Episode 111: Ross Benes on eMarketer and Juggalos

Summary

Marketecture Podcast: Episode 111 Summary Featuring Ross Benes on eMarketer and Juggalos

Release Date: February 21, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 111 of the Marketecture Podcast, hosts Ari Paparo and Eric Franchi engage in an insightful conversation with Ross Benes, a Senior Analyst at eMarketer. With over seven years at eMarketer, Ross brings a wealth of knowledge on advertising trends, data methodologies, and the evolving landscape of digital marketing. Additionally, Ross shares his unique personal interests, including his admiration for the Insane Clown Posse and his role as an author.

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eMarketer Company Overview

[04:08]
Ross Benes provides an overview of eMarketer, highlighting its ownership by Axel Springer and its global footprint. "It's a market research company that creates a lot of data and charts that you guys love to use." Ross mentions the rebranding journey from Insider Intelligence back to eMarketer and emphasizes the company's expansive workforce spread across the U.S., Argentina, the Philippines, and the UK, underscoring its increasing global presence.

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eMarketer's Methodology

[05:10]
When discussing eMarketer's research methods, Ross elaborates on the blend of original research and meta-analysis. "Some statistics, there's a plethora of existing research and we can kind of just do a meta-analysis of that." For novel or rapidly changing metrics, like upfront ad spending forecasts, Ross outlines a more hands-on approach involving background interviews and multiple data sources. This methodological transparency ensures clarity and reliability in their reports.

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Clarity and Accuracy in Reporting

[06:10]
Ari commends eMarketer for their detailed footnotes, which clarify data interpretations. "Whether you're right or not is a totally different question. But there are plenty of folks who say, like, programmatic is $100 billion market. And what do they mean by programmatic? That could be anything. And you, you folks actually say what you mean on each graph, which is highly appreciated." Ross acknowledges the effort behind these annotations, noting, "me and other analysts spend a lot of time writing those little notes."

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Common Misinterpretations and Challenges

[07:07]
Ross addresses frequent misconceptions, particularly regarding Connected TV (CTV) versus linear TV ad spending. "Linear is still more than double CTV." He clarifies that while projections often suggest CTV will surpass linear TV spending, the current reality is that linear remains dominant, albeit with CTV steadily growing. Additionally, Ross highlights misreported statistics, such as Disney's subscriber counts being erroneously attributed to exceed Netflix by inflating metrics.

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Programmatic Advertising Insights

[11:38]
The discussion shifts to programmatic advertising, where Ross estimates the U.S. market at $181 billion, constituting 90% of digital ad spending. He breaks down the fragmentation within the market, noting the presence of numerous companies like OpenXS and Index Exchange. Ross elaborates, "There's a lot of companies in the Lumascape," emphasizing the competitive and dispersed nature of the programmatic landscape.

Notable Quote:
"Programmatic is 90% of display, which is $180 billion in the U.S." – Ross Benesh [11:30]

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Retail Media Analysis

[17:24]
Ross delves into the retail media sector, spotlighting Amazon's dominance, which accounts for three-quarters of the market. He acknowledges Walmart's burgeoning ad business, now valued at $4.4 billion with a 27% year-over-year growth, positioning it as the clear runner-up. Despite the existence of around 80 retail media networks (RMNs), their collective market share remains modest, indicating a duopoly between Amazon and Walmart.

Notable Quote:
"Amazon is 3/4 of the market still. And there's like we, we estimate about 80 retail media networks now." – Ross Benesh [18:52]

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AI in Advertising

[19:40]
Ross discusses the multifaceted impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the advertising industry. Internally, eMarketer leverages AI for streamlining processes and enhancing internal communications. Externally, AI is disrupting media buying and transforming various aspects of the advertising stack. Ross urges caution against overhyping AI's immediate financial impact, emphasizing the need for strategic adaptation as the technology evolves.

Notable Quote:
"You have to be cognizant of it in some way. But that strategy is going to evolve a lot." – Ross Benesh [20:48]

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YouTube TV Statistics Confusion

[29:28]
The hosts raise a query about conflicting reports on YouTube's share of TV watching. Ross clarifies that according to Nielsen's metrics, YouTube accounts for approximately 10% of all TV viewing, excluding YouTube TV. This distinction highlights the challenges in accurately measuring and interpreting media consumption data across different platforms.

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Ad Safety and CSAM Efforts

[32:54]
Discussing industry responses to Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), Ross highlights DoubleVerify's proactive measures. These include labeling CSAM and high-risk content, avoiding peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing and streaming categories, and collaborating with law enforcement and child safety organizations. Ross appreciates these efforts, noting the importance of industry leaders taking decisive action.

Notable Quote:
"They have to be proactive. If they just sit around getting haymakers from all sides, it's not great for their business." – Ross Benesh [32:54]

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CTV Market Dynamics and CPM Trends

[33:26]
Ross analyzes recent trends in Connected TV (CTV) advertising, pointing out a decline in Cost Per Mille (CPM) rates due to an influx of ad inventory from platforms like Amazon Prime Video and Netflix. "Average CPMs are going down because inventory is increasing." He explains that while anchor CPMs are decreasing, total ad spending continues to rise, benefiting the overall industry.

Notable Quote:
"If total spending goes up, that's good for the industry. The CPM is going to come down." – Ross Benesh [35:12]

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Netflix's Potential for Sports Bidding

[36:10]
A recent rumor suggests Netflix may bid for NFL broadcasting rights. Ross clarifies that while Netflix has expressed interest, actual participation is unlikely in the immediate future due to existing contracts extending until 2029 or 2030. However, he speculates that Netflix may eventually pursue sports rights as part of its growth strategy, despite current assurances to the contrary.

