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[00:01]
A
This podcast is brought to you by the Build, a new podcast from the guys behind Sincera, Michael Sullivan and Ian Myers. They built their company by figuring out clever solutions to a few important ad tech problems in our industry. And that's exactly what the show is about. Mike and Ian interview some of the smartest tech minds in the biz to hear about how they identified opportunities, solved their hardest challenges, and grew their businesses in the process. Listen to the Build with Mike o' Sullivan wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Market Sector podcast. This is Ari Paparo. I'm here with Eric Franchi and our guest today is old friend of mine Jonathan Carson, who is the co founder and CEO of Antenna, the streaming measurement firm. And he was formerly the CRO at Trade Desk and the CRO at Vevo and I worked with him at Nielsen and he effectively knows everything there is to know about measurement and TV and streaming and signups and everything like that. So I'm pretty excited to have this conversation because there's been a lot of news in that area and it's a pretty important topic. Do you follow this area a lot, Eric?
[01:20]
B
Yeah, I mean there's always so much news that we have to prepare for the pod. Right. You know, just last week we, we were talking about how the, the linear platforms are really mad at Nielsen over under reporting and everything like that. So I think Jonathan brings great perspective. I do think that just given everything that's going on with platforms becoming larger and more on the channel, measurement is just so important and just a big category and a big opportunity. So cool to see a company like Antenna and a founder like Carson just, you know, being all in on it.
[01:53]
A
Absolutely. And he'll talk a little bit about his business, which is pretty interesting. So next week where at Possible in Miami. Come say hello to me and to Eric and any other members of the Marketecture team. If you see AdTech God, say hi to AdTech God or praise him in one way or another. Eric, is there anything, are you doing anything? Startup competition, anything like that?
[02:16]
B
Yeah. So two things. So first is with Possible, my card is stacked so if you see me just, I'll probably be running to a meeting. Don't stick out your foot and trip me and make me late, but please say hi. And then yes. Imperium and Growth by Science. We are co hosting a startup competition. The finalists are great. It's going to be a two day competition. It's going to be on the innovation stage. Come through if you want to say hi to me. Corey, Joe, Any of the team. That's where we'll be.
[02:45]
A
Sorry, what is growth by science?
[02:47]
B
Oh, growth by science. Guy by the name of Andrew Cavado, who is like one of the smartest people that I know in measurement. We partner up and co sponsor. This is the second year in a row we've done it.
[02:58]
A
Yeah. Okay, great. And for those of you who read the newsletter at the end of this show, we often say, well, the links will be in the newsletter. And I wanted to give a little update on that because we're trying something kooky. So as many readers, listeners know, I have my pet project called maddb, which is a database of all the news and all of advertising over the last 20 years. You should sign up at maddb.AI so what we're doing is we're collecting all the news from this podcast into basically a list of links that you can access through the newsletter, but also you can create your own links and your own lists if you want, of news on various subjects. It's basically like a bookmarking service. So I'm excited about it because this sort of thing gets me excited. I don't expect other people to, but if you're wondering why the format in the newsletter looks like that and why what the point is, you can click through, you can bookmark them yourselves, create your own lists, share them with your team, stuff like that. So let me know what you think on that. Let's jump in. So, Jonathan Carson talking about the state of chaos in streaming measurement. We're here with Jonathan Carson, the co founder and CEO of Antenna. Jonathan and I worked together at Nielsen a while back. So welcome to the pod.
[04:13]
C
Really happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
[04:15]
A
So I wanted to have you on because I think you're pretty deep and knowledgeable about measurement and TV and streaming and where it was, where it's going next. And it seems like it's a big mess. Some of the headlines we've seen in the past couple months are Nielsen Gage is under criticism by one of his biggest customers at nbcu. Nielsen Gage is delayed. We had this T Vision sale. T Vision was a venture funded startup that was trying to compete with Nielsen and they sold for much less money than they even raised. And going back a little bit, we had Video Amp effectively implode and lose its top executives. So what's going on? Is this like, is this a doomed space? Is this impossible?
[04:58]
C
Yeah, so there, there's definitely a lot of nerd drama going on right now. That is for sure. It's hard. It's hard to keep up with. There's a new headline every week of, of some disaster in this space. I think if, if you cut through the noise, what's really driving it is that the transition from measuring linear to measuring streaming is just, it's really painful. It's a really different world we're moving to. And it's not like a light switch. It's happening gradually over the course of a decade. And so you kind of have to measure both at the same time, which is just really, really tough.
[05:44]
A
Yeah, so is the problem. So Nielsen is the, is the monopoly in the space, in linear at least. And let's just focus on them for a moment. So they've been trying to become better at alternative ways of watching tv, at streaming. They've been expanding in all kinds of ways. If they had done a good job, would this have been solved? How much of this is the problem that they didn't move fast, as fast as the industry wanted them to look?
[06:14]
C
