Episode 138: Perplexity exits ads, Epsilon owns an SSP, and Paramounts Looks at The Free Press

Summary

Podcast Summary: Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.

Episode 138: "Perplexity exits ads, Epsilon owns an SSP, and Paramount Looks at The Free Press"

Release Date: September 5, 2025
Host: Ari Paparo
Co-host: Eric Franchi

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Episode Overview

This week’s Marketecture episode dives deep into three major stories shaping the ad tech, search, and media landscape:

1. The fallout and implications of the Google search antitrust remedies.
2. The revelation that Epsilon (owned by Publicis) operates an SSP—largely unknown to agency buyers until recent Adweek coverage.
3. Perplexity’s apparent de-prioritization of advertising and spotlight on the churning ad lead.

Additional rapid-fire segments cover OpenAI’s acquisition moves, the identity data sector, CTV development, and a rumored media acquisition of The Free Press by Paramount—offering a comprehensive cross-section of current industry news and analysis.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Google Search Antitrust Remedies: What Changes?

(01:23–08:41)

• Summary of Remedies:

  • No forced divestiture of Chrome or Android.
  • Ban on exclusive search distribution deals, but with significant loopholes (if Google is the default, practical effects are limited).
  • Mandated sharing of search data with competitors—but only to qualified entities and with many technical, privacy, and scope caveats.

• Hosts’ Take:

  • Ari Paparo: “If Google had 90% market share in search last week, they're probably gonna have 90% market share in search next week. And if AI was the biggest challenge to Google last week, it remains the biggest challenge to Google this week. Nothing changed.” (02:09)
  • Both hosts express skepticism that the data-sharing mandate will cause a real shift: “There are enough questions around what data should be and can be legally transferred...both of us are very skeptical it'll have any actual impact on reducing Google's power.” (04:21)

• On AI’s Role:

  • Recognize that the real threat to Google’s search dominance is not regulation, but AI-driven behavior change.
  • “The biggest story in search is not the antitrust, it's the potential competitor to Google search from AI and the change in consumer behavior.” (06:27—Ari Paparo)

2. Epsilon’s SSP Ownership & Industry Transparency

(09:32–15:48)

• Revelation:

  • Adweek reports that agency buyers were purchasing inventory through a Publicis/Epsilon-owned SSP via complicated reseller chains—often unknowingly.

• Hosts’ Reactions:

  • Eric Franchi: “First of all, this makes me laugh...Did you know that publicist via Epsilon had an ssp?” (09:58)
  • Ari Paparo:
    • “You have to remember that Publicis owns Epsilon...Then you have to remember that Epsilon bought Value Click. Then you have to remember the Value Click changed its name to Conversant...The hardest part is remembering that this SSP still operates because, like, no one remembers that.” (11:13)

• Why It Matters:

  • Buying through an SSP owned by a competitive agency group could expose sensitive spend data and strategic targeting information.
  • “Your competitors will know how much you're spending, what you're bidding on, what kind of sites you're bidding on.” (12:15—Ari Paparo)

• Industry Structure Critique:

  • “It's no one's fault but the publishers to be honest. Yeah, because basically they're working with too many SSPs. Duplication.” (15:49—Ari Paparo)

3. Perplexity Exits Ads (at Least for Now)

(15:58–18:27)

• News Angle: Adweek reveals Perplexity’s head of ads, Taz Patel, has exited after a year; ad revenue was extremely modest ($20,000 in Q4 per the article).

• Hosts’ Insights:

  • Eric Franchi: “Perplexity is a little perplexing...maybe advertising is just like yet another thing they're trying to figure out.” (17:04)
  • Ari Paparo: “The short answer in my opinion here without any data is that they invested in advertising too soon based on their volume...the play typically is scale, scale, scale and then advertising once you have the scale, especially when they're trying to reproduce the Google AdWords model.” (17:15)
  • Stability concerns flagged due to Perplexity’s wide-ranging and experimental business pursuits (from buying Chrome to launching a browser).

4. OpenAI Acquires Statsig: The Commercialization of AI

(18:30–21:20)

• Details:

  • OpenAI acquired Statsig, a website optimization and analytics company, for $1.1 billion—a major move in the AI/data optimization space.
  • Leadership and talent overlap between Facebook veterans and OpenAI.