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Movement for the Open Web

[39:25]
The conversation touches on the Movement for the Open Web, an anti-Google consortium founded by James Rosewell of 51 Degrees. Ross describes it as an advocacy group aiming to challenge Google's dominance and influence over web standards and advertising technologies. The group has recently criticized Google's Sandbox APIs, questioning their efficacy compared to traditional cookie-based attribution.

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Personal Insights and Ross's Authorship

[22:26]
Beyond his analytical work, Ross shares his passion for the Insane Clown Posse and his role as an author. His latest book, "1999: The Year Low Culture Captured America," explores how 1990s pop culture phenomena continue to influence contemporary society. Ross humorously refers to himself as a "Juggalo," reflecting his deep appreciation for the group's enduring fanbase and cultural impact.

Notable Quote:
"I've never been to the Gathering, but like, if the great Malinko album comes on, I turn that shit up." – Ross Benesh [24:20]

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with Ross Benesh promoting his book and sharing final thoughts on the dynamic nature of the advertising and marketing industries. He emphasizes the importance of accurate data interpretation and the ongoing evolution driven by technology and consumer behavior.

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Key Takeaways

• eMarketer's Role: A pivotal market research entity providing transparent and reliable advertising data.
• Market Fragmentation: Programmatic advertising remains highly fragmented despite major players like Amazon and Walmart dominating retail media.
• AI's Dual Impact: AI is both an internal tool for efficiency and a disruptive force in advertising strategies.
• CTV Trends: Increased inventory is driving down CPMs, making CTV more accessible to a broader range of advertisers.
• Data Accuracy: Misinterpretations of data, especially concerning emerging platforms like YouTube TV, highlight the need for meticulous analysis.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• "Programmatic is 90% of display, which is $180 billion in the U.S." – Ross Benesh [11:30]
• "Amazon is 3/4 of the market still. And there's like we, we estimate about 80 retail media networks now." – Ross Benesh [18:52]
• "You have to be cognizant of it in some way. But that strategy is going to evolve a lot." – Ross Benesh [20:48]
• "They have to be proactive. If they just sit around getting haymakers from all sides, it's not great for their business." – Ross Benesh [32:54]
• "If total spending goes up, that's good for the industry. The CPM is going to come down." – Ross Benesh [35:12]
• "I've never been to the Gathering, but like, if the great Malinko album comes on, I turn that shit up." – Ross Benesh [24:20]

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the key discussions and insights from Episode 111 of the Marketecture Podcast, providing valuable information for listeners and those interested in the advertising and marketing industries.

Transcript

[Ari Paparo]

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[Eric Franchi]

Yeah, this is going to be awesome. So it's the Market Startup Showcase. Brett, who we had on a couple of weeks ago, he was the former founder and CEO of TubeMogul, took a break from ad tech. Now he's back and investing in AI and ad tech startups. We're both going to be moderating six startups who are going to be doing little mini pitches and showing what the future is going to be. So we've got some familiar names like our portfolio company Chalice, who's doing some very interesting things, but also a bunch of brand new companies nobody's ever seen before, like Gumshoe, AI. They're one of these SEO for LLM companies. Some really interesting companies that are doing things with video, like creativey. It's going to be neat. Like the submissions were awesome. It was really hard narrowing it down. The presentations I think are going to be fantastic. It's going to be hopefully a highlight of the day.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, I'm really excited about it. And I sent out an email to the mailing list talking about this today and I accidentally didn't put a URL on the register button. So if you got an email and clicked register and nothing happened, I would just encourage you to type in Marketlive.com because no one's perfect. And the register button was broken.

[Eric Franchi]

Are there any tickets left?

[Ari Paparo]

Ar vanishing leaf? Few. So hit that register button. Buy those tickets. All right, let's get into it with Ross. All right, and we're here with Ross Benesh, who is the senior analyst for eMarketer for over seven years. He's an author of several books and probably most of the people listening to this have heard of him or have cut and paste charts he's created to put into their PowerPoints. So, Ross, thank you so much for being here.

[Ross Benesh]

Hey, great to be here.

[Ari Paparo]

So I wanted to have you on for just like generally thinking about eMarketer as like this pillar that holds up so much stuff in our industry, so much analysis, business plans, et cetera. Everyone knows the brand. The red color is like ingrained into our brains. Like, what is E Marketer?

[Ross Benesh]

Just a market research company that creates a lot of data and charts that you guys love to use.

[Ari Paparo]

True. Like, what's the state of the company? Who owns it? How big is it?

[Ross Benesh]

Well, Axel Springer owns it. And, you know, we merged with Business Insider Intelligence a few years ago and then we became Insider Intelligence. Now we rebranded back to E Marketer. It's a few hundred people work for us and we're kind of all over right now. I mean, New York is the base and the headquarters, but we have employees all over the U.S. we have forecasters in Argentina. We have some editors in the Philippines. We have an office in the UK with a lot of people. So, you know, it's, it's become more global, I would say, in the seven years I've been here.

[Ari Paparo]

Right. To what extent is it, I want to hear about your methods. Is it original research? Is it piggybacking off other people's estimates and then sort of normalizing? What does it look like a day in the life?

