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AdTechGod Pod
Ep. 81 From Buying to Building: Bari Bucci on Streaming, Strategy, and Staying Curious
00:25:11
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- [00:01]
Ad Tech God
A word from our sponsors Headed to Can so are we with the addition of Audigen, Experian is now your end to end solution for data driven advertising, helping you understand your customers, reach them across channels and measure what matters. The result? More relevant experiences for consumers, more revenue opportunities for publishers and better performance for brands. Book a meeting with our team@experian.com can that's experian.com C-A N N E S this podcast is brought to you by Audiohook, the leading independent audio DSP. Audio Hook has direct publisher integrations into all major podcast and streaming radio platforms, providing 40% more inventory than what could be accessed in omnichannel DSPs. What's more, audiobook has full transcripts on more than 90% of all podcast inventory, enabling advanced contextual targeting and brand suitability. Audio Hook is so confident that in addition to CPM buys, they offer the industry's only pay for performance option where brands can scale audio and podcasting with peace of mind, knowing they are only paying for outcomes. Visit audiohook.com to learn more. That's audiohook.com welcome to the AdTech Godpod, your window into the world of advertising technology and the people behind it. I'm your host, Ad Tech God. Welcome to the AdTech God Pod, your go to for conversations with leaders shaping the future of partnerships in advertising. Today I'm joined by Barry Bucci, Senior Director, Programmatic Partnerships at Warner Brothers Discovery. Prior to Warner Brothers Discovery, she spent nearly six and a half years as VP Trading and Programmatic Operations at Ampersand. She also worked at Amnet and Accordant and it has a great perspective on the buy side overall. Barry, I'm really excited to have you with me today. Welcome to the AdTech Pod.
- [02:06]
Barry Bucci
Thanks so much. I'm really excited to be here.
- [02:08]
Ad Tech God
Same here. Thank you. And you know, I love bringing people in from the publisher side of the business. You obviously have a super impressive background having worked at Ampersand for so many years in Amnet and Accordant. So I'm excited to have you here and congratulations on your new role.
- [02:24]
Barry Bucci
Thanks. This is the end of week four, so I'm still learning everybody's names, but it's been really interesting because I do have that buy side background and now I'm kind of on the other side. I'm on the content provider publisher side which has been so interesting.
- [02:44]
Ad Tech God
You're going to bring an entirely new perspective, I think. Like when you switch over from, you know, buy to sell or sell to buy, you like you, you realize that there's just so much knowledge that can be shared that, that maybe others don't have. So I, I think you'll bring a ton of value. You know, based on your experience.
- [03:00]
Barry Bucci
It is, you kind of hit the nail on the head. It is definitely bringing the buy side perspective to the content provider side where, you know, they haven't been a trader, they haven't been exposed to some of the nuances of how a trader looks at a media plan or how they execute or how they think about accessing inventory for specific campaigns with specific goals. So I'm excited to be here and I'm excited to also learn. There's only so many times in your career that you get to pivot and really make a big change. And this is a big change for me.
- [03:36]
Ad Tech God
I know all about pivots. I know all about pivots. It is both extremely challenging, but you learn so much when you pivot in your, in your career and in your life. I think it's just like the best.
- [03:49]
Barry Bucci
Thing you could do, you know, starting off. I didn't start off in ad tech or, or media for the most part, and I've made several pivots across my, you know, career. So this is just another one.
- [04:04]
Ad Tech God
So how did you start? Barry, like you, you, you have a great background, you've worked for some really well known companies. How did you get into this space? And, and really what brought you to the point where you're at today with wbd?
- [04:17]
Barry Bucci
Yeah, I mean, if we're going back, I'll age myself a little bit. I'm a geriatric millennial, if you want to call me that. And when I graduated college, it wasn't easy. I had a really hard time figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. And so I went to grad school for publishing. And I always joke that it was the most expensive way to learn what a CPM was, but it was great experience. It also led to some really cool internships and one of them was Rolling Stone. On the editorial side, I got to be a contributor for their 40th anniversary cover to cover book, which is so out of print by Val. But during that time, I kind of was. I took some time off, tried to figure myself out, and I ended up going to Pure Media, which is now Prime Media. It was magazines and it was digital properties. And kind of from there I kind of started leaning into the digital side of advertising. And one of my colleagues was boomerang back to a company called 247 Real Media. And I was like, what is this? And she started talking about Programmatic. And I was like, that sounds so interesting. I feel like I can do that. And so I went with her. That kind of was my intro, my education into Programmatic. I met some amazing people, and from there, those relationships definitely carried me, and I'll talk about more of them later on in my career. But from there, I went to Accorda Media and Accorded Media, Mac Reitzer and Artball. You had created such an amazing culture of independent trading desk that was filled with some of the most amazing people. And it was such a groundbreaking educational background to just leaning into different Programmatic technologies. A lot of direct response campaigns, and it was wonderful. And I stayed there for a little over two years before a former colleague from 247 said, hey, will you come work with me? And I spent a year at Smaato, and then I went back when Art and Matt were now at Amnet, and I went with them. And then Nicole Pingus, who I worked with 24 7. She was now CEO of NCC Media, which is now known as Amperson. And she asked me to come with her to start up this programmatic operations department there. And I've never been in TV before. This was in 2018, I think we were kind of playing around with some PG at AMNET for ctd, but it was so nascent, and then it just boomed. And so I kind of stepped outside my comfort zone and started this department from the ground up. And it was such a. An amazing, amazing experience and was there for six years. So my career built on my relationship.
