ABC has two floors-
Doing insertion orders?
... of people looking at ad creatives.
Oh, my God!
Yeah.
I can't believe it.
So we've built these tools that can ingest creatives, review them, meta tag them, you know, make sure that they're compliant, and then for the ones that need to be human reviewed.
Mm.
We set up a queue of, like, 50, and they can just go, go, click, click, click, click, click, so.
Okay.
So yeah, the idea is. Yeah, and is that disintermediation to a DSP? I suppose, but it's, again, we're not going after DSP dollars that are in the programmatic ecosystem. We're going after these frozen linear dollars that need a super low-fee path to come in-
Okay
... to the system in a simplified way.
Okay.
That's what we built, and how we get paid is from the buyer. In that instance, they'll pay, you know, a low single digit.
Like a Mediaocean kind of take rate, 1 or 2%?
Yeah. I mean.
Right
I think Mediaocean would love to have a 1% or 2% take rate.
Fair enough. I would love to have 1% or 2%.
Yes.
Okay, all right. So it's sort of a narrow use case. I do think Wall Street takes these as, like, competing, like, OpenPath from The Trade Desk and ClearLine from you, is trying to disintermediate. But it sounds like that's just the wrong interpretation.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a simplified way to look at it.
Okay
A nd it is a complex world, and I-
Yeah
... appreciate how complex ad technology can be.
It is, yeah.
But I do think that there's also a school of thought that it's an industrial logic, right? What could be better than having end-to-end pipe, you know, buyer to seller transparency, lower fees? This is exactly what-
Mm-hmm
... the industry wants. It isn't what the industry wants.
No.
The buyer wants their agent-
Yeah.
The seller wants their agent.
Mm-hmm.
And when it gets all... That's called Google. And no one likes that.
Yeah.
And so, I think that it's not gonna revert to that, 'cause of a natural means of order or whatever the case.
Oh, and actually, the government says that Google takes 35%.
Yeah.
Which, okay, the open internet takes more than that, but 35% for having huge conflicts of interest, I'm not sure it saves anybody, the third parties, I don't think it saves them any money. Questions from the audience? We have about five minutes left. Any questions from the audience? Yes, ma'am.
How much of the ad spend actually comes from the 501 advertiser to the end, like, to lower?
No, never. $5, I'm winning it right here, I'm telling you.
Currently, we are dealing in the world of 500 advertisers. It's all about shifting. It's the advertisers that were advertising on broadcast that have a declining audience, and they see the best and brightest of those, that audience now streaming. And so they're saying, "My budget is gonna shift over there." Of course, there's leakage along the way, going to Instagram, TikTok, and that's part of the challenges for broadcast as well. But that's the world we're dealing with. We start to expand that aperture a little bit with our managed service business. But we work with DSPs that specialize in these types of advertisers. MNTN is a good example. They work with advertisers that have video creative, typically social. They help them convert that into more broadcast-oriented, and they buy from us to the tune of, you know, well over $200 million a year in terms of total spend.
Mm-hmm.
So you're starting to see that, where those advertisers appear, generally on a, a Pluto or a Tubi or, you know, the FAST channel of LG. That's kind of the environment that is conducive to those types of advertisers now. But I'm... And this is why I'm gonna be $5 richer in two years. Ask Rita, the-
Okay
... the President of Disney Sales-
Okay
... where they see the future going. They brought in Bain, and I'm not talking preschool.
Good.
They'll, they'll do it, right? After McKinsey, after...
Yeah.
That's the under-addressed market for every broadcaster, is that group of advertisers. They have to figure out a way to get them, or else their business ain't gonna work.
Wow! Yeah, wow. That'd be quite the change. All right. Okay, live sports: One of the things you really brought up on the call a lot was live sports. And so when you're doing live sports, and I know you had a really big live sports quarter that was really helpful to your quarter. Talk about what you're doing in live sports, and why it's different than other types of genres?
Yeah, so live sports, incredibly attractive opportunity, right? I mean, you, just as a consumer, you see all these new deals being struck-
Mm
... and everything has a streaming component to it.
Yeah.
So 2025 will be the year where every sporting event you wanna watch, you'll be able to see on streaming.
Okay.