I mean, you got to look at it like what Nielsen is going through is actually not unlike what the traditional media companies are going through. You're in that position, you know, streaming is the future you want to be all in. But when the majority of your revenue and all of your profits are still in linear broadcast, you have to manage that transition really carefully. And on top of that, you know, Nielsen has an extra pressure that, that they have to keep those legacy and the new clients, you know, the new streaming clients happy through that process. And because of the. Harry, you are former Nielsen, we know not to use the M word because of their unique, because of their unique market position. You know, clients expect to be very involved, lot of heads up, lot of opportunity to give feedback. And, you know, that results in these crazy timelines where, you know, they announce a product and it's coming out in 19 quarters.
[07:18]
A
That's pretty difficult. The 19 quarter roadmap. So what's this current situation as far as you know about Gauge? What is it supposed to accomplish versus what is it actually doing?
[07:30]
C
Yeah, so I mean, important to say the Gauge is not an actual product. Yeah, the TV ratings product is what buyers and sellers use to transact advertising. The Gauge is a marketing product. It's a thought leadership product. It's been really successful in market, but it really just breaks down time spent across the different video channels and then around individual networks. And it does matter though, because people kind of use it as a barometer to understand how that shift from linear to streaming is taking place. And now, as I understand it, a Bunch of the changes that Nielsen has been implementing to the actual TV ratings product. They for the first time started to put one of those changes into the gauge. It all of a sudden changed the narrative, which had come out last year, that streaming had surpassed linear in tonal time spent. The streaming clients were not happy about that. The traditional media companies were, were happy about that. There was back and forth. They were planning to release it and then they decided not to release it.
[08:43]
A
And so, yeah, suddenly the number said that linear was growing and streaming wasn't growing as much, which seemed a little strange. And. And these numbers really matter because this is what people bill and. And book on.
[08:56]
C
Well, now the gauge numbers, they don't bill and book on.
[08:59]
A
Okay.
[09:00]
C
The ratings numbers, they bill and book on. So, you know, important distinction. The gauge is more, you know, a thought leadership market trend number.
[09:10]
A
And on the positive side, Nielsen has made a lot of strides in the last couple years to include things like out of home, which was a longtime complaint of, like, sports networks, that they weren't getting bars and they weren't getting, you know, people in each other's homes, you know, super bowl parties and stuff like that.
[09:25]
C
Yep, that, that was a big development for sports numbers. I think the specific thing that was going into the gauge that drove TB linear viewership up was kind of better. Call it better measurement of rural counties and some undercounted populations. So this stuff is complicated. And the problem is with every change, there's a batch of people that are winners, there's a batch of people that are losers. The losers tend to be a little more vocal than the winners. So then we get all this drama.
[09:58]
A
It's a funny situation where you're. You think of yourselves as selling a product to a customer, but the customer actually is relying on your measurement to sell stuff. And so if they're not happy with the product, they lose money. And it causes this pretty interesting, you know, back and forth where they get sniped out in the press by NBC or someone like that. But anyway, let's go back in time. So a couple of years ago, there was blood in the water, right? And I don't know, I would probably hesitate to give it an exact year, but sometime around the COVID world where streaming was obviously increasing, you had T vision and Videoamp and comscore and a couple of others that all were saying, like, now's our opportunity. We're going to make this transition to streaming in a way that big, dumb old Nielsen won't be able to. And there was a joint industry Committee, a JIC that sort of. I don't remember exactly what. They weren't going to select a vendor, but they were going to kind of approve vendors as being eligible. And it appears that that is dead. That whole wave is dead. I don't want to put words at your mouth. Maybe it's not dead, Maybe I just think it's dead, but it feels like it was a failure.
[11:14]
C
Well, I wouldn't say it's dead. I wouldn't say it's dead. I think there was a wave of energy around this idea of alternative currencies. And there was a bunch of industry work through the jack, through the arf, through sim, these various industry bodies, just to try to get the industry aligned around definitions and what good looks like, all that stuff. And I think that was pretty successful to me. The idea of an alternative currency, it's kind of the wrong way to look at this situation. In actuality, the traditional Nielsen business of verifying did I reach my intended audience across publishers? Like that particular and especially looked at by a narrow set of demographic measures, that particular question is just going to be a lot smaller than it used to be. But if you look at the way CTV is being traded and will be traded, the total role that data plays in the picture, the number of questions that it answers, the role that it plays in selection, in execution and then in measurement on the back end is going to be much, much bigger. If you think of terms in terms of programmatic take rates, the take rate for data business, all data and technology in linear television, maybe 5%. What do you think is going to be in CTV? A lot bigger. So we are talking about a much bigger pie, the thing that Nielsen traditionally did. It's going to be a piece of it, but a pretty small piece of it. So the real thing is, how do these models emerge and who participates most actively?
[13:07]
A
I feel like we're sliding into the what does Antenna do? Territory. So what is your vision as the CEO of Antenna for the future of all this stuff and the measurement of streaming entertainment and content?
[13:21]
C