- [07:27]
Ad Tech God
I feel like it's a common theme, like, you know, just for the people listening that aren't nice to their colleagues, like, you better be nice to your colleagues. Like, it's a pretty small industry. And the reality is, is that, like, the people who lift you up at your work, will you usually return the favor and lift them up in the future. So, you know, you enjoy working with them. They. They contribute, they bring value. Those are all very important. But also just generally wanting to work with someone is important. Were you there? Because I think Accordant is part of Dentsu, right? And then AMNET is also part of. I just want to make sure I don't come from the agency world. I want to make sure I've got the, you know, the hierarchy of the agency world in front of me. Correctly.
- [08:06]
Barry Bucci
Oh, yes. So I missed the acquisition by, like, two months.
- [08:12]
Ad Tech God
Oh, man.
- [08:13]
Barry Bucci
Uh, listen, you live, you learn, and.
- [08:16]
Ad Tech God
You'D have a golden microphone right now, baby.
- [08:20]
Barry Bucci
But I don't regret anything because without that year at Smaato, actually, that's where I met Ari Papara for the first time. That's where I met so many of the colleagues I interact with now on the supply side. And as somebody who had never traveled to Europe before, never managed before that experience, and I was managing a New York and San Francisco office. I got to travel for Europe for the first time. It was my first year of marriage and I was away like two weeks every single month. So that was. My husband did not mind, but, like, it was just. It was so fun.
- [09:04]
Ad Tech God
The first year of marriage is never easy anyway. It doesn't hurt being away.
- [09:08]
Barry Bucci
Honestly, it was great. But it also got really tired of traveling. And so for someone who never traveled, loved it, then hated it, but I got to experience so much. And then to come back to Accordant, which was now Amnet, be with my colleagues in this different environment, deal with much bigger budgets, bigger accounts, being inside this Holdco agency, which I had minimal experience with because I was at 24 7, I was there for a few months after the merger with Vaxis. So I got to see some of those dynamics. But this was a whole different experience. I met so many new colleagues that became new friends. And honestly, everything I have done in my career kind of has led me now to wbd, Warner Brothers discovery. And I'm. I think without those experience, I don't think I would be here.
- [10:03]
Ad Tech God
Do you feel as you built your network over, you know, multiple years at Amnet and Smato and Accordant, like, do you feel that a big part of your success today and being able to join such a successful company like WBD has a lot to do with just the education, the knowledge sharing and just the collaboration that you've had with these people. Because it's, you know, I feel like some people think they can do it all on their own and others are all about, you know, collaboration and learning and educating each other throughout the process?
- [10:34]
Barry Bucci
Absolutely. I think there is a learning curve and I think what you just said about kind of doing it on my own, I think when I first started off, I felt like I had so much to prove. I started later in my life in this industry and in my career that I always felt like I had to make up for lost time. And once I got out of my own way and was really able to knowledge share and collaborate and lift others up, it also comes with age and experience and lots of therapy for me.
- [11:10]
Ad Tech God
Like, I think you're right. I think, I think when you're doing Your career, the first thing you're like, I need to. I need to show everybody I know everything.
- [11:16]
Barry Bucci
Exactly.
- [11:17]
Ad Tech God
As you start to mature, you start to realize, look, I know a lot, but not everything. And how do I ask the question? I had the same conversation with Ria Madrid, which is a couple episodes ago, and same conversation, you know, like, be comfortable with the fact that you don't know everything. There's nothing wrong with it, and learn how to ask questions in the right way so you don't waste people's time. But like, you, you should ask questions, and it's. It's the right way to do things.
- [11:38]
Barry Bucci
I mean, you hit the nail on the head, and especially now coming from the buy side and going to the content provider, the network side of things. And I'm almost starting over in a way where I don't know everything. I. For sure. And I'm asking the questions, and I'm not afraid. I feel like I see it a lot in people I mentor. They're afraid to ask questions. And I always encourage the folks that report into me or that I'm able to mentor. What's the worst that can happen? If you ask a question, you learn something or, you know, it's. Don't be afraid to ask what you don't know and just continue to challenge yourself and step outside your comfort zone. Maybe it is public speaking. Maybe it is, you know, speaking up in a room where there's executives in there and, you know, you're brand new.