[Ross Benesh]

That depends a lot on what statistic you're looking at and what data is available. You know, some statistics, there's a, just a plethora of existing research and, you know, we can kind of just do a meta analysis of that. But then others, especially when you're doing a forecast for the first time or it's one that, you know, changes a lot per year, like the upfronts, I'll do like a lot of interviews for the forecast. Like on background interviews. We will use other estimates too, but those might be driven by, like, what we find talking to people. So some of the forecasts have like a lot of sources pegged to them. Some of them have a few that they're based on. You know, it really depends what's out in the marketplace and how mature that metric is. So, like, when we do it for the first time, it doesn't have as much data in it as it does, you know, when we do it for the fifth time.

[Ari Paparo]

One of the things I really appreciate about eMarketer is the footnotes, because you explain exactly what the data means. Whether you're right or not is a totally different question. But there are plenty of folks who say, like, programmatic is $100 billion market. And what do they mean by programmatic? That could be anything. And you, you folks actually say what you mean on each graph, which is highly appreciated.

[Ross Benesh]

Well, I appreciate that because I, me and other analysts spend a lot of time writing those little notes and they're not like, you know, normal English sentences. It's very technical terms to try to make them as truncated as possible so it can fit there, even though it's still my take up half the damn chart.

[Eric Franchi]

Ross, people throw around stats all the time and they never cite them. And oftentimes they're wrong. Right. So whether it's the total size of the ad market, the size of Programmatic Search, ctv, what do you hear people getting most wrong when they're out there just like quoting stats about the size of the market or growth.

[Ross Benesh]

That's a good. Well, so, you know, I cover tv, so a lot of my bias is going to be, like, in stats on that. But I. I've heard, you know, people say that spending on CTV is going to exceed linear. Like, I've heard them say that, and it will one day, but, like, not now.

[Ari Paparo]

What are the relative numbers on that?

[Ross Benesh]

Linear is still more than double CTV.

[Eric Franchi]

That's 30 and 70, right?

[Ross Benesh]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. CTV is declining. It's probably a little closer to 60 now, just because every year erodes a little bit. But, like, it will get there. But I've seen, or sometimes you'll hear, like, spending on CTV content is exceeding linear. You know, you might hear that, but that's kind of a misnomer because a lot of the content that's come into streaming is paid for by linear companies. Think of all those CBS shows that are on Paramount and all the, you know, shows produced by NBC that find their way on Peacock. They're not necessarily streaming shows. They just happen to be on the service.

[Eric Franchi]

How do you resist being a. Well, actually reply guy every time you see this stuff?

[Ross Benesh]

Well, I got things to do, you know, otherwise I'd just be sitting there doing that all day. The one that. The one time I became a reply guy was Disney had this stat, I think it was last year. They said that Disney subscribers exceeded Netflix, but that was counting Disney plus, Hulu and ESPN plus. And not even take into a fact that one individual could do all three if you have the bundle. So sometimes you're counting one person three times.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, that's.

[Ross Benesh]

So many news publications just ran that Disney's exceeded Netflix's subscribers and not. Not at all. Not even close. That one. I did do some press interviews and send some hottie tweets, but normally I just try to chill out because I know it'll blow over eventually.

[Ari Paparo]

All right, what's the opposite?

[Ross Benesh]

What.

[Ari Paparo]

What have you published that got people the angriest?

[Ross Benesh]

I feel like I got people a lot angrier at Digiday than I. Than I have at eMarketer, because I was a lot more antagon. Just any story naming a name that had to deal with ad fraud would sure get people the angriest Emarketer. There's a lot less hostility.

[Ari Paparo]

What's the most debatable statistic, though? What's the one where there's a wide variety of views about what the actual number is?

[Ross Benesh]

Well, programmatic ad spending in general. We take a wide view of it, so our numbers are going to come in higher. Whether we'd be looking at total programmatic or programmatic CTV, you know, we're going to estimate over 80% because we're seeing any automation. But some places are going to say like if you're just using automation for the ad fulfillment or you're doing programmatic guaranteed. That's not really programmatic. So if you, I mean if you remove all that, then the number is a lot different. But that's just basically our real time bidding estimate. So it comes down to terminology more so.

[Ari Paparo]

No, I appreciate that. Those are the footnotes. Come in. I want to spend a little time on this. Let's do a little TAM exercise. Let's start with advertising. How big is the advertising business globally x China? Because the number I've heard is a trillion. It's a trillion for every ad. That does include marketing. It does include billboards and radio ads in Africa or whatever. I think Sir Martin probably throws around the billion number and the trillion number.

[Eric Franchi]

Yeah, we've, we've, I mean I think we've said this on the pod.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, I think we have, but I don't know if we have any. We don't have footnotes on the pod.

[Eric Franchi]

Never.

[Ari Paparo]

You can't clearly we get fact checked a lot.

[Ross Benesh]

You know, we have, we have total ads. I'm trying to find the. We have it by all these countries. I'm trying to find the exact metric. So you said, you said total media spending. So this includes traditional. This isn't just digital. Yeah, we have actually pretty close to that. We have it at 948 billion.

[Ari Paparo]

So what's 60 billion here and there? It's fine.

[Ross Benesh]

Well actually that's last year. So it does cross. It does cross though. It does cross a trillion this year.

[Ari Paparo]

Let's narrow a little bit. Maybe you don't have this number. I don't have this number. What's the digital.

[Eric Franchi]

Yeah, it's widely said. It's like basically 700.

[Ari Paparo]

700 billion of the trillion is digital.

[Eric Franchi]

That's what I've heard.

[Ari Paparo]

That seems high to me.

[Eric Franchi]

Between 6 and 700.

[Ross Benesh]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard that a bunch of times. Yeah, it was 689 last year and 776 this year.

[Ari Paparo]

So actually.

[Ross Benesh]

Right, with what Eric's. Maybe Eric's just repeating E marketer stats that someone told.

