AdExchanger

MediaMath has completed the first phase of its SOURCE initiative, which CEO Joe Zawadzki describes in this episode as the industry’s first fully-transparent supply chain. “You can look at everyone that’s involved in the transaction. You know the price that they’re charging. You know the value they’re creating. That hasn’t existed in my 25-year career. That foundation of trust in the supply chain… you can build all sorts of wonderful things on top of it.”

TikTok has many imitators, but what makes TikTok, well, TikTok? It’s the content, says Matty Lin, TikTok’s managing director of monetization and partnerships. Because TikTok isn’t based on a social graph, it’s able to stay laser focused on keeping the content experience authentic. Lin shares more on that, plus TikTok’s priorities for 2021, including a major investment in ecommerce.

In the second episode of AdExchanger’s Industry Preview series, Sheri Bachstein describes the high stakes for advertisers as they rush to adopt privacy-friendly data strategies. She says AI is in a sweet spot to address the challenge. Bachstein is global head of IBM Watson Advertising, overseeing the company’s two media brands, The Weather Channel and Weather Underground, as well as its B2B data unit. 

Publishers are in a strong position going into 2021, but only if they can break their long-running dependency on big tech companies. This week's guest, Somer Simpson, has worked on challenges faced by media companies since the late 90s. In this episode, she describes the high stakes these companies face as they take on challenges like privacy compliance, data ownership and user experience. 

In the kickoff episode of AdExchanger’s Industry Preview audio series, we talk with Sebastian Tomich, global head of advertising and marketing solutions at The New York Times. He says, "It’s pretty clear that in the future of media, we’re heading to a direct-to-consumer model that is going to be winner take most.” 

For our final episode of the year, we decided to resurface our memorable 2019 interview with Brian O'Kelley. BOK, sporting a gray beard, holds forth on a bunch of topics: the sale of AppNexus, the legacy of programmatic and whether he’s really retired from ad tech.  

Bonnie Kintzer, CEO and president of Trusted Media Brands, which owns Reader’s Digest, sits at the helm of a storied publishing portfolio that has reinvented itself from digital laggard in 2013 to a digital-first publisher today. Kintzer takes us on its journey of digital transformation.

Pete talks about the shifting revenue mix at Insider  – which owns Business Insider, Morning Brew and Insider Intelligence – and  breaks down the impact of cookies fading out. He says the lost revenue will be ameliorated by increases in private programmatic deals, subscriptions and first-party data programs. 

PubMatic raised $118 million in its public offering on Wednesday, significantly surpassing the $75 million it had set out to generate from stock sales. With a stock price of $29.45 at close of business, the business is valued at just under $1 billion. Rajeev talks about his "sweatpants roadshow" experience and what happens next. 

An update with GumGum, which combines computer vision, AI and contextual advertising. It had layoffs this year, but the business has rebounded. “It’s nice to be part of...a company that’s doing great ads without using privacy data," Schraeder says.