Yeah, so, I mean, we actually come at it from a totally different angle. We launched our business actually two weeks into Pandemic, so just as all this crazy streaming stuff was really taking off. But we launched it to measure subscriptions, the other revenue stream for these streamers. And so we have a panel of 2 million Americans. We measure their financial transactions, we use that to count the number of subscribers to all these services, but then do really deep analytics on acquisition and churn. More recently, over the past year, We've started to integrate ACR data directly into that panel. So now we're drifting into this space in a more more specific way. The angle that we're taking though right now with our Subscriber Views product is programming analytics. So we're looking at when people sign up for a service, what are the first shows they watch, what are the viewing patterns? In particular, shows that drive stickiness and retention. When interesting groups cancel a service, what do they go watch on other services?
[14:31]
A
So yeah, it's interesting you bring up the content side. It feels like the content stuff really does drive, churn and sign up especially maybe there's some cohort of money saving types who are constantly like, oh, the Game of Thrones is back, well, let's get HBO or Mandalorian on Disney and then they cancel as soon as it's over. How much of that is happening?
[14:52]
C
It's a lot. Programming really does drive the majority of activity. So the fact that we're able to tie those together, you know, we think is really valuable on the subscription side. It does, we think over time get to be an interesting part of the advertising equation as well. You know, thus far most of CTV ads have been sold on an audience basis, but we're just now getting to the point where the streamers are getting big enough audiences to actually sell around shows. So if you think like two years ago, our, our antenna numbers say that less than 10% of Netflix subs were on the advertising plan. Last month we measured 54% of people signing up for Netflix signed up for the ad plan.
[15:44]
A
Oh, wow.
[15:45]
C
Yeah, they're at a place where all of a sudden, you know, if you want to plan a campaign or build a package around the crown or stranger things, like you actually have the type of audience half that you can do that. And we think that's going to be exciting for brands and exciting for the streamers. And we think more of that traditional show based buying won't be the whole thing, but it'll be part of the equation going forward.
[16:10]
A
How big does a show have to get before it's worth selling on its own? I mean, I know that's very subjective, but what have you seen anecdotally?
[16:18]
B
Yeah, yeah.
[16:19]
C
I mean, I think the, the streamers are experimenting with that now. I mean, if you think about how that translates to in traditional linear, you know, certainly shows that are doing whatever, you know, a few million, several million are. Those are properties that advertisers will build a plan around. And so, you know, if it translates to the same type of numbers in ctv, we're reaching that point, at least for the top shows.
[16:51]
A
So where does this end up? What's like the measurement nirvana for these publishers? What do they want to see in their dashboard? And will it be one vendor, two vendors or N vendors?
[17:02]
C
Yeah, so I mean I think it's pretty clear in. It's pretty clear to the marketplace now. It's not going to be one provider, it's going to be a mix. Some of it's going to be, you know, integrated into the dsp, Some of it's going to be driven by first party, some of it will be by third party. So I think that that work around standardization that we talked about, that the JIC and the industry bodies did that, that's going to be important in driving some principles around, around how people think about the space. But then individual brands and individual publishers, you know, depending on their brand goals or the strengths of their audience, they're going to find different flavors of it to monetize most effectively in their environment.
[17:52]
A
You still have a gatekeeper effect because you don't want just any little startup doing measurement that pretends to be an alternative currency. You still need the MRC or the JIC or whomever. I assume that's going to be part of it.
[18:05]
C
Yeah, well, in the industry bodies as a function to establish those standards, provide some sort of framework for evaluating vendors. That's, that's a really valuable part of the ecosystem.
[18:18]
A
Yeah. One thing we covered on this pod a while back is the, the sort of mashing together where podcasting is becoming a player. You have Netflix signing podcast deals, YouTube signing podcast, YouTube becoming the largest podcast distribution channel. And it feels like it's just fragmenting even further where you have smaller and smaller called shows. Maybe they're just influencer channels that suddenly are important parts of the media mix. Like how far does it scale downwards to the smallest content? Because that's really the fundamental problem is the downward scaling. Measurement.
[18:53]
C
Yeah, yeah. Because we're dealing with digital measurement. The measurement scales quite well. The problem in traditional linear and some of the challenges I think that traditional measurement has had in porting over to streaming is it wasn't designed to deal with things that weren't the biggest mass channels. The mechanisms that we have now we're panel based, but we're 2 million, so that's 1% of the audience. That's a big panel. And a lot of the measurement systems are essentially census based. They're working with the actual ad transaction data, the ad delivery data, things like that. So it will scale quite well.
[19:43]
A
Kind of. The last topic, it wasn't actually on the agenda, but I'm sure you have some insight in it is where does sports fit in? Because the NFL rights are being negotiated over the next, I guess, 18 months or something like that. And the first of all, I'm sure in your data, you see they have a pretty strong effect on signups, but I'm just wondering how you think that's going to play in and what you hear in the industry.
[20:09]
C
Yeah, I think it forces a lot of this transition to happen faster because the big sports rights have, over the last couple years, really flipped the switch to go aggressively after big streaming deals. And so then all of a sudden, you've got 20 million people watching Thursday Night Football on Amazon, all on CTV or almost all on ctv. Well then all of a sudden, you need those hardcore traditional TV metrics to work in that environment. So that's forcing the function a lot faster.
[20:48]
A