• Implications:

  • “OpenAI has a lot more ammo in the effort to become the new ad hub than Perplexity does based on this acquisition.” (19:20—Ari Paparo)
  • Potential for OpenAI to power new kinds of website, ad, and data optimization.

• Notable Quotes:

  • “This is not a minor acquisition. This is a pretty important acquisition.” (21:20—Ari Paparo)

5. Superset Launches Symmetry: Agentic AI in Ad Tech

(21:35–23:43)

• What’s Happening:

  • Superset (Tom Chavez and the ex-Crux crew) incubates a new agentic AdTech AI startup, Symmetry (with two M’s).
  • Focus: optimization for LLMs, loyalty offers, publisher monetization.

• Industry Observation:

  • “It comes in waves...six months ago there was a ridiculous preponderance of AI companies doing creatives and creative generation and media planning. And now six months later, there's a ridiculous number of AI companies doing GEO, AIO and ad networks for LLMs.” (23:43—Ari Paparo)

6. CTV Milestones: Roku Overtakes Broadcast TV

(23:47–25:09)

• Stats:

  • Roku now accounts for 21.4% of all TV viewing (per Nielsen)—surpassing broadcast TV’s 18%.
  • Hosts clarify that this includes usage of all streaming services via Roku devices, not just Roku content.

• Commentary:

  • “YouTube gets to actually monetize every single ad on their monstrous footprint. Whereas Roku has kind of this somewhat complicated business model.” (24:39—Ari Paparo)

• NFL RedZone to Add Commercials:

  • Long-time “commercial-free” channel (RedZone) will begin featuring ads, causing subscriber uproar.
  • “People are going crazy. Do a search on X for NFL Red Zone commercials...people are going to storm NFL hq.” (25:02—Eric Franchi)
  • Supply benefit for advertisers, as more live streaming ad inventory comes online.

7. Ad Tech M&A in Europe: RocaD Acquires Ziotap Data

(27:32–29:16)

• Deal Overview:
  • Rokad acquires Ziotap’s data business, positioning themselves as the “LiveRamp of Europe.”
  • Ziotap to focus on its CDP business, will be a customer of Rokad Data.
  • Brief discussion of naming confusion (Rokad vs. Roccat), and Rokad’s role as more of an aggregator/avatar of IDs.

8. Paramount Eyes The Free Press Acquisition

(29:32–32:29)

• Deal Rumor:

  • Paramount reportedly considering buying Bari Weiss’s news platform, The Free Press, for $200 million.
  • Context: Shift in Paramount’s ownership, potential ideological alignment, and value for CBS News under new stewardship.

• Takeaway:

  • “$200 million for a news, basically a newsletter and podcast business is, is pretty healthy.” (31:43—Eric Franchi)
  • Conversation segues into podcasting business valuations with tongue-in-cheek ambition for Marketecture.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Ari Paparo (02:09):
  “If Google had 90% market share in search last week, they're probably gonna have 90% market share in search next week. And if AI was the biggest challenge to Google last week, it remains the biggest challenge to Google this week. Nothing changed.”

• Eric Franchi (09:56):
  "First of all, this makes me laugh...Did you know that publicist via Epsilon had an ssp?"

• Ari Paparo (11:13):
  “You have to...remember that Epsilon bought Value Click. Then you have to remember the Value Click changed its name to Conversant...The hardest part is remembering that this SSP still operates because, like, no one remembers that.”

• Ari Paparo (15:49):
  "It's no one's fault but the publishers to be honest. Yeah, because basically they're working with too many SSPs. Duplication."

• Eric Franchi (17:04):
  "Perplexity is a little perplexing...maybe advertising is just like yet another thing they're trying to figure out."

• Ari Paparo (17:15):
  "The play typically is scale, scale, scale and then advertising once you have the scale..."

• Ari Paparo (19:20):
  "OpenAI has a lot more ammo in the effort to become the new ad hub than Perplexity does based on this acquisition."

• Eric Franchi (25:02):
  "People are going crazy. Do a search on X for NFL Red Zone commercials...people are going to storm NFL hq."

• Eric Franchi (31:43):
  "$200 million for a news, basically a newsletter and podcast business is, is pretty healthy."