So huge inventory about to come to market, all ad-supported. There's no such thing as a live sport that doesn't have ads, right? And so people are used to it. They're... Here's why it's challenging. DSPs were built to moderate campaigns over a window of period. So let's just say, I'm running a State Farm campaign, and I have $1 million to spend, and I want it evenly paced over 30 days. I don't wanna blow it all one afternoon.
Mm-hmm.
That's what sports is all about, though, right? It's, it's 1:00 P.M., it's East Coast time, the first Big Ten football game kicks off, and traffic goes like this.
Mm-hmm.
... the DSP is rejected instantly because they're pacing campaigns, and they're like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! There's something going on here. It might be fraud. It might be a bot. I'm gonna choke my buying. Or even if they bought their normal allotment, that would only eat up that much of the inventory of that live... So programmatically, if you can figure that piece out, if you can figure out how to forecast when it's gonna spike, it's pretty easy if you're working with the publisher, and you know when these things are scheduled. They have a history of what the viewership looks like. And you can teach the buy side how to handle that, how to ingest it.
You have a tremendous opportunity because unlike entertainment programming, where you know you're gonna have eight minutes of ads over an hour, here are my eight minutes of ads, nothing's gonna change. Sports changes wildly, injury timeouts, overtime. You know, game goes into extra innings. All sorts of things all of a sudden leave you with blank ads. You don't have a demand. So even if you sold all the demand you thought you were gonna have, next thing you know, you're running ads, and you're eating into, you know, the spend of that advertiser for the next event. And so therefore, if you could just toggle to programmatic to backfill when you have those-
Like a remnant idea, but in real time-
Exactly.
Premium.
Yeah, and so that's why everyone's super excited about how programmatic's gonna play in live sports. We're putting a lot of energy and effort into solving for a lot of those glitches in the programmatic. The peak moments? Is that- Yeah, the peak moments, yeah, and that's where owning the ad server is so important.
Why is that? Correlate that.
'Cause we can forecast better, 'cause we're that closer. We have tools like binge watching, where we're able to see spikes like that and cache ads, so we can bring them in. So yeah, we're really excited, and we'll be talking a lot more about our product roadmap going forward in live sports in the coming quarters.
Oh, great, yeah. Questions? Yes. Oh, go ahead.
Yeah, okay. So I heard a data point for the first time. The Criteo CEO mentioned that they're getting dollars from broader ads and not just trade marketing, from other ad partners, right? So that's the genesis of this question. So if the whole case on Magnite is 100% of linear dollars will come from TV dollars, and you will get your fair share of it. Doesn't matter what CPMs do to the market. But what if 100% there's leakage, and it goes into something much more attributable, performative, like retail media? Have you considered that as a value?
Yeah, no. That's still a creative test. It doesn't. Like, so for instance, in retail media, take Walmart, for instance, notwithstanding their purchase of Vizio. But just say Walmart's owned and operated media is their site, you know, Walmart.com. Most of the advertisers that they would go to that sell goods in Walmart are very much used to running TV ads. So what if you took Walmart's data, overlaid it on our supply-
Mm-hmm.
and then you could have that performance measurement, where Walmart is tracking it to the shopping cart. And they have to run the ad somewhere, so they go to a SSP, like Magnite, to buy supply from them because Walmart doesn't own any TV inventory, so to speak. So we participate in that example, where they're just trying to chase a Walmart user off of Walmart, but they know a lot about them. And when they see them on a Paramount, they bid high to be able to run an ad in that show because they know that a Walmart family is watching it. So those retail media dollars, Criteo spends a ton with us today trying to do that on the web. We'll participate in that. We can also participate in retail media.
We'll be making a couple announcements in the coming weeks at Cannes, about a relationship with a hotel company and a relationship with an airline, where we're the ad server for the end screen. So, flying-
Mm-hmm.
You have the screen.
Oh, okay.
Uh, TV-
Uh-huh
... in the hotel room, you have the screen.
Fantastic.
And so that's their,
Non-traditional. Yes.
That's their idea of owned and operated, and they all have huge loyalty programs.
Yeah.
So that's kind of their retail media as well. So there's a lot of ways we can participate on the supply side, but if it's done on the demand side, they come to us to buy the supply to run the TV ads.
Great.
I'm gonna call it there 'cause we're up against time. Thank you very much, everybody. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thanks for coming. Bye.