I swear, I don't want to sound like an old man, but every Thursday I'd be like, how do I watch Prime Video again? Or, where is this game? I would be Googling Prime Video because logging into my Amazon account, I'd be like, I could either reorder some printer cartridges or I could watch a football game. So I think that's a challenge. All right. With that.
[21:16]
C
Topic for another edition.
[21:18]
A
Topic for another edition. Okay. This is a super interesting continuing area. Eric, you had something you wanted to add?
[21:23]
B
No, I'm just laughing, actually. Maybe one. Just. I'm kind of obsessed with Paramount in a number of fronts. Do you have data on when Paramount did the UFC deal where they basically bought the rights to ufc? Did that have, like, a big bump in subscribers for them?
[21:45]
C
Yeah, yeah, we saw, you know, on order of a million new people sign up for that first fight, which is a fantastic, fantastic pop. And then I will say also that we saw it was absolutely one of the most watched programs that Paramount has had amongst new subscribers. The other thing that we saw is, and clearly Paramount knew this and making that big bet, it's a very loyal audience. So the retention of that group both to the ensuing fights, but also to Paramount, plus subscription, has been quite strong.
[22:24]
A
All right, on that note, let's take a quick break. We'll come back with a lot of news this week. As usual, AI and some interesting people moves. So we'll be right back.
[22:37]
D
This is Ad Tech God, and I command you to listen to this house ad. So if you're listening to this show, just know that you've really stumbled upon a giant network of content across advertising, marketing, media, publishing and of course the people that work in this great advertising industry. So go to market. Com, check out all of our brands. We have multitude of shows from the Brand Forum, the Advertising Forum, the Monopoly Report, the Ad Tech God Pod, the Market Example pod and more. We are bringing more podcasts to our network. We are consistently and constantly bringing on new shows. So check it out marketecturemedia.com or search for any of those brands in the app that you use to listen to this podcast. Enjoy the show and see you all soon.
[23:26]
B
All right, we are back with the refresh all the news of the week. So few things. We have some platform stuff, we have some AI stuff, we have some people stuff. Something for everybody. Let's talk platforms. So this week we had two big announcements. Two companies did a couple of announcements. So let's start with Index Exchange. Index launched Index Cloud. So effectively a way to bring the buy side closer to the sell side and tapping into Index's new neutral compute environment, which I say will help bring down costs, improve efficiency and maybe create some competition in the DSP market.
[24:06]
C
Ari, do you have a chance to
[24:07]
B
check out this one? What was your take?
[24:09]
A
Well, on the one hand, I'd say it's great that Index is differentiating. All the other SSPs are rushing to add buying platforms. DSPs within the SSP and Index is not. They're saying, well, we're going to lead effectively in curation, letting people come in here and do what they want to on our inventory. So I think that's pretty interesting and differentiated. And I've talked to Andrew Casale. He's actually, I think he's going to be our guest next week. We're still working on scheduling, so we'll hear a lot more about it. Then on the other hand, on the little skeptical side, I have two skepticisms. One is like this is not new. I mean, this is Brian O' Kelly's pitch for App Nexus circa 2006. You know, basically put it in our cloud, it'll be faster. We give you compute. And the second question I have in general is fragmentation. Are you as a buyer going to have a real opportunity here in Indexes Cloud when you can't get, say, you know, I think Hulu is exclusive to Magnite, for example. So suddenly you're going to have everything except Hulu. And also Google adx still has a lot of inventory. You can't get it anywhere else. So, you know, the data curation use case makes a Ton of sense. Does the DSP use case make sense about putting a real bidder there? I'm a little skeptical.
[25:27]
B
Yeah. No, those are, those are good points. My partner, Joe Zawadzki, he, he's been saying for some time now the DSP market will either be like three company market or a 300 company market.
[25:40]
C
Right.
[25:41]
B
And this may be, you know, how the, the latter gets realized. First company that is launching on this is bedrock platform which, which we invested in at a barrier and we had Shane on when they very early on and they were basically talking about this idea that, you know, DSP needs more competition. DSP can, you know, compete in different ways and go bringing costs down. Could be a way for, you know, challenger DSPs to compete in this era of behemoths with unique data. Unique, unique inventory. Jonathan, it's been a little while, but you have some DSP DNA. What do you think about this?
[26:21]
C
I think the concept of how the DSP market shakes out and consolidates is really interesting. I think there's a lot of benefit to big brands that comes from scale. So I think on the top end of the market it'll be pretty consolidated. But when you go down into specific niches, there's really pretty great ways for specialists to differentiate.
[26:51]
A
And I wrote about this in my newsletter this past week. I wrote an article that everyone hated called it's the Data Stupid, about how if you have unique data, you effectively have your own dsp. And if you don't have unique data, it's pretty tough sledding. So I think that's kind of relevant here.
[27:07]
B
You got a lot of hate on that one.
[27:09]
A
A little hate, yeah.
[27:10]
B
Just because I didn't own unique data.
[27:13]
A
Yeah, a little bit that also. I don't want to call it a correction, but the Nexon people are all over me because they were not included as a decent DSP in my little list. And they do have unique data, apparently. Next instance, I bought a mobi has quite a bit of non video. So they were upset that they weren't on the list. So now they're in the podcast.
[27:34]
B
All right, half a correction right there.
[27:36]
A
Work, work the refs. Work the refs.
[27:39]
B
Speaking of unique data, I thought this one was interesting too. Another one on the index front. So they're making Unity one of the big gaming ad platforms. Their data available through curated marketplace deals. Right. So this idea of index, just enabling curation of unique inventory, I think this is a really cool use case. And they say gamers are a hard to reach market outside of the games. So I think this is a neat deal.