[Ari Paparo]

That's part of the problem. Okay, let's go.

[Ross Benesh]

We're just parroting into each other.

[Ari Paparo]

Okay, let's talk about. So you define programmatic as anything that doesn't involve a human More or less like anything where the algorithm is determining where the ads show. What's your estimate for the Programmatic? If you have global or if you have a us here, we'll, we'll go.

[Ross Benesh]

Us so programmatic this year? 181 billion for that. And that's like 90% of the market now.

[Ari Paparo]

90%, what market?

[Ross Benesh]

Digital ad spending in the U.S. but half of that is social.

[Ari Paparo]

Yes. So your definition, you can think of it as cutting it two ways. First way you could cut it is display versus search or other formats. Right. And so you remove Google search as this giant number. And then the second way you could cut it is programmatic versus. Yeah, it's your true.

[Ross Benesh]

It's 90% of display.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, 90% of display is. What was the number? 180 billion. Okay, now let's talk about what is probably the most relevant for this audience, which is rtb. So we're taking out social or walled gardens. What's the number there?

[Ross Benesh]

Yeah, so if you just have real time bidding, the total is about 44.

[Ari Paparo]

Billion in the U.S. interesting. Yeah, yeah, in the U.S. so. So let's analyze that number a little bit. So basically this is better than having the marketer subscription. Just having you on the pod.

[Eric Franchi]

Okay, so a wave of cancellations are coming out.

[Ari Paparo]

All right, so 44 billion. So here's what I think is really interesting. You know, and I've written about this and people have talked about this, which if you think about the opportunity for a company like the Trade Desk, which recently in the public markets has taken a shellacking, their media spend, the amount of money that goes through their pipes I think was estimated at somewhere like 12 to 14 billion. So is it fair to say that assuming it's all us, let's forget international for a second, that 12 divided by 44 is 27% market share.

[Ross Benesh]

So our real time bidding is just open exchange and private marketplace. It doesn't include programmatic guaranteed. You know, the Trade Desk is going to be involved in some programmatic guaranteed. So. So that figure would probably be a little lower than what you're estimating if we did create that statistic.

[Ari Paparo]

Right, okay. So their market share would be lower. Yeah, yeah. So if you. And now throw in international, especially Europe. And so you end up with the Trade Desk market share maybe being 20% of programmatic. And yet they're by far the leader in the space. And so it kind of brings up this question about who's got everything else.

[Ross Benesh]

Well, the leader, absolutely.

[Ari Paparo]

The leader's Google, right?

[Ross Benesh]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ari Paparo]

Okay. But we know Google's. Because of the antitrust suit. We know Google's not much bigger than that. Their total media spend through DV360 was only about 10 billion a couple years ago, so it's probably not much more than that. So it feels still very fragmented. Either your estimates are too high, which is possible, or it's more fragmented than we think in terms of where the media spent originates in rtp.

[Ross Benesh]

Well, there's a lot of companies in the Lumascape. I mean, they have to be making something, right? I mean, you talk about fragmented, so there's a lot of share going to OpenXS and index exchange and so on and so forth.

[Ari Paparo]

Sure, sure. Although that's the sell side, so.

[Ross Benesh]

Well, you know what I mean. These names all change. I was gonna say magnite, but I.

[Ari Paparo]

Appreciate you helping me through that exercise. This is absolutely what I. The only reason I wanted to have you on was to have that analys. Uh, let's get back to business. So let's talk about what it's like.

[Ross Benesh]

Amazon would be another Amazon. Big part of that too.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah.

[Ross Benesh]

Okay.

[Ari Paparo]

What's it like like working at a marketer? Do you see your charts in weird places? Like, do you, like, go to a cocktail party and someone's like, you know, talking about some weird stat that they saw and you can trace it back?

[Ross Benesh]

Well, thankfully, no one talks to me about this at cocktail parties. You know, my cocktail party conversation is more about Juggalos and pro wrestling.

[Ari Paparo]

But we're gonna get to the Juggalo part.

[Ross Benesh]

You do see it in. In weird places. Sometimes it's attributed, sometimes not. And you'll. You'll see, like a stat put out there that, you know, you, like, help create, or you put the chart out and it'll be like on some random blog, sometimes almost word for word saying what you're saying. But yeah, you know, I've been at conferences and, like, someone will put it, you know, they'll just have a slide on there, and they might even recreate it themselves. It might not be in our black and red and white outlay, but it'll be our forecast. And it's pretty prevalent even on Twitter. There'll just be random guys tweeting stuff that probably don't even know who I am. And I'll be like, I made that chart.

[Ari Paparo]

There's a lot of that going around. There's also this whole world of SEO spammers that take real data from companies like yours and then create a webpage in front of you. There are People who try to get the SEO juice so people don't have to pay for a subscription from you and things like that.

[Ross Benesh]

Yeah, that's definitely a thing.

[Ari Paparo]

Eric, what percentage of pitch decks have an E marketer chart in them that come your way?

[Eric Franchi]

100%.

[Ari Paparo]

100%. 100%.

[Eric Franchi]

Yeah, 100% just. Which is why I was oddly accurate on especially the TAM size, because it's a slide in every deck and I think it's generally attributed. Right. Because these are documents that they're out for talking to investors. So I usually see them coming back to email.

[Ross Benesh]

I think if someone's put in a pitch deck that attribute it and if they're a client, they're just. It's easier to just grab the image itself which would have the attribution in the. In the chart. That's a lot different use case than like someone trying to get SEO with a blog of analysis they never did and ripped off.