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Start–End |
|------------------------------------------------------|----------------|
| Google Search Antitrust Remedies | 01:23–08:41 |
| Epsilon’s SSP & Industry Transparency | 09:32–15:48 |
| Perplexity Exits Ads | 15:58–18:27 |
| OpenAI’s Statsig Acquisition | 18:30–21:20 |
| Superset Launches Symmetry | 21:35–23:43 |
| CTV: Roku & NFL RedZone | 23:47–26:32 |
| Rokad Acquires Ziotap Data | 27:32–29:16 |
| Paramount & The Free Press | 29:32–32:29 |

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Tone & Style

The episode is fast-paced, conversational, and laced with industry in-jokes and wry humor. Ari and Eric balance technical detail with accessible explanations—often stepping back to explain acronyms, context, or industry structure for wider listeners.

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Conclusion

• Major regulatory actions, convoluted supply chains, and experimental AI ventures continue to reshape the advertising, media, and tech industries.
• The hosts agreed: Real market shifts are driven more by emergent technology (AI, CTV) and business innovation than regulatory changes.
• Industry connections, transparency, and adaptability are as important as ever as new players jockey for position (and as legacy players continue to surprise).

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For further information and to access related interviews, visit marketecture.tv.

Transcript

[A]

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[A]

Welcome to the Market Extra podcast. This is Ari Paparo. I'm here with Eric Franchi and we're going to talk about the refresh news of the week because we had a special episode that came out yesterday or I'm sorry, Wednesday. This is coming out Friday covering the Google search remedies where Alan Chappelle joined me to deep dive on that. He was going to be our guest anyway this week, but we just divided it in half to make it a little more timely. Eric, did you have a chance to catch the episode with Alan?

[C]

I unfortunately have not.

[A]

Well, big surprise. We went in depth on the remedies and he is a very erudite follower of these things and we both sort of threw up our hands and said, huh, I guess nothing changes.

[C]

That's the TLDR. Nothing changes.

[A]

Yeah, if Google had 90% market share in search last week, they're probably gonna have 90% market share in search next week. And if AI was the biggest challenge to Google last week, it remains the biggest challenge to Google this week. Nothing changed.

[C]

All right, well, thank you for doing an emergency pod with TLDR being it's the pod about nothing.

[A]

It's a pod about nothing.

[C]

It's like the Seinfeld po. There's more to talk about though. Come on. Right, so. All right, there is. All right, so we've got the search trial. The summary of the remedy is it's basically three things. Google is not being forced to divest Chrome or Android.

[A]

Nope.

[C]

Google is not allowed to do any more exclusive search distribution deals.

[A]

Yeah, okay, but there's A little. There's a lot of asterisks on that, which is that if you're the default, then what's the difference between being the default and the exclusive?

[C]

Yep, exactly. Exactly. I think that makes sense. And then there's number three, they must share search data with competitors.

[A]

Yes. So we, we spent a good amount of time on the POD the other day talking about this because this is kind of the most hairy issue, which is there's going to be. Assuming this judgment stands, you know, there still could be appeals, etc. There'll be a technical committee that will oversee this data sharing. It will only be to qualified competitors. So it'll be, you know, the duckduckgos and Bings of the world. Maybe it'll be anthropic and OpenAI, but it will not be random company that wants to see the search data. And there's just so many hairy issues here about privacy and about which products data go into search. Is it just what you literally type in the search bar or is it your Chrome history, your calendar history, your maps, your profile, your Gmail? It's just a massive hornet's nest. And both Alan and I are pretty skeptical it will make any difference at all.

[C]

Meaning it's unrealistic for all of that data, your Gmail, your maps, like everything that you know, Google, quote unquote knows about you, to be classified as the type of data that they would provide to an open AI.

[A]

Well, I think they. There are enough questions around what data should be and can be legally transferred, and it's so far off into the future that both of us are very skeptical it'll have any actual impact on reducing Google's power and market share in the search market, which is ultimately the goal of the antitrust remedy. So if you were to see, I mean, you'd have to believe the following. First is that there are competitors to Google who are not winning share because their search quality is lower. Right. That's a pretty big assumption right there because Google has a lot of other things going for it, including distribution, which they're not prohibited from doing. So they still have the money, they still have the distribution. So you have to believe that consumers are willing to switch if another search engine gets better. Second thing you have to believe is that the reason these other search engines are not better is because they don't have as much search history data as Google. And that did come up in the trial as, as a claim of Bing and some other folks. But, you know, I'm, I'm a little skeptical Third thing you have to believe is that by the time these companies get their first taste of this data, which might be like three or four years from now, it makes a difference. And then the final thing you have to believe is that is the, this kind of big privacy question, which is like that after you scrub the data from everything that Google will claim very, very accurately to be sensitive, that that remaining set of data is still valuable. So, you know, color me, I got other things to podcast about.