[28:06]
A
Yeah. And Unity. Maybe I'm getting this totally wrong, but I believe they shut down their ad network recently. They had IronSource, they had acquired. Then they. And they shut it. So Chris FIO is over there, he's doing their ad business and there's definitely shaking it up. They're trying different things here.
[28:21]
B
Yeah, this has Chris's fingerprints all over it. Him, you know, coming out of Experian, Experian having Autogen, them seeing the power of curation, I think. I think the breadcrumbs are there. All right, let's talk about ttd. So TTD this week launched KOA Agents, which is their agentic platform. It's a system called Open Agentic Kit, which I think kind of competes with ARTF and adcp. Maybe not in the announcement. Two things. So first is Stagwell was announced as the first partner. So shout out to Stagwell. And Jeff Green had a really interesting blog post that at once sort of announced this and gave a lot of
[29:04]
C
credit to Stagwell, but then at the
[29:05]
B
same time continued to throw not in name some other holdco's under the bus and I'll pull one out. We're increasingly focused on powering the advertising companies of the future, those who make things more efficient, not those who exploit inefficiencies. Good quote. All right, Jonathan, now it's time for you to weigh in.
[29:24]
C
Yeah, so I think this is a place where Trade Desk's heritage really gives them a great advantage. Trade Desk, from day one built itself in what at the time was a really contrarian approach of being a deep partner to the agencies. And so while the rest of the industry has done a bunch of pivots to try to follow, Trade Desk has just had a big lead in kind of DNA that's been tough to match on that front. So when you think about something like, okay, what's the system, you know, what's the buying system that's going to best figure out agentech workflows that fit into an agency structure. You know, I think Trade Desk is, is really well positioned to lead there.
[30:13]
B
Makes a lot of sense. All right, what you got?
[30:15]
A
Yeah, I, I think there's sort of this vibe in the industry right now that that AI is not for sort of point to point use cases like, hey, tell me what segments you have. And it's more about orchestration across the more complicated workflows that the customers have. When you're talking about planning, buying, optimizing, creative et cetera I heard a very similar pitch from Triple if this week. I spoke at their little, they had a little afternoon thing. I was their moderator on a panel unrelated to AI. But over there, Dave Heimlich and team are very much talking about this. Like we want to be able to do the complete suite of AI activities, not just the point suite. Hopefully that was under embargo, but we'll see.
[31:00]
B
Hopefully not.
[31:01]
A
It's good pitch for them, but I'm hearing this more, you know, like, because the, the simple point to point stuff is trivial nowadays with AI and Claude. So.
[31:10]
B
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. One to watch. Also, TTD phased out the much maligned periodic table UI and it is being replaced with something that is more akin to what people expect. So that's probably another good positive just given, you know, simplicity of the UI is, is, is paramount.
[31:33]
A
When it's not working, you got to give up and, and just product managers everywhere don't use metaphors. Metaphors don't work for UIs. Metaphors are good for product naming, but not for the ui. Just make the UI and boring boxes, tables, lines, searching, filtering. Don't do weird metaphors.
[31:51]
B
We're back to the boxes and tables.
[31:53]
A
I love clouds.
[31:54]
B
Good job, ttd. Okay, cool, let's move on. AI stuff. So this rolled out last week and after the pod, it's probably worth us talking about. So Claude launched Claude Design with the launch of Opus 4.7 and basically it's ridiculous capabilities that take on companies like Figma and Canva. Have either you guys played with this thing yet?
[32:20]
A
I've not. But if you told me it helps me avoid using Canva, I'm all in. They got my money. Take my money.
[32:28]
B
How about you, Jonathan? Did you give it a shot?
[32:30]
C
No, I haven't dug in yet. Weekend project.
[32:33]
B
All right. As the resident guinea pig on the pod, I always do this stuff so I can bring some feedback. So I tried this and. Oh my God. So the use case is it's for sales and marketing teams. So you know, like either just upload something that you know is like reflective of your core brand guidelines or actually like feed it into Claude and then say, give me a one sheeter, give me marketing collateral, like give me anything. So I took like a really big aperium deck, like one of those just like, you know, tons of slides. You know, it had our brand guidelines, had everything into it and just said, make this a one sheeter. And it made it a one sheeter that like I would have paid for. You know, it took like two minutes. You know, I probably would have changed some of the wording but from a design perspective, layout like hidden things about 90%. It was great and way beyond my like, you know, borderline design capabilities. So this is like really, really exciting stuff. I think this is going to be like used all over the place, particularly like with sales and go to market teams. Everybody should try it. It's super neat.
[33:39]
A
Yeah, I'm excited about this. I think it's sort of. Figma and Canva are different use cases. Obviously the figma is under pressure because while figma is a great tool for product designers, increasingly people are asking whether they need product designers or if product designers need to be in the loop on every project. Or more like an establishment use case where you figure out the design system and then other people run with it. Whereas Canva, the whole point of Canva is to, is to make it easy to create designs. That's like their value proposal is like let non designers create useful collateral for design and it feels like AI just kind of blows that out of the water to some extent.
[34:19]
B