[Ari Paparo]

So you sent us some interesting analysis about retail media and what's going on there. Do you want to talk about what your latest findings are there? Sure.

[Ross Benesh]

And I'm not the retail media analyst, so I'm ripping off like Sarah Manzano and Sky and Blake, but so I'm just giving a shout out.

[Ari Paparo]

There's one chart has a seven line footnote on it. I'm very impressed by that.

[Ross Benesh]

Which chart is that? The one about the gap between the gap.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ross Benesh]

So one finding is just that if we go back a few years ago, the majority of retail media ad spending. Well, it still is the majority, but by far the most was search. And search was almost 50% higher than display dollars. And this is looking outside of Amazon. And now the search and display are pretty similar. So, you know, all these apps that have jammed retail media networks into them have seen their display grow a lot faster than their search. The search has just kind of been steady and now they have all this display because they're serving ads where people are spending time within the app.

[Ari Paparo]

Does display include ads that are showing product, like the product listing ads?

[Eric Franchi]

I believe it does.

[Ari Paparo]

All right, I'll have to read the seven line footnote.

[Eric Franchi]

Yeah, if you extrapolate the spend, I think it has to include the sponsored listings, right?

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, it has to because there's not a lot of banner ads going on in e commerce apps and sites. But I thought it was more interesting. We've talked on this show before about the problems in commerce media, how it's very fragmented outside of Amazon. But you, you showed us a kind of shocking chart about that.

[Ross Benesh]

Amazon is 3/4 of the market still. And there's like we, we estimate about 80 retail media networks now. I mean, you know, everyone's become an ad network is kind of the joke. But they only account for like 15% of the market. So you have Amazon's like 3/4. Walmart is pretty big. And then you got just dozens of companies fighting for between a tenth and a fifth of the market.

[Ari Paparo]

Are you tracking the progress of Wawa?

[Ross Benesh]

You know, Wawa would be one of those, but it's not, it did not make the cut. Yeah, it's not as significant as Target, but their sandwiches are adequate.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, it's really surprising that Wawa's not bigger given their share of podcast discussion. What about AI?

[Ross Benesh]

Is this podcast brought to you by Wawa?

[Ari Paparo]

It could be. If anyone from Wawa is listening, we'll take your money. What about AI? Are you, are you looking into that at all?

[Ross Benesh]

We have a lot of. So AI is pretty interdisciplinary right now. We have a VP who is focused on AI within the company, like using AI to streamline processes, using IT to write emails or briefings. So we have the internal use of AI, but of course we're looking at it external. Max Willins wrote a report on AI disrupting media buying. It's kind of in every area. So whether you're a retail analyst or the programmatic person or the CTV person, or even if you're like on the other side of the company covering finance, you have to be cognizant of it in some way. But that strategy is going to evolve a lot. I'm sure we'll only have primar forecasts on that over time. But you gotta be kind of cautious and not just buy the hype and say this is going to be a trillion dollars immediately.

[Eric Franchi]

Yeah. I mean, because there's two things, right? It's, it's to your point, the use of AI that's transforming, you know, much of the advertising stack. But then there's like the advertising format that is kind of yet to be built. But we're starting to see some of the emergence of it. We'll even see it, you know, a couple weeks from now at marketing of like, you know, what an LLM based ad looks like. How large does a market need to be for emarketer to start tracking it?

[Ross Benesh]

You know, that's a great question. It's not, I don't know if there's like a particular size because we've tracked some kind of small markets. If there's enough interest in it like programmatic podcast ad spending, which relates to this thing you're listening to. If you guys want to jam in and add in the middle. It's not that big of a market. It's 500 million.

[Ari Paparo]

The total podcast market was estimated by the IB to be 2 billion last year. It's maybe a little bigger now, but the programmatic portion of that is probably de minimis.

[Ross Benesh]

Yeah. So programmatic, it's 270 million.

[Ari Paparo]

Very small.

[Ross Benesh]

So it's a. It's a. Podcasts already a fragment of digital audio. And they're growing, certainly, but they're not the majority. Most digital audio still people listening to Spotify and Pandora and iHeartradio. And then programmatic is a sliver of that. But we forecast it because clients are interested in it, and it's a growing market, so that's kind of one of the smaller ones we would do. But if it's under 100 million, that's a tough pitch to get the resources and build out an annual forecast for.

[Ari Paparo]

As a side note, the Information just published a deep article on Spotify's troubles, so that's worth listening, reading if you have a subscription. The Information. So let's talk about your secret life or your other life as an author. So many people who are listening to this may not know that Ross has published. Was it two books?

[Ross Benesh]

This is my fourth one.

[Ari Paparo]

Fourth books. Oh, my God. The latest one is called 1999, the Year Low Culture Captured America. You want to tell us about that?

[Ross Benesh]

Yeah. The premise is just that the trashy 90s are shaping our world in all sorts of weird in interesting ways. And so I see, like, the heyday of Beanie Babies reminiscent in some of these meme coins and NFTs that blow up in value and then suddenly decelerate. Pro wrestling is in the White House. We got a WWE hall of Famer and, you know, Secretary of Education, soon to be was former pro wrestling CEO. And, you know, Jerry Springer is with us in all these ways that people fight with each other online or in reality TV or even in congressional hearings. And I see the moral panic of 90s Video games resurfacing with the moral panic of TikTok. Right now. Congressional leaders talk about TikTok the way they talked about doom in 1999, causing all kinds of irreparable harms to children. So I looked at the trashiest stuff that I loved as a kid, and I connected it to what's going on in our world today.

[Ari Paparo]

It's fascinating. And there's a reality TV show star. Who's the president now? Related. How do you find the time?