[C]

All right, well, I mean on the, on the other side, on the other hand, right, so Judge Mehta did say that the rise in AI affected the decision here. Meaning in one of your. You have to believes is users will search using different products. And I think that's the case because they're using these answer engines.

[A]

It's the biggest story in search is not the antitrust, it's the potential competitor to Google search from AI and the change in consumer behavior. We've talked about this sort of ad infinitum on this podcast and you know, I think the judge and the legal system deserves a little credit here for not doing what antitrust is always supposed to, always seems to do, which is fight the last battle they had. They had in mind the next battle. I don't think I agree entirely with the decision, but I'm not trying to advocate here. I'm just trying to kind of lay out the facts.

[C]

Yeah, there were ad tech implications for the divestiture of Chrome, also Android, but really Chrome. What do you think about now, the ad tech trial and is this setting the stage for more of the same in the ad tech trap?

[A]

Yeah, so we talked about that also. But I, I think the vibe shifted, but the vibes are relevant. You know, Judge Brink is not really running on vibes. So, so if anything there's a, there's a theory that this might allow Google more latitude to settle the ad tech trial because they have a better card in their hand now. They're, they're not playing against a stack deck. They, they, they just got an ace. And so maybe, maybe they want to call, maybe they want to, you know, make the ad tech trial go away. There was also, there's also a little news which I tweeted that Reuters reported a couple of days ago that Europe, Europe's been in limbo. So everyone expects Europe to basically find against Google in the ad tech, similar ad tech findings. But they've been holding their judgment, waiting for America to deal with it. And the Reuters report is that Google is no longer going to look for An ADEX spin out. Gam spin out that they're just going to look for a multi billion dollar fine. And the article seemed to claim that that was sort of geopolitical. They didn't want to poke the Trump administration. So that seems actually maybe more impactful to the ultimate ad tech trial than the search trial. Because if they come to a settlement with Europe, maybe there's some influence on the US Wanting to settle.

[C]

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so we wait. And in the meantime, nothing. Burger.

[A]

Two weeks from now, I will be in Virginia and I'll. And you'll be hearing too much about the ad tech trial. Daily, Daily Monopoly report newsletters with the usual snark starting on 22nd. Yeah.

[C]

Are you staying at the same hotel that you stayed in last time?

[A]

No, I moved it around. I've. I've had bad luck with the hotels in Arlington and it's not the nicest. Not. It's okay, but it's not the best.

[C]

That's why I asked. You know, I remember that, you know, the hotel wasn't. Wasn't up to your usual standards.

[A]

My usual standards? Well, the main thing is it's taking place during Rosh Hashanah, so I'm the only. I'm the designated Shabbos guy from the press corps. Literally every single person who covers ad tech in the press is Jewish. Like every single one. I think it's 100%, except for like Ronan. So. So I'll just like, I'm just the one who's taking it for the team and ignoring the Jewish politics.

[C]

As always, taking it for the team. We appreciate you. All right, let's move on. There was a story that dropped Ad week. They reported that buyers at holding companies didn't realize they were buying inventory from a SSP owned by Publicis owned Epsilon through Multi Hop Reseller. First of all, this makes me laugh.

[A]

This story.

[C]

Why does it make you laugh? First of all, did you know that publicist via Epsilon had an ssp?

[A]

That's why it makes me laugh. Right, because Epsilon bought Cognizant. Is that who they want? No, I have the wrong name, wrong conversant. Conversant, which used to be called valid. Click right.

[C]

All right, we're going to experiment for this for the, for the YouTube audience here. We are going to show the Publicis SSP.

[A]

Oh, wow, you have a visual. We've never had this before on the podcast because now we're in video. Okay, so what are we looking at?

[C]

This is the. When you search for the Publicis Epsilon, SSP this is what you land on. And it seems to be a pretty.