It does, it does have to try it to like, you know, I think fully appreciate it. But whereas with Canva you kind of need to know what you're doing. You know, it's like start with, start with a template. Okay, how do I like, you know, put an image in here. This is just like purely hands off. So like really, really impressive stuff. All right. On the ChatGPT front, two things. ChatGPT officially rolls out CPC pricing with average CPCs in the three to five dollar range. So moving along the continuum of making their ads more available, more performance based, more competitive with the other platforms.
[34:56]
A
No real surprises here. I mean I think we all said all the smart money said the exact same thing when they rolled out like the $65 CPM, it was that this is just to get money fast. They're building product, it's going to look like Google search, you know, no surprises. The surprises are the people who reacted badly and said, oh, OpenAI has no idea what they're doing. You imagine a CPM price. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just wait three months, dude.
[35:20]
B
Exactly.
[35:20]
A
Chill out. Yeah.
[35:21]
B
And speaking of CPMs, there was a leaked, I'll say, quote unquote leaked. I don't know if it was like leaked internally or somebody got all of it Dec with Stack Adapt, who I guess is a partner of ChatGPT has CPMs quoted in the 15 range, so no more 60 in the marketplace. So it's kind of rolling out as we thought it would.
[35:41]
A
Yeah, nothing Nothing too exciting here, I think on separate news. I'm not sure we have this anywhere, but Kevin Weil left OpenAI. So he's an old longtime ad tech guy who, who got promoted up, up, up to head of product for Instagram and then I think it was briefly head of product for OpenAI. Then he turned into a different role and now he left. So Opening Eye has a lot of staff turnover.
[36:04]
B
Yeah, I mean that's part of the game, people stuff. So Magnite.
[36:14]
C
Yeah.
[36:14]
B
Some shuffles at. At Magnite. So Adam Soka certainly friend of the pod. He was head of product. He departed cmo David Herog departed and chief strategy officer and head of Corp Dev Eric Obanac departed. All public all, you know, putting their stuff out there on. On LinkedIn. Interesting. When three C level execs all depart.
[36:37]
A
Yeah. And I think they had all been there a long time. Right. So this is not a case where the company has a lot of turnover like some other companies. This company is. Has had an exec team. Adam's been there for like eight, nine years. So. So it could be a natural evolution, I think. You know, the question of Michael Barrett going to be there forever or is there some future CEO going to be there? It's interesting. I'd love to. I think the other shoe hasn't necessarily dropped here.
[37:06]
B
Yeah, yeah. One to keep an eye on. But yeah, you're right. These are all three, like awesome execs. Did a lot of great stuff. They're from the days of Rubicon. I know Eric was the architect of a lot of the. The M and A that created Magnite. So look forward seeing where all they move on to what they all move on to rather fluency. Who you had on the pod? I think it was Monday.
[37:27]
A
Yeah, we had a. We had Fluency on. On Monday. It was a good conversation. And they just hired another friend of the pod, Eric Picard, who was. He was head of product for Pandora. He'd been at Microsoft ads back in the long, long ago. Interesting. Keep your eye on that company, I think.
[37:46]
B
Yeah. Agree. They're doing some neat stuff. One thing we missed last week that I thought was interesting in apropos having having Jonathan on the pod this week. So Netflix, their ad revenue again is set to double in 2026 to $3 billion. And Eric Suefer picked this up. 50% of the revenue is programmatic. So they're continuing to climb. $3 billion is a legit ad business.
[38:11]
C
Yeah. Yeah. And as I said earlier, over half of people signing up For Netflix, pick that ad plan we have about. We have them at about a third of all US subscribers now on the ad plan. So it's. It has become a major part of their business, for sure.
[38:28]
A
And I think their integrations are broadening. I think they have four or five DSPs now who can beta in. A couple aren't in there. And I've heard complaints, you know, people saying, why can't we get Netflix? But I think their strategy is to expand that.
[38:42]
B
People come to you with all their complaints.
[38:44]
A
They do, because they think I could solve their problems, and I can't. Here's an example. So I get the most common thing anyone ever reaches out to. To me about cold reach out is like, hey, I want to get my SSP integrated into Beeswax. Can you put me in contact with the. The guy who's in charge of that? Right. Who. And is a really nice guy, many of you know, named Matt Clark. And I text with Matt Clark all the time. He's a friend of mine. Matt Clark has me on standing orders to never, ever introduce any SSP to him. It's the only thing he's ever asked of me. He, he. It is a standing order, no exceptions. And it's the only thing anyone ever wants for me. And so I have to tell them, like, no, you're on your own. The dude's name is Matt Clark. Go LinkedIn him and spam him, but he will ignore you, and I will not help.
[39:30]
B
Jonathan, do you get requests for TTD integrations?
[39:36]
C
Well, I do get a few of those. I think I get more requests for introductions into the recruiting process.
[39:42]
A
Yeah, yeah, I get that too.
[39:44]
B
Yeah, for sure. All right. I think with that, we should call it a pod. This has been a good one.
[39:51]
A
Yeah.
[39:51]
B
You got something?
[39:53]
A
No, it was a great conversation. So, Jonathan, thank you so much for being here. You're the co founder and CEO of Antenna. Where can people find you to sign up on Antenna for a free newsletter or something? LinkedIn.
[40:07]
C
You know it. Antenna Live.
[40:10]
A
L, I V E. All right. I remember the name because Beeswax actually launched a product called Antenna at the exact same time you did. Launched your product. And we didn't have the URL either, but your product was a lot more successful than ours. Appreciate that.
[40:24]
C
We had that trademark lawsuit ready to go, too.
[40:27]
A
Exactly. Well, we'll see you all in Miami, probably. So stop. Say hi to Eric or I or Jonathan, you can be in Miami.
[40:34]
C
I'll be there. I'm a proud possible investor.
[40:39]
A
All right, sounds good. Thanks, everybody.
[40:41]
B
Bye. Bye. Thank you for subscribing to marketecture.
[40:45]
A
New interviews are added every week at marketecture TV and your favorite podcasting app.