- [12:30]
Ad Tech God
So I think thoughtful. Yeah. And I think one thing that I've learned is there's an audience for everything. And the format of that question varies. If you're speaking to someone that is not from senior leadership, you know, the way you ask questions is very different than, you know, a direct report or a counterpart. But, you know, thoughtfulness, I think, comes first. And then, you know, do your research before you ask that question. Because if it's readily available and you don't know, that's also not a good look. Like you should, you know, spend five minutes and look it up somewhere in your company wiki or online. But generally, like, asking questions is the right way to do it.
- [13:07]
Barry Bucci
Absolutely. Yeah. There's at least so many times where I'm like, I wish people would just use the search function on their browsers. And first, before. Yes, I agree. I agree with that. I agree with that. But then, you know, don't ask me.
- [13:23]
Ad Tech God
About the flow of dollars from agency to a publisher without at least just glancing at the lumascape for two minutes. It'll, it'll explain some of it for you.
- [13:33]
Barry Bucci
On WhatsApp, no one can see or hear your personal messages. Whether it's a voice call message or sending a password to WhatsApp, it's all just this.
- [13:44]
Ad Tech God
So whether you're sharing the streaming password.
- [13:46]
Barry Bucci
In the family chat or trading those late night voice messages that could basically become a podcast, your personal messages stay between you, your friends and your family. No one else, not even us. WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Now we have AI for a lot of it.
- [14:04]
Ad Tech God
That's true. You probably just type it in, it'll just push it out for you. I'm actually going to try that and say what's the flow of a dollar from, you know, Ford to Warner Brothers and what would it look like through ad tech? So when, when you come from the buy side, having worked from, you know, a different perspective than really the, the sell side, what perspectives do you think you'll bring? I know you're only there a few weeks, I know that you're probably still filling out HR documents and medical benefits, but like what do you, what do you think you're going to bring to the overall group that's going to be valuable and a different perspective for them?
- [14:37]
Barry Bucci
So one thing that especially coming from Amperson and then also just in general through my career as a trader, even if an advertiser did not have a inventory list, a specific inventory list that they wanted to run on, one thing that I very much practice was encouraging my teens to always look at where the ads are running. It's so simple, but so many traders and campaigns are so focused on performance metrics which there needs to be a balance, of course, depending on the goals. But I think having that curated mindset is so important and I think that is something I want to bring to how traders think about campaigns, how there is a balance between depending on the performance and diversity of the inventory, understanding what type of reporting needs that traders will be looking at, some of the buttons that we push, what actually transpires in a dsp. I think that's some of the topics that I've been talking about internally.
- [15:53]
Ad Tech God
I think you're probably bringing a perspective. So on the sell side of things, there's probably a lot of here's the inventory we have have and I'm not saying you're a company saying in general, here's the inventory we have, here's the CPM we have, good luck and. But I think when you understand that there's KPIs that need to be hit when there's targeting capabilities or requirements that need to be hit, that helps you package your inventory better. So like how do we prepackage or how do we package this inventory in a way that's attractive and really like curating that inventory is really important. Is, is that something that you think is, is also valuable to, to your advertisers and what you'll be working on?
- [16:29]
Barry Bucci
Yeah, absolutely. I think inventory discoverability is a huge topic and how traders are finding this inventory and also some of the nuances to the advertiser requests I think is really interesting, whether it's a political advertiser or a cpg. You know, I understand, I understand now that content providers do have a huge direct IO business, but they're not seeing the other side for when they're working with these big agencies and what these trading teams are being asked of by the advertiser. So I think that experience will also help in my new role.
- [17:10]
Ad Tech God
What do you think coming from, you know, now the sell side, the industry really enjoys clickbaity topics and negative topics in the news, but I see that streaming television in particular is still pretty bullish in my eyes that, you know, there's still a lot of growth, there's still a lot of refinement. I think ad dollars will continue to spend, if not accelerate, through a, maybe a more turbulent economy. We want to call it that. I don't think we're in a recession just yet, but in a more challenging economy, where do you see things heading for the publisher world, for the advertiser world, as it relates to just streaming overall? That's, that's positive in your eyes?