[A]

Like, it's an ssp. Sorry, it's an exchange. And now we're having the debate online again about whether the name is SSP or Exchange.

[C]

Okay, all right. So number one, it exists. Number two, you have encyclopedic knowledge on this stuff. And if, you know, I were to like, DM anyone, I'd ask, how meaningful is the Epsilon ssp, right? Like, this would be a big deal if this was through Magnite, right? If an agency owned Magnite, this ssp, do you think a lot of volume is running through it?

[A]

I don't know. Honestly, I forgot. I think probably 99% of the ad tech world forgotten that. So you have to go through so many, so many thought processes here. You have to. First you have to remember that Publicis owns Epsilon. That's already a pretty big jump for me. Then you have to remember that Epsilon bought Value Click. Then you have to remember the Value Click changed its name to Conversant. Then you have to remember what ValueClick owns because value Click owned a lot of stuff. It owns Befree, like the affiliate network. So there's an affiliate network somewhere in there too. So. And then you have to remember the hardest part is remembering that they. This SSP still operates because, like, no one remembers that.

[C]

I guess the real question is, like, does anybody know that this SSP is actually operating?

[A]

And then that's the. That's the other shoe to drop is this Adweek article. It's not just like, hey, agencies were buying from their competitors ssp, which, you know why? We should probably step back and say, why wouldn't you want to do that? Like, who cares? It's just supply.

[C]

We.

[A]

Well, no, because your competitors will know how much you're spending, what you're bidding on, what kind of sites you're bidding on. Imagine if you as an agency represent, let's say Hershey's, and your competitor who owns an SSP owns Mars. They could very easily see the sites that Hershey's advertises on and put them on their include list. Or they could see the prices on individual cookies that they're bidding, and they could maybe deduce that those cookies might be, you know, chocolate eaters or something like that. So you really don't want to be bidding on your competitors ssp. So anyway, the second shoe to drop is that this Adweek article basically says that they had no idea they were doing this, that it was through reselling and multiple complex chains. They thought they were buying Pubmatic but actually they were buying Epsilon because it was. I couldn't even tell in the article which publishers had which tags on their page. It was just so insanely convoluted. And this whole thing, if you were came to the advertising world from outer space, you were an alien trying to learn programmatic advertising. You would like read this article and just throw your computer out the window and go back to Mars or wherever.

[C]

All right, I got a pushback. Maybe not pushback, but like ask the question because this is an SSP inside Epsilon, which is inside publicist is the idea that teams, agency teams at publicis have access to this data and then can actually get that data. Like could just knowing how big hold codes work. Could you imagine that being the case?

[A]

I would probably think it wouldn't happen at the team level. That would happen at some sort of programmatic center of excellence kind of level. It could, yeah, it definitely could. Yeah. Does it? I don't know.

[C]

Yeah. This is an Ari you, you have to believe chain.

[A]

Well, to explain this why, maybe we should ask a question. Why would a Holdco own an ssp? Right.

[C]

I know. I wrote this question down in the docket because I don't know the answer.

[A]

Yeah, you would think it would be. The first order answer would be to get cheaper inventory. Yeah. More direct inventory access.

[C]

You gotta like operate an ssp so it needs to like be a good business.

[A]

Well, okay, so we know that all the major DSPs have supply operations at this point. Right. And so. And we also know that the holdcos are in many cases making deals with SSPs to get either kickbacks or better pricing from them. So owning one fits right into that strategy. You know, you prefer your own, you double dip on the fees, maybe you get more transparency. The clients might not and it might not be the best pricing but sure, it sort of makes sense to own your own SSP if you have enough scale.

[C]

Yeah, I guess that's right. I guess that's right. We need to know from you know, the, the agency buyers from other hold cos just how much, how much they were spending. Like was this a meaningful spend and was real data exposed? That's, that's the thing that I don't think anybody knows at this point. But this probably validates like everything that TTD has been talking about with open path just like out in the open right now.

[A]

Yeah, I mean all, all roads point to getting direct access to supply.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And it's no one's fault but the publishers to be Honest. Yeah, because basically they're working with too many SSPs. Duplication.