[Ross Benesh]

It's tough and it's getting tougher because I'm about to have like my second kid in a few weeks and I don't know if I will continue to find the time. But I've devoted a lot of nights and weekends to watching 20 part documentary series on Monday night. Pro wrestling ratings, which my wife would probably wish I would do something else with my time.

[Ari Paparo]

So the Insane Clown Posse, we have to bring this up. So you're a member of this posse?

[Ross Benesh]

Well, there's only two members of the posse, J. Shaggy too dope. I. You can call me a Juggalo if you wish.

[Ari Paparo]

I would love to.

[Ross Benesh]

Okay. I'm fine with that. I don't know if I'm. As a tensor, you know, I don't have any hatchet gear other than the shirt I'm wearing. And I got this off of temu, which I don't know if that counts. So I like the Insane Clown Posse. I'm fascinated by them. I've written about them for business journals, culture magazines, all sorts of places. I think they get more out of less than any other entertainer in the world. I mean, they just. They have a career of like 30 years going off of just appealing to a few thousand fans intensely. So my love isn't ironic, but I'm also like, I've never been to the Gathering. I'm not like super intense about it, but like, if the great Malinko album comes on, like, I turn that shit up.

[Ari Paparo]

All right. The Gathering. I've heard about the Gathering. It's similar to like what the boy Scouts have when they all go to like the mountains.

[Ross Benesh]

That's an interesting way of putting it.

[Eric Franchi]

One other VROs factoid for the listeners, if you do a Google search, I want to say the title is the Oral history of the Lumascape on Digiday. That was a really good piece. We're just doing some quick research on your background. That was the first result that came up and it was really good. So for a lot of the folks that are somewhat new to the industry and want to hear how this set of landscape documents were created and the impact it had, you should check it out.

[Ross Benesh]

One other one I did that was ridiculous at Digiday and I appreciate that. Shout out was the oral history of header bidding. And it wasn't even header bidding as it became used. It was just why that buzzword was chosen as the term for it. It was like 2,000 words on the Lexicon of AdTech target.

[Ari Paparo]

I've referred to that article many times. I'm pretty familiar with it. All right, well, let's call it there and we will come back. So we've renamed our second session. It's no longer News of the Week, it's now the refresh. Because Marketecture also publishes a newsletter called the refresh@therefresh news.com and we also have the Refresh on social, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. So you should check out architecture on those platforms. But we will be back with Eric and I as well as Ross talking about news that happened this week under the brand the Refresh. This episode is brought to you by Global X. Since 2008, Global X ETFs has been.

[Eric Franchi]

Committed to empowering investors with unexplored intelligence solutions. GlobalX specializes in exchange traded funds that offer exposure to the artificial intelligence ecosystem, including themes like data centers, robotics, semiconductors and cloud computing. To learn more about Global X's entire suite of ETFs from covered calls, fixed income, emerging markets and more, visit globalxetf's.com all right, we're back with the Refresh. Do you know why it's called the Refresh? Ari?

[Ari Paparo]

I made up the name. I'm good at naming things.

[Eric Franchi]

Oh, I thought it was a shout out to Kramer on that Seinfeld episode where he was obsessed with the Junior Mints. Wow, very refreshing.

[Ari Paparo]

No, it was sort of an ad tech joke because people do refreshes to get more ads. I'm a pretty modest guy. I won't say I'm good at X very often. One thing I'm very good at is naming things.

[Eric Franchi]

I like it. Okay, second week in a row your DMs were flooded with corrections, amplifications, updates. Why don't you take us through?

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, let's make it quick here. So last week's pod, we talked to Christoph of Atalytics. We got a ton of feedback. And then following up, both AdTech explained and the Monopoly report talked about that as well this week. So we're really flooding the zone on Christoph. Anyway, Christoph felt really bad that he did not give enough credit to Ariel Garcia of Check My Ads, who was very involved in the CSAM investigation. So he really asked us to make sure that we gave Ariel her due credit. I also owe Ariel a lot of credit for the work she's done at the doj. So keep up the good work and thank you for that. Secondly, DoubleVerify reached out because during that show I mentioned that DoubleVerify had written a rebuttal to Atalytics a couple weeks earlier, and DoubleVerify wanted to be very clear that that had nothing to do with the csam. They were fully supportive of the CSAM work and that the rebuttal was other work Atalix has done. So I just want to make that clear in case anyone thought doubleverify was being defensive about the CSAM stuff. And lastly, there's this report that YouTube is 10% of all media watching. And the YouTube people have been saying that does not include YouTube TV, but it might actually include YouTube TV. Listener Doug Laurento pointed us to some footnotes again in the report that says it does include YouTube TV. So I'm just gonna leave this as I'm little confused as to what it includes or not, because the YouTube people are kind of confused. Everyone's confused. I think it includes YouTube TV, but they don't hold up.

[Eric Franchi]

This is a job for literally one person, and we have that person on the pod right now. Ross Bennes, answer this. How much of TV watching is YouTube?

[Ross Benesh]

About 10%. And if we're looking at the Nielsen gauge, I believe the Nielsen gage does exclude YouTube TV because it just says YouTube Vein. But that's if you're looking at the Nielsen gauge. I don't know if you guys are looking at a different study, but the Nielsen gage would show 10% of all television watching is YouTube main. Or were you guys looking at a different study, though? I don't know.

[Ari Paparo]

We'll leave this to the readers to understand.

