SALISBURY, CT – With deals like Samba TV buying Disruptel, Criteo acquiring Brandcrunch and Kargo buying VideoByte, the ad tech industry is still seeing M&A, even though some had forecast a drop-off.
It means a much-needed consolidation phase, says Sean Buckley, Chief Revenue Officer of Magnite, who says: “I think we’ll continue to be in a consolidated phase for the foreseeable future.”
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Buckley says: “The buy side in particular is really driving this change. Buyers are being much more hands-on in terms of where their dollars are spent.”
A Consolidation Phase
According to Buckley, demand side platforms (DSPs) are further down the consolidation road, but changes are also starting to be seen on the sell side.
“There’s been some news in the industry around companies either shutting down or disappearing outright,” he says. “I think we’re at a point where that’s quite frankly long overdue.”
Despite the consolidation, Buckley believes there is room for newcomers. “There are no shortage of challenges that emerge in the industry, and I think we’ll continue to see companies born out of capturing those opportunities,” he says. However, he doesn’t see the need to reinvent the core technologies on both the buy and sell side.
Optimization & Maturity Drive Ad-Tech Consolidation: Magnite’s Buckley
Sustainability in Consolidation
“Sustainability is becoming an important theme,” Buckley says, adding that the current structure in areas like display and short form video is unsustainable. “You see media owners working with 15, 20 exchanges in parallel, essentially providing a ton of duplicate paths to the same inventory footprint. And I think that needs to change.”
On the subject of disintermediation, Buckley thinks it makes sense for companies to build new technologies to optimize their businesses. However, he cautions against painting everything with the same brush.
For instance, a demand side platform building a different form of connectivity in the supply side is entirely different from a company that builds technology for media owners to manage their advertising business.
Will there be an end to Ad Tech's M&A dry spell? YES! @conorjmckenna explains why. https://t.co/iG8ERb6hKQ
— Terence Kawaja (@tkawaja) July 13, 2023
Role of AI in the Industry
AI has long played a role in the ad tech business and will continue to do so, Buckley believes.
He sees potential for AI to free up teams to “work on more creative or higher level tasks versus some of the things that are more monotonous.” He also believes AI will continue to impact the production business over time.
Magnite is a publicly traded advertising technology company that provides a range of solutions to help digital publishers and advertisers buy and sell advertising space.
The company, which is headquartered in Los Angeles, California, was formed in April 2020 when Rubicon Project and Telaria merged.
The company’s DSP offers advanced targeting and optimization capabilities, as well as real-time reporting and analytics, to help advertisers get the most out of their campaigns.
You’re watching coverage of Beet Retreat Berkshires, our latest Retreat in Salisbury, Connecticut — presented by Magnite, KERV & TransUnion. For more videos from this event, please visit this page.