[C]

Too many SSPs who are working with too many SSPs. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, let's move on. That gave me a headache. Also in Ad Week. Good week. By Ad Week they announced that Perplexity's head of ads, Taz Patel, who was on stage at marketexture Live earlier this year, has left the company after one year. Perplexity is a little perplexing. So like they're just in the news all the time. They announced that they were making an unsolicited buy for Chrome. They announced that they have a 30 something million dollars purse to pay publishers. They are launching their own browser. Like they're doing a lot and they had an advertising business or have an advertising business. The only data on the advertising business was actually in that Adweek article which was, you know, supposedly they did like $20,000 in Q4 running, running a couple of small tasks. So I guess just kind of like reading the tea leaves here. You question just how much of a priority ads is to Perplexity, like if this, you know, Taz, who's amazing, you know, leaves after, after a year, like maybe advertising is just like yet another thing they're trying to figure out.

[A]

Right? I think the Taz on stage of Architecture Live said, I don't remember the exact words, but he basically gave an indication of the current scale of their experiments and they were very, very small. I think that was the main thing people left that conversation with was like, oh wow, this is not a real, a real business yet experimental, etc. I, I think the short answer in my opinion here without any data is that they invested in advertising too soon based on their volume. The play, the play typically is it is scale, scale, scale and then advertising once you have the scale, especially when they're trying to reproduce the Google AdWords model of these micro targeted niche intent subjects. You know, Perplexity has a pretty low scale in terms of, you know, search market share, Certainly less than 1% of search market share. And, and so they probably tried to early in addition, once again we don't know but like based on pattern recognition, like a company that is trying to buy TikTok, trying to load its own browser, trying to buy Chrome, trying to do this, trying to do that. It's not a really positive sign for the stability of the company. Let's just say that.

[C]

Yeah, I think that's right. It's a good take.

[A]

This episode is brought to you by Sovereign, a software and data company powering commerce Media campaigns for the world's largest brands with real time purchase intent data collected from over $3 billion in annual retail spend. Sovereign's commerce media deals are helping reach consumers at the time of purchase and deliver better outcomes for advertisers. To learn more, visit sovereign.com that's s o v r n.com to learn more. Not on the docket though. There was also an OpenAI acquisition. Did you read about that?

[C]

No.

[A]

So OpenAI acquired a company that is a specialist in website optimization. Really? Yeah. What's the name of it?

[C]

Statsig.

[A]

Yes. Static. So this is definitely an eyebrow razor. So the company that acquires like an. One of those sort of like, I don't know, like chart beat, like companies for apps where they, they put in analytics into your website and they help you make better, better conversions, better, all this stuff and, and simultaneously Kevin Wheel, who is an old ad tech pro, who is the head who. He was the CPO of OpenAI and he moved on to a new role inside the company focusing on scientific research, which congrats, that sounds like an awesome job for him. So tea, leave reading. Here is a couple things that OpenAI has got a preponderance of former Facebook executives inside of it right now. And these people are really good at the commercial side of operating a company at scale. And so it feels as though OpenAI has a lot more ammo in the effort to become the new ad hub than Perplexity does based on this acquisition. And maybe they start like powering different things on websites. Maybe they're monetizing their own website. It's not really clear what the surface area is of all this tech, but I think these moves are kind of more interesting to the advertising world than the Perplexity Blip.

[C]

Yes. So a couple other things here. I did some quick searches. So Stat Stig, the founder and CEO is Vijay Raji at Facebook. Vijay built messenger for Windows, Facebook Marketplace, groups, commerce and more. Climbed the ranks from software engine engineer to vp, head of gaming, head of Facebook Seattle and ultimately VP and head of entertainment. So Vijay is super legit and the acquisition was 1.1 billion in an all stock deal at the current valuation. So this was a seemingly great outcome for Satsig.

[A]

Yeah, great outcome for them. I'd have never heard of the company before today, which, you know, maybe it's just I'm not in that loop anymore. There's something going on here. This is not a, this is not a minor acquisition. This is a pretty important acquisition.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah. So you've got this You've got Fiji from Instacart. She was ex Facebook. And then to your point, Kevin Wheel has worked at basically every important company. I spent a bunch of time at Facebook, so I agree. Well, there's one more AI piece that we should just touch on here. Not as big. Certainly not as big. Superset. So this is the team that spins out, basically incubates and spins out businesses. They incubated and launched and sold Habu to Live Ramp. Superset is Tom Chavez and that old crew from Crux Digital. They are incubate incubating a new gentic ad tech startup called Symmetry. Symmetry, from the article. It's interesting. They basically are working on a bunch of things. So it's one part the Geo, right? The optimization for LLMs, one part optimizing loyalty offers, and one part trying to help publishers surface the right content for monetization and not have too much leakage. They raised I think a total of $6 million. They didn't say if it was all via super or not. Interesting. Like yet another Geo, yet another crew from the OG programmatic days going into agentic AI and a crew with a good track record. So it's one to keep an eye on.