[Eric Franchi]

Yeah, fight it out in the comments. Okay, we have something you grabbed that was late breaking yesterday. So X is apparently pushing IPG to spend more, allegedly on the platform because IPG is apparently caught in the crosshairs of this whole Trump admin backlash. Walk us through this.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, I don't want to get too political here, but there seems to be a pattern. The Trump administration has been shaking down Paramount for a very large amount of money. Basically, the Trump administration is suing Paramount because they believe that The CBS program 60 Minutes, that's cut the Kamala interview to be more pro Kamala, which is an insane lawsuit. I mean, it makes no sense. But because Paramount is trying to merge right now, it's under the thumb of the regulators. And effectively what's going on is some sort of quid pro quo where Paramount's gonna have to settle the lawsuit, pay tens or $20 million to Trump in order to get their merger approved. Now, a second instance, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that a lawyer for X called up A lawyer from IPG and said more or less it'd be a real shame if your merger didn't go through. Maybe you should spend more money on X and you know, that's the world we're living in. It's alleged. It's the Wall Street Journal reporting it. The Wall Street Journal said multiple sources confirm this. Yeah, it's like not a great situation.

[Eric Franchi]

That seems bizarre. How much does IPG's spend account for X's potential spend and how important is that?

[Ari Paparo]

I mean they're a big holding company, right. And Apple recently decided to go back on X with their spend. I don't think anyone thinks X is a great place to spend media. Doing a favor for the regime seems like a.

[Ross Benesh]

It's a pretty small place too. Like the total spending on X is not much. Yeah, it's not going to affect your media budget a ton if you do go back.

[Eric Franchi]

Yeah, fair point. Huh. That's weird. Okay, let's get back to ad tech. On the heels of the Kristoff episode, DV came out with a post that I thought was really good and worth talking about about increasing their safeguards around csam. And we'll point to it in the notes in the newsletter. But basically they, you know, brought this safeguard approach out for the industry that's got three points. So it's number one, obviously like labeling CSAM and high risk content and make it a category that is enabled by default to avoid running ads on. Number two, completely avoiding the P2P sharing and streaming category. And number three, have a ongoing collaboration with law enforcement and child safety organizations. So I thought this was a really good response to the piece that analytics came out.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, I mean they have to be proactive. You know, if they just sit around getting, getting haymakers from all sides, it's not great for their business. So it's good to see them being proactive, doing something and you know, not being too cautious and you know, they.

[Eric Franchi]

Were the one that did it. I didn't see any other brand safety vendors or anyone else come out with any, any solutions.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, I mean, I think they're definitely positioning themselves as the clear leader in the space despite their, you know, drawbacks or negatives. Is seems strangely quiet on a lot of this stuff.

[Eric Franchi]

Yeah, I guess that's a strategy perhaps. Moving on. So let's talk about CTV and your chart. Ross made its way into a semi viral X thread. So this username, Tom Lee, I guess he's an ex Amazon guy. He pointed out that after Amazon Prime Video started enabling ads by default. About a year ago, there's been a flood of inventory that's had meaningful impact on CTV CPMs. So it's interesting. They didn't really like point to averages in general, but you know, just taking a Look here, Netflix CPMs a year ago were averaging $42. Now they're $31. Amazon Prime Video itself was like $35, now it's $28. So. So there's certainly some equilibrium happening in the market with pricing and supply. I thought this was pretty interesting.

[Ross Benesh]

Yeah, we've been seeing that for about a year now where the inventory share has been increasing. Amazon's the biggest factor of that. But you have other factors too, like Netflix and Disney plus and Max, their ad product is getting more mature and they're getting a lot more ad supported viewers than they did like right when they launched. So that's just a lot of additional inventory. And as that goes up, the average unit goes down. You know, total spending is going up though. So I just want to emphasize that these things kind of work, you know, in different directions. If total spending goes up, that's good for the industry. The CPM is going to come down. It's more, it's cheaper to buy a 30 second spot than it used to be. And if more inventory floods, like if Netflix gets even more users converted to the ad supporter plan, you'd probably see inventory, I mean, ad prices decline even a little bit further.

[Eric Franchi]

Yeah, this is going to be interesting to keep an eye on because there's also the dynamic of all these new SMBs and performance based advertisers starting to experiment with CTV. So, you know, we could see real equilibrium if, you know, we see just supply stabilization, more advertisers, the whole thing kind of.

[Ross Benesh]

And those SMBs aren't wanting to pay $40 CPMs too. They're going to be more comfortable if the CPMs are where they are now or if they even decline a little bit. They're probably a little discouraged two years ago, but now Disney and others have cheaper inventory. That's more in their ballpark.

[Eric Franchi]

Yeah, that makes sense. All right, this is one that you flagged. So apparently, and this is like big news, apparently Netflix could be bidding for the Sunday afternoon NFL games, which is huge. From a watch standpoint, 72 of the top 100 most watched broadcasts of 24 were NFL games.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, so this is sort of true, but exaggerated. So what happened was that a senior executive from Netflix went on the podcast the Town, which is about Hollywood, and the host asked her what content would you love to have the most. And she said Sunday NFL and it kind of got a life of its own, that they were going to be aggressively bidding on it, which doesn't appear to actually be true. And Rich from LightShed, who's a friend of the pod, wrote a good blog post, kind of throwing some water on this. But the facts are that the NFL has an opt out of their current deals. I think it's been reported as 2029 and other people have reported as 2030. But I think it's the 2029 season and it's right after the 2030 Super bowl that the NFL can opt out of its current contracts and renegotiate, which would throw Netflix and others into the mix to some extent. I think there's no doubt they'd be involved. I mean, they're already owning some rights. So I think there's a glimmer, more than a glimmer of truth to this, but the actual news cycle around it has been a little exaggerated.