- [17:49]
Barry Bucci
Well, so not to go I will address your question, but it just made me think about when I was looking for my next role, one thing I wanted to do was stay on the streaming side of things because I don't think and agree or disagree with me here, but during the pandemic, I've never seen a form of media just take off so quickly. And it just really astonished me how much streaming has grown so quickly and has become such an important part of a media plan of an advertiser's media buy. And I think streaming and CTV are not just going to continue to grow, but it's going to be connected in more direct path to the buyers. I think we're seeing a more immediate need for streaming at scale, but that quality streaming at scale and that's going to continue to accelerate and how that looks in a programmatic fashion is going to continue to evolve. And I'm so excited to see what continues to come. I think it's pretty impressive what's been happening on the streaming side in such a short amount of time in this industry.
- [19:10]
Ad Tech God
So 2020 was quite the boom for CTV. I know there was a lot of panic, I mean outside really of a few weeks where it seemed like everybody turned off the faucet and spend kind of dropped off. I don't know if you remember that, but there was a period where like everybody looked at each other like oh my gosh, this is not good. And then it turned back on and it seemed like everything was just growing at absurdly week over week growth rates across the board. And what that did was really, I think, slow down the traditional spend and we saw the streaming spend start to increase and we dealt with all the wonderful stuff that we're now almost fixed frequency capping, back to back ads, competitive separation topics like we saw that kind of get highlighted for a year and then now we've resolved a lot of those issues that we had before. But I agree, I think streaming will only accelerate over the next 12 months. I keep putting it out there and people argue with me and say it's not going to happen happen. I have a feeling it's going to happen. I don't care about upfronts. I think it's going to happen across streaming. I think it's going to accelerate faster. That's my view, my personal view. I could be wrong. Who says I'm God other than my username but like that's my view of things.
- [20:19]
Barry Bucci
Well, I, I think a lot of people will agree with your view. I did just read something and I about how the prediction is that I think it was streaming or CTV spend is going to accelerate and almost past linear by 2028. You can look it up something like that. But I just. My husband and I have different. He loves his linear tv. We still have a box. We. He still watches it. He does. I don't. I'm a streaming person so obviously I have to mention max. I'm a max subscriber prior to my new role. But you also have Peacock and Paramount and plus and all these different streaming ways to consume content without the need of a linear subscription. So I think it's just going to continue to shift ad dollars towards where the eyes are.
- [21:14]
Ad Tech God
Yeah, I think so too. And I think as you're finding what's the right. I'm trying to. I always try to find the right political way of saying things. As you find the demographics change and as you find the gen, whatever, Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z, kind of start to, you know, consume content like you're finding the older generation has plateaued in consumption and then the newer generation is really streaming heavy and streaming friendly. And so it's just a natural evolution that you're going to find the traditional cable box kind of folks will not have subscriptions and you'll start to see the streamers take off. And that's just my view. And the dollars will follow. It's easy enough to shift dollars to streaming from, from if need be. But yeah, I think it is 2028, 2029, it exceeds it. I think it might be faster, but again, we'll see where it goes.
- [22:07]
Barry Bucci
Absolutely. And I think it's across for all advertisers, all verticals. At Ampersand I was exposed to, you know, they have a huge political business, national and local business. So the diversity of the advertisers that work with Ampersand is vast. And that exposure just, you can see the shift of advertisers that continuously push dollars towards ctv and it's across the board.
- [22:36]
Ad Tech God
So totally. If looking from, from where you sit today, and I know, I know you're still very new and I want to keep saying that because you're probably still, you know, learning as, as you navigate kind of like the internal processes and products that you have available, what do you think is something that's like really positive on the industry as, as we see some economic headwinds, as we see some challenges there? Where do you think the growth will be? Will it be in technology? Will it be in automation? Will it be in packaging? Or will it just continue to grow the way it is today?
- [23:10]
Barry Bucci
I think it's across the board. I think I see it definitely in the way the technology works. I think we're going to continue to see it grow. I think we're going to continuously see, and we're seeing this now, the advancements of the way our current tech is growing to adopt to the needs of CTV and streaming. I think that's really going to be the biggest push. Whether it is how the current SSPs, the current DSPs work, how they talk to each other, how the content providers are delivering their content to consumers, or allowing the type of ads. I mean, we're all, you know, I kind of guessed that there were the interactive ads on ctv. What was it, six years ago or so? It that was, you know, so we're continuously seeing new advancements and in this, this side of the industry and it's just really exciting.
- [24:13]
Ad Tech God
Same. I agree. Barry, I wanted to thank you and thank you to WBD for having you as my guest. I really appreciate your time and it's been great meeting you and I wish you the absolute best of luck in your new role.
- [24:25]
Barry Bucci
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
- [24:28]
Ad Tech God
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the AdTech Godpod, a podcast for the people about the people. Stay connected with me for more insights, trends and interviews in the realm of of adtech. Don't miss out on the latest updates, so follow me on X Instagram and connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't forget ATG Slack community has insights, networking opportunities and jobs. Keep the conversation going and stay at the forefront of adtech innovation.