[A]

Yeah, I invested in a company called Symmetry, but my Symmetry only had one M, so I feel like I'm behind. Symmetry has two M's.

[C]

Yeah, no, we invested in that company as well. A different spelling and seemingly doing different things. Hopefully it's not too much market confusion.

[A]

Well, you know, six months ago there was a ridiculous preponderance of AI companies doing creatives and creative generation and media planning. And now six months later, there's a ridiculous number of AI companies doing GEO, AIO and ad networks for LLMs.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

So it comes in waves.

[C]

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Okay, let's hit a couple other things. Two quick hits on CTV. So Roku is larger than broadcast TV. I thought this was interesting. So Roku TV is 21% of all TV viewing versus 18% for broadcast TV for the third straight month. I was pretty surprised to read this.

[A]

Yeah, that seems like a high number because I remember didn't we recently see stats that YouTube was the largest source of streaming and it was like 11 or 12%. I'm just kind of confused between the different measurement capabilities here.

[C]

Yeah, so this is data from Nielsen. So streaming on Roku powered devices accounted for 21.4% of all TV viewing.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

If I understand that correctly, that means it could be watching YouTube on your Roku device.

[A]

Yes. Right. Okay, that helps clarify it because. Yeah, so they're, they're, they're both monsters. But YouTube gets to actually monetize every single ad on their monstrous footprint. Whereas Roku has kind of this somewhat complicated business model.

[C]

Correct. Okay, so that was number one and then number two. Are you an NFL Red Zone watcher?

[A]

No, I'm not. I'm very excited about the season starting this evening, Thursday when we're recording this. But not, not Red Zone.

[C]

I am not either. And we need an NFL Red Zone listener to chime in. People are up in arms on this. So NFL Red Zone will feature commercials like. That's the headline. Apparently this has been a years long service that the host typically welcomes fans by saying seven hours of commercial free football starts now. People are going crazy. Do a search on X for NFL Red Zone commercials is like, I mean like people are going to storm NFL hq.

[A]

So what used to happen during the commercial breaks, they would just have no mic and they would have a video of the screen of the, of the field. That is interesting.

[C]

I'm not a watcher, but as an ad tech person, like flooding the market with high quality like live streaming supply, I'm here for it.

[A]

Remind me. I know I should know. This is Redstone. Red Zone is only available through YouTube. Now you have to buy it as an ad. Google has the sales rights to it or something like that.

[C]

It is a, it is a, it is a subscription product. I don't know if this is the via YouTube. If it's via YouTube.

[A]

Yeah, I think that YouTube grabbed it off of Dish a couple years ago. It's still a paid product though. Maybe, maybe this is, this is fake news. I don't remember.

[C]

I think it might be.

[A]

Yep.

[C]

So ESPN purchased NFL Network. We talked about that a few weeks ago. As part of that, they purchased the rights to NFL Red Zone. So this is going to be espn.

[A]

Apologize. There's a related story though that. Have you ever heard of Stream East?

[C]

No.

[A]

Stream east is the leading way to illegally watch sports online. It sounds like a conference. It does.

[C]

Like a CTV conference.

[A]

So I don't know that much about it, but Stream east was a website app where you can watch pirated streams of, of TV and it was busted this week, so it seems a little convenient. That was busted like the week before the NFL season starts. They're just kind of. It's based in Egypt. It was, you know, definitely an international thing. But for those, you know, NFL fanatics without a lot of money who use as an alternative to Red Zone, they're hurting Twice. Don't mess with the NFL.

[C]

Definitely don't mess with the NFL. Move on. Rokad acquired Ziotap Data. My firm is an investor in both Roccad and ziotap.

[A]

Oh, really?

[C]

Roccad?

[A]

I don't know.

