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Founded as a premium video SSP in 2015, Telaria this week launched an enterprise video management platform to help premium publishers better understand, decide, and act in ways that accelerate the value of their video content. It is currently working with a number of publishers (in beta) including a long-term partnership with Bonnier.
Based in New York, with global offices in major cities including London, Sydney, Singapore, and São Paulo, the publicly traded company employs over 140 people around the world.
WNIP caught up with Mark Zagorski, CEO at Telaria, to learn more about the company’s new video management platform and specifically what it feels is its main USP in a rapidly evolving landscape.
WNIP: Why is it so important to offer publishers a one-stop platform?
Zagorski: In all the conversations we have with publishers, they tell us they want fewer but better tools to be able to monetise and manage their video inventory. If you look at the current ad tech landscape, it’s hard to find a streamlined management platform that combines the controls and functionality of an ad server built for connected TV (CTV) with the data and analytics that can help publishers optimize their monetisation and user experience. So in many ways, we are simply responding to an increasingly vocalised market need.
Over the last six months we ramped up our efforts to bring that vision of an end-to-end video management solution to life. It’s literally built from the ground up to solve the most complex problems that exist in video and CTV ad serving. That is a huge advantage over others who have legacy technology or even those that are trying to bolt on new tech onto old. We expect the process of making our platform better to continue as we iterate new functionality and stay ahead of industry trends.
WNIP: What differentiates it from other products on the market?
Zagorski: As our premium video clients became more sophisticated, it was clear that they were looking to optimise revenue not only across all platforms, but also across all demand sources – both programmatic and direct. Having separate systems was creating sub-optimal, and in many cases, biased outcomes. By integrating the data generated across all opportunities into a single decisioning engine and delivery platform, we are able to solve this challenge.
Other companies in our industry have solutions rejiggered from desktop days – that won’t cut it as more and more video inventory comes from CTV. We’ve been able to learn from our predecessors and think three-four steps ahead to anticipate what publishers and advertisers need and execute on that rapidly.
In terms of product features, our VMP is the only in the industry to offer live, real-time analytics and reporting that enables publishers to better segment and value their supply. Additionally, we have built specific solutions to create a great user experience across “big screen” formats such as ad podding, which eliminates ad redundancy and conflict, and audio normalization, which ensures that content and ads are delivered at the same volume level. All of these self-serve solutions work seamlessly together in the only system based on live data flows to help publishers drive revenue gains by integrating all first and third party data in one spot, ensuring complete inventory intelligence.
WNIP: How will this launch move the advanced TV ecosystem forward?
Zagorski: We know that consumers are redefining what it means to watch TV. They are increasingly opting to watch what they want, when they want via a connected big screen. It is vitally important to publishers and content creators that they build a long-term, premium user relationship with these consumers that brings them back over and over again. Monetising this relationship in the most efficient and effective way is essential – which is the drive behind the Telaria VMP.
The scale of the OTT opportunity (the delivery of film and TV content via the internet, without requiring users to subscribe to a traditional cable or satellite pay-TV) is huge and the fight for viewers is getting more intense. By necessity many of these platforms are going to have to offer an ad-supported option and they need to find the right technology partner who can provide that superior monetisation engine as well as the data intelligence and delivery mechanism that will enable them to run their businesses profitably.
WNIP: Thanks for your time, we’ll look forward to catching up later in the year