[Ross Benesh]

Well, Netflix, in their last earnings call, made a point to say that they're not going to be bidding on any, you know, big sports rights in the foreseeable future. But what I said in my statement after the call is that they have a habit of doing the exact thing that they said they wouldn't do, like having ads and cracking down on password sharing and so, you know, having live sports to begin with. So, like, when they say they're not going to do something, I fully expect them to do so within a few years. The reason they're not going to bid on anything really major in the next six months probably is because there isn't a lot up for renewal. None of the big ticket items are up. Like they're all locked up. So five years from now it would make sense for them to bid on this. But that's, that's a long time, really.

[Eric Franchi]

Okay, moving on. We talked about this a little bit in the previous segment, but I just want to give a shout out to Ryan Barwick from Morning Brew. He pointed out that Walmart's ads business is now 4.4 billion and it grew 27% year over year. So this is the clear number two in the category. It's going back to you, Russ. Do you see this, you know, effectively duopoly of Amazon and Walmart continuing? Or just because there's, to your point, 80 RMNs that you track? Probably a heck of a lot more if you still got a good on the long tail. Do you see this at all balancing out over time?

[Ross Benesh]

Well, you're still going to have a duopoly where the majority is going to go to two companies. Right now it's 80%. You know that share might shrink to like 60 eventually. So what I'm saying is I. The rest of the market is going to grow faster because they're starting from a smaller base and it's 80 companies and probably be a hundred within a year or two. But they have a long way to go. So it's gonna be a long time before 51% doesn't go to Walmart and Amazon combined.

[Eric Franchi]

Yeah, that makes sense. What's the total like the total size of the retail media market?

[Ross Benesh]

$63 billion.

[Eric Franchi]

$63 billion market in the United States.

[Ari Paparo]

Awesome.

[Eric Franchi]

So it's a big market. All right, Ari, who is behind the Movement for the Open web and have you heard of them prior to today?

[Ari Paparo]

The movement for the open web? I think, I don't want to say something incorrect, right. But I think this is a group that's been in the UK for a while and that was started. I had outreach from a guy at. There's this cross device company called Thirteen Bells or something. It has a really weird name like that, like 23 something. It's not 23, 33 across. It's a number and then a word. And they've been doing cross device stuff for a long time. And the CEO reaches out to me to get me involved in this thing and I'm pretty sure that's what Movement for the Open Web is. And so basically an anti Google consortium.

[Eric Franchi]

It's conspicuously no names on the website. So that's the reason why I asked. So maybe that's not a conspiracy, unfortunately.

[Ross Benesh]

So it's like ad tech Stonecutters. Is that like what we're going for?

[Eric Franchi]

I guess. What do you mean by that?

[Ross Benesh]

Well, the Stonecutters are a parody by the Simpsons of the Freemasons. So like, like a secret society that runs the world, but they don't know who's in it.

[Ari Paparo]

What is a conspiracy if not just like an organized plan with a bunch of people?

[Eric Franchi]

Okay, so it is a conspiracy.

[Ari Paparo]

No. I will spill some tea here. Okay, it is. James Rosewell is the founder. He was the founder of 51 Degrees. I knew I had it. I knew I had it. Sort of vaguely deep in my memory. 51 degrees is a cross device data company that's been around for a while.

[Ross Benesh]

It's not half of a 90s boy band.

[Ari Paparo]

Not exactly half. Rounding error. So that's the origin. Like I said, it's A UK based, kind of vehemently anti Google lobbying group. And they've been very involved in trying to get the W3 seed and not approving the sandbox stuff and otherwise just being advocates for. What's the opposite of being an advocate? Someone who's against Google, an opponent. Opponent. Yeah. Thanks.

[Eric Franchi]

Anyway, they came out swinging. Thank you. That was great. No longer a conspiracy. They came out swinging against Sandbox, basically claiming that it doesn't work and Google themselves said it doesn't work based on a post that lagged that Sandbox was inaccurate by wide margin vs. Cookies in attribution reporting.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah. So not a lot of ink has been spilled on the reporting. Sandbox APIs, everyone in our little universe's focus on Papi, which is kind of like reporting part. I haven't spent a lot of time on the reporting part either. So this is. It's interesting in that it's really just quoting from a Google report that's a couple months old, but I'd love to hear more from experts on reporting and how it's going.

[Eric Franchi]

Yeah, for sure. Hey, this has been an awesome episode. Do you want to cut it here, Ari, or anything else you want to slide in?

[Ari Paparo]

No, this is great. The new refresh is going swimmingly. So, Ross, thank you so much for being here. Super interesting. Why don't you plug your book one more time?

[Ross Benesh]

1999, the year Lowell culture conquered America and kickstarted our bizarre times. We'll learn a lot of fun facts like Jerry Springer was the first show ever recorded on TiVo.

[Ari Paparo]

All right. Anywhere your books are sold, right?

[Ross Benesh]

Yep, exactly.

[Ari Paparo]

All right, Eric, always a pleasure.

[Eric Franchi]

Always a pleasure. We'll see you next week, everybody. Bye bye. Thank you for subscribing to marketecture. New interviews are added every week at marketecture tv and your favorite podcasting app.

[Ari Paparo]

Foreign. Thank you for listening to the marketexture podcast. New episodes come out every Friday and an insightful vendor interview is published each Monday. You can subscribe to our library of hundreds of executive interviews at Markitecture tv. You can also sign up for free for our weekly newsletter with my original strategic insights on the week's [e-mail]. and if you're feeling social, we operate a vibrant Slack community that you can apply to [e-mail].