[C]

Yeah, so it's an identity resolution. Basically their plan is to be the live ramp of Europe. So they're biting. They're buying the data business from zotap. Ziotap is going to be all in, focused on their CDP products and be a customer of the rocad. They will be a customer of Roccad Data, formally Zotech Data.

[A]

Wait, hold on. Rokad. I thought it was rock ad, like MTV rock ad.

[C]

I know, I know. I feel weird when I say rock ad.

[A]

Like it's spelled R for the listeners. It's spelled R O, Q A D.

[C]

Yeah, I've never actually asked Carson the proper pronunciation of it. I'm gonna ask Carson and I'll. I'll come back, perhaps with a correction of myself.

[A]

Carson's a fun guy. I have a question. Roccat, the live ramp of Europe. I always thought of Roccat as like a direct competitor to ID5, which is another investment of yours.

[C]

Yes. I think that's a market misconception. Rocket is like an aggregator of IDs, so I think they'll stitch together like multiple IDs. I don't know if they actually work with ID5 versus ID5 being all in on their own universal identifier.

[A]

And Ziotap, German based. They have some relationships with cell phone carriers and they used to do identity resolution and data services. I would think of them a little bit more like the live ramp of Europe. But I guess not anymore.

[C]

Correct. All of that business you were talking about is effectively what Rocket acquired. And Ziotap's basically been all in as a cdp. Like a CDP for Europe and global customers for a few years now.

[A]

Right. Okay, this is interesting. I mean, it feels like the two of them should just get married, you know?

[C]

Yeah, yeah, perhaps that's in the future. I don't know. I don't have any knowledge. Hey, one more thing that I think is interesting. As a media company, AKA marketexture, Paramount is reportedly looking at buying Bari Weiss's the Free Press for $200 million.

[A]

Yeah, I've been listening to speculation about this on, you know, the show and other the Town. Sorry, another podcast for a while. So some background here for those who aren't super into this. So Barry Weiss was a New York Times reporter and she sort of leaned a Little bit conservative and felt like she was being stifled there. And then she started this new company called the Free Press, which is sort of like a substack on steroids, that it's not like red meat, Republican newsmax stuff. It's just like slightly, it's like mainstream but conservative. And Paramount was just acquired by, by Skydance, which is owned by Oracle's family, the family of Larry Ellison. And Paramount owns CBS and CBS News, which is under assault by the Trump administration for the 60 minutes supposedly improper editing of the Kamala interview. And they settled with Trump before they got approval on the Skydance merger. And so there's a lot of dots to put into a line here. So the thought is, first of all, there may be sort of this slightly rightish ideology of the new owners of Paramount. Secondly, the feeling that there may be a disconnect with the legacy CBS News, which is, you know, has one of the best reputations of any news organization in America, but which maybe the new owners don't love and certainly the administration doesn't love. So that's, that's all the background I've got.

[C]

Got it. The price tag is what raised my attention. So $200 million for a news, basically a newsletter and podcast business is, is pretty healthy.

[A]

Yeah, I think I know architectures Market at least 100. At least 100 million. This is the second time we've talked about this. It's like so obvious. Like if we've said the price twice, it seems pretty obvious that's the price. You know, if Paramount can't have us. But you know, maybe Lionsgate, maybe they want a marketing news information system.

[C]

Exactly. It's putting a good multiple out there in the marketplace. I'm happy about it.

[A]

Cnbc, like I could do, I could do the Jim Cramer thing about marketing. A half hour a week. If you give me $100 million, I'll do anything of the buttons, like with the noises and stuff.

[C]

That would be amazing.

[A]

I would tune our RTB button because. Rtb, rtb, you know, that sort of thing.

[C]

That's crazy. All right. We've descended into laughing at each other's jokes.

[A]

Yes, I know. All right, well, thanks everyone for listening. We'll be back with our regular single episode next week unless some other world changing news occurs between now and next Friday. Thanks for listening. Hope everyone had a great Labor Day as well.

[C]

We'll see you next week, everybody. Thank you for subscribing to marketecture.

[A]

New interviews are added every week at marketecture tv. And your favorite podcasting app. Thank you for listening to the marketecture 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 Architecture tv. You can also sign up for free for our weekly newsletter with my original strategic insights on the week's [e-mail] TV. And if you're feeling social, we operate a vibrant Slack community that you can apply to [e-mail].