Adtech’s Real Superpower Is Infrastructure: Magnite CTO David Buonasera
As adtech executives spend most of their time talking about AI, identity and data, David Buonasera has a different obsession: making sure the lights stay on when hundreds of millions of viewers suddenly decide to watch the same sporting event at once.
For the CTO of Magnite, infrastructure has quietly become one of the industry’s most important competitive advantages, especially as live sports, streaming and AI place new demands on advertising platforms.
“Infrastructure isn’t normally seen as a strategic advantage in adtech,” Buonasera said in an interview with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan. But the rise of programmatic advertising around major live events is changing that equation.
When the world tunes in at once
The challenge becomes obvious during global sporting events. Buonasera pointed to JioHotstar’s coverage of the Cricket World Cup, where audience demand can surge dramatically in a matter of hours.
Using cloud resources, Magnite was able to rapidly expand server capacity across Asia-Pacific markets to absorb the spike in advertising activity. That approach avoids the traditional alternative of buying hardware months in advance and then watching it collect dust once the tournament ends.
The same dynamic is expected to play out during future FIFA World Cup tournaments and other major live sports broadcasts.
For adtech companies, it is the digital equivalent of preparing a stadium parking lot for a crowd that may or may not show up. The difference is that advertisers are less forgiving when traffic backs up.
AI wants answers faster
The infrastructure challenge extends well beyond sports.
“As the industry is evolving, it’s asking us to do more and more decisioning and do it as fast as we have ever done it,” Buonasera said.
At the same time, platforms are processing increasingly large datasets while supporting AI-driven optimization tools. That has pushed companies to balance the reliability and cost efficiency of traditional data centers with access to cloud-based technologies such as GPUs and AI models.
“Having the reliability of your on-prem infrastructure and its cost efficiency, but also being able to use some of the newest technology in the cloud, like GPUs or AI algorithms, is a huge advantage,” he said.
Buonasera argues that companies locked entirely into either cloud or on-premises systems risk missing important benefits. Magnite’s strategy centers on combining both.
The luxury of saying yes
One of the less glamorous realities of adtech is that growth can become a problem.
“The growth in the adtech ecosystem is incredible,” Buonasera said, noting that incoming requests can increase by more than 100% year over year.
For publishers and broadcasters, the last thing they want to hear is that their technology partner has run out of capacity during a period of rapid growth.
“We have the advantage of always being able to say yes,” Buonasera said.
That answer becomes increasingly valuable as publishers generate more inventory, audience providers contribute larger datasets and AI applications consume additional computing resources.
According to Buonasera, some competitors may eventually face difficult choices about which customers receive priority when infrastructure becomes constrained. Magnite’s goal is to avoid those conversations altogether.
Today’s decisions shape tomorrow’s flexibility
While AI has become the industry’s favorite buzzword, Buonasera believes infrastructure decisions made today will determine which companies are actually able to capitalize on future innovations.
“The decisions you make today are going to define how flexible you can be in the future to try new things and scaling out,” he said.
That requires more than simply adopting a hybrid-cloud strategy. Companies must carefully consider how their cloud and on-premises systems interact, where they are located and how efficiently data moves between them.
As audience data volumes continue to grow and AI workloads become more demanding, Buonasera sees infrastructure moving from a back-office concern to a boardroom priority.
After all, AI may generate the headlines. But if the servers cannot keep up during the next World Cup, nobody will be talking about the algorithm.
As adtech executives spend most of their time talking about AI, identity and data, David Buonasera has a different obsession: making sure the lights stay on when hundreds of millions of viewers suddenly decide to watch the same sporting event at once.
For the CTO of Magnite, infrastructure has quietly become one of the industry’s most important competitive advantages, especially as live sports, streaming and AI place new demands on advertising platforms.
“Infrastructure isn’t normally seen as a strategic advantage in adtech,” Buonasera said in an interview with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan. But the rise of programmatic advertising around major live events is changing that equation.
When the world tunes in at once
The challenge becomes obvious during global sporting events. Buonasera pointed to JioHotstar’s coverage of the Cricket World Cup, where audience demand can surge dramatically in a matter of hours.
Using cloud resources, Magnite was able to rapidly expand server capacity across Asia-Pacific markets to absorb the spike in advertising activity. That approach avoids the traditional alternative of buying hardware months in advance and then watching it collect dust once the tournament ends.
The same dynamic is expected to play out during future FIFA World Cup tournaments and other major live sports broadcasts.
For adtech companies, it is the digital equivalent of preparing a stadium parking lot for a crowd that may or may not show up. The difference is that advertisers are less forgiving when traffic backs up.
AI wants answers faster
The infrastructure challenge extends well beyond sports.
“As the industry is evolving, it’s asking us to do more and more decisioning and do it as fast as we have ever done it,” Buonasera said.
At the same time, platforms are processing increasingly large datasets while supporting AI-driven optimization tools. That has pushed companies to balance the reliability and cost efficiency of traditional data centers with access to cloud-based technologies such as GPUs and AI models.
“Having the reliability of your on-prem infrastructure and its cost efficiency, but also being able to use some of the newest technology in the cloud, like GPUs or AI algorithms, is a huge advantage,” he said.
Buonasera argues that companies locked entirely into either cloud or on-premises systems risk missing important benefits. Magnite’s strategy centers on combining both.
The luxury of saying yes
One of the less glamorous realities of adtech is that growth can become a problem.
“The growth in the adtech ecosystem is incredible,” Buonasera said, noting that incoming requests can increase by more than 100% year over year.
For publishers and broadcasters, the last thing they want to hear is that their technology partner has run out of capacity during a period of rapid growth.
“We have the advantage of always being able to say yes,” Buonasera said.
That answer becomes increasingly valuable as publishers generate more inventory, audience providers contribute larger datasets and AI applications consume additional computing resources.
According to Buonasera, some competitors may eventually face difficult choices about which customers receive priority when infrastructure becomes constrained. Magnite’s goal is to avoid those conversations altogether.
Today’s decisions shape tomorrow’s flexibility
While AI has become the industry’s favorite buzzword, Buonasera believes infrastructure decisions made today will determine which companies are actually able to capitalize on future innovations.
“The decisions you make today are going to define how flexible you can be in the future to try new things and scaling out,” he said.
That requires more than simply adopting a hybrid-cloud strategy. Companies must carefully consider how their cloud and on-premises systems interact, where they are located and how efficiently data moves between them.
As audience data volumes continue to grow and AI workloads become more demanding, Buonasera sees infrastructure moving from a back-office concern to a boardroom priority.
After all, AI may generate the headlines. But if the servers cannot keep up during the next World Cup, nobody will be talking about the algorithm.
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