Summary6 min read

Marketecture Podcast Episode 170 Summary

Title: The Streaming Measurement Mess. Jonathan Carson Helps Us Make Sense of the Chaos.
Host: Ari Paparo (A), with co-host Eric Franchi (B)
Guest: Jonathan Carson (C), Co-founder & CEO of Antenna
Published: April 24, 2026

Overview

This episode dives into the complexity and disorder currently plaguing the streaming TV measurement landscape. Host Ari Paparo and co-host Eric Franchi interview Jonathan Carson, an industry veteran and CEO of Antenna, to unpack the headlines, drama, and evolving models in streaming and TV measurement. The conversation covers Nielsen’s dominance and challenges, alternative measurement approaches, Antenna’s innovative role, and recent trends in programmatic advertising, AI, and industry shakeups.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The State of Streaming Measurement

The transition from linear TV to streaming has created significant pain points and “nerd drama,” with frequent crises making headlines ([04:58]).
Measuring both linear and streaming simultaneously is extremely challenging due to the different technological and business paradigms.
- Quote: "There's a new headline every week of, of some disaster in this space… the transition from measuring linear to measuring streaming is just, it's really painful." – Jonathan Carson [04:58]

2. The Nielsen Dilemma

Nielsen remains the default for linear measurement, but its move into streaming remains fraught with slow product timelines and industry dissatisfaction ([06:14]).
There’s a parallel between traditional media companies’ struggle to pivot away from legacy models while maintaining core revenue.
- Quote: "You know streaming is the future...But when the majority of your revenue and all of your profits are still in linear broadcast, you have to manage that transition really carefully." – Jonathan Carson [06:14]
“The Gauge” is a Nielsen product often confused as a ratings tool but is more of a marketing/industry thought leadership product ([07:29]).
- Quote: "The Gauge is not an actual product...it's a thought leadership product...people use it as a barometer to understand how that shift from linear to streaming is taking place." – Jonathan Carson [07:29]

3. The Buyer-Seller Tension & Industry Politics

Ratings changes benefit some stakeholders and disadvantage others, leading to public disputes and increased scrutiny.
- Quote: "With every change, there's a batch of people that are winners, there's a batch of people that are losers. The losers tend to be a little more vocal..." – Jonathan Carson [09:25]
The role of industry bodies (like Joint Industry Committees – JICs) and alternative vendors (Videoamp, Comscore, T Vision) was explored; their efforts have had some success, but the idea of a single “alternative currency” may be misguided ([11:14]).
- Quote: "The idea of an alternative currency, it's kind of the wrong way to look at this situation...the traditional Nielsen business...is just going to be a lot smaller than it used to be." – Jonathan Carson [13:07]

4. Antenna’s Perspective & Approach

Antenna focuses on subscription analytics via a panel of 2 million Americans, tracking sign-ups, churn, and content consumption. They now integrate ACR (automatic content recognition) into their analytics ([13:21]).
- Quote: "We launched it to measure subscriptions...then do really deep analytics on acquisition and churn." – Jonathan Carson [13:21]
Content is the main driver of streaming churn and sign-ups, with newer capabilities enabling advertisers to plan around individual shows ([14:52]).
- Netflix ad plan adoption has radically increased: "Last month we measured 54% of people signing up for Netflix signed up for the ad plan." – Jonathan Carson [15:43]

5. How Measurement Will Evolve

There will not be a single measurement provider; rather, a mix of first-party, third-party, and integrated DSP solutions will emerge ([17:02]).
Industry standards created by JICs and other bodies will help guide this fragmented landscape.
Measurement downscaling is possible due to digital and panel/census hybrid approaches.
- Quote: "Because we're dealing with digital measurement. The measurement scales quite well...the mechanisms that we have now...are essentially census based." – Jonathan Carson [18:52]

6. The Growing Role of Sports

The shift of high-profile sports rights to streaming accelerates the need for accurate, scalable measurement compatible with both linear and CTV ([20:09]).
- Quote: "The big sports rights...really flipped the switch to go aggressively after big streaming deals...that's forcing the function a lot faster." – Jonathan Carson [20:09]
Example: Paramount’s UFC deal drove around a million new subscribers with high retention ([21:45]).

Notable Quotes & Moments

On the complexity of measurement:
"There's definitely a lot of nerd drama going on right now. That is for sure." – Jonathan Carson [04:58]
On legacy providers managing disruption:
"What Nielsen is going through is actually not unlike what the traditional media companies are going through." – Jonathan Carson [06:14]
On winning and losing with measurement changes:
"The losers tend to be a little more vocal than the winners. So then we get all this drama." – Jonathan Carson [09:25]
On Netflix advertising:
"Last month we measured 54% of people signing up for Netflix signed up for the ad plan." – Jonathan Carson [15:43]
On the future of vendor diversity:
"It's pretty clear...it's not going to be one provider, it's going to be a mix." – Jonathan Carson [17:02]

Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|------------------------------------------------------------| | 04:13 | Jonathan Carson introduced; the state of streaming chaos | | 04:58 | Why is streaming measurement so troubled? | | 06:14 | Nielsen’s transition challenges and roadmap | | 07:29 | What "The Gauge" actually is | | 09:25 | Impact of ratings changes on industry politics | | 11:14 | Alternative currencies and JICs: successes and limits | | 13:21 | Antenna’s approach: subscription analytics, ACR data | | 14:52 | Content-driven churn and sign-ups; Netflix ad plan stats | | 17:02 | The future: no single standard, diverse vendor landscape | | 18:52 | Measurement downscaling to small/influencer content | | 20:09 | Role of sports in accelerating measurement innovation | | 21:45 | Paramount’s UFC deal's effects |

Final Thoughts

The “measurement mess” is deep-rooted and will not resolve with a single solution or provider. The future for streaming measurement is a mix of first-party, third-party, and hybrid data, with more granular content-level data and ever-increasing complexity due to the proliferation of platforms, formats, and content types. Companies like Antenna are innovating at the intersection of subscription analytics and programming measurement, helping both platforms and advertisers adapt to new consumption and buying patterns.

Contact:

Antenna: Antenna Live

For more episodes:
https://www.marketecture.tv

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Transcript113 lines

[00:01]
A
This podcast is brought to you by the Build, a new podcast from the guys behind Sincera, Michael Sullivan and Ian Myers. They built their company by figuring out clever solutions to a few important ad tech problems in our industry. And that's exactly what the show is about. Mike and Ian interview some of the smartest tech minds in the biz to hear about how they identified opportunities, solved their hardest challenges, and grew their businesses in the process. Listen to the Build with Mike o' Sullivan wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Market Sector podcast. This is Ari Paparo. I'm here with Eric Franchi and our guest today is old friend of mine Jonathan Carson, who is the co founder and CEO of Antenna, the streaming measurement firm. And he was formerly the CRO at Trade Desk and the CRO at Vevo and I worked with him at Nielsen and he effectively knows everything there is to know about measurement and TV and streaming and signups and everything like that. So I'm pretty excited to have this conversation because there's been a lot of news in that area and it's a pretty important topic. Do you follow this area a lot, Eric?
[01:20]
B
Yeah, I mean there's always so much news that we have to prepare for the pod. Right. You know, just last week we, we were talking about how the, the linear platforms are really mad at Nielsen over under reporting and everything like that. So I think Jonathan brings great perspective. I do think that just given everything that's going on with platforms becoming larger and more on the channel, measurement is just so important and just a big category and a big opportunity. So cool to see a company like Antenna and a founder like Carson just, you know, being all in on it.
[01:53]
A
Absolutely. And he'll talk a little bit about his business, which is pretty interesting. So next week where at Possible in Miami. Come say hello to me and to Eric and any other members of the Marketecture team. If you see AdTech God, say hi to AdTech God or praise him in one way or another. Eric, is there anything, are you doing anything? Startup competition, anything like that?
[02:16]
B
Yeah. So two things. So first is with Possible, my card is stacked so if you see me just, I'll probably be running to a meeting. Don't stick out your foot and trip me and make me late, but please say hi. And then yes. Imperium and Growth by Science. We are co hosting a startup competition. The finalists are great. It's going to be a two day competition. It's going to be on the innovation stage. Come through if you want to say hi to me. Corey, Joe, Any of the team. That's where we'll be.
[02:45]
A
Sorry, what is growth by science?
[02:47]
B
Oh, growth by science. Guy by the name of Andrew Cavado, who is like one of the smartest people that I know in measurement. We partner up and co sponsor. This is the second year in a row we've done it.
[02:58]
A
Yeah. Okay, great. And for those of you who read the newsletter at the end of this show, we often say, well, the links will be in the newsletter. And I wanted to give a little update on that because we're trying something kooky. So as many readers, listeners know, I have my pet project called maddb, which is a database of all the news and all of advertising over the last 20 years. You should sign up at maddb.AI so what we're doing is we're collecting all the news from this podcast into basically a list of links that you can access through the newsletter, but also you can create your own links and your own lists if you want, of news on various subjects. It's basically like a bookmarking service. So I'm excited about it because this sort of thing gets me excited. I don't expect other people to, but if you're wondering why the format in the newsletter looks like that and why what the point is, you can click through, you can bookmark them yourselves, create your own lists, share them with your team, stuff like that. So let me know what you think on that. Let's jump in. So, Jonathan Carson talking about the state of chaos in streaming measurement. We're here with Jonathan Carson, the co founder and CEO of Antenna. Jonathan and I worked together at Nielsen a while back. So welcome to the pod.
[04:13]
C
Really happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
[04:15]
A
So I wanted to have you on because I think you're pretty deep and knowledgeable about measurement and TV and streaming and where it was, where it's going next. And it seems like it's a big mess. Some of the headlines we've seen in the past couple months are Nielsen Gage is under criticism by one of his biggest customers at nbcu. Nielsen Gage is delayed. We had this T Vision sale. T Vision was a venture funded startup that was trying to compete with Nielsen and they sold for much less money than they even raised. And going back a little bit, we had Video Amp effectively implode and lose its top executives. So what's going on? Is this like, is this a doomed space? Is this impossible?
[04:58]
C
Yeah, so there, there's definitely a lot of nerd drama going on right now. That is for sure. It's hard. It's hard to keep up with. There's a new headline every week of, of some disaster in this space. I think if, if you cut through the noise, what's really driving it is that the transition from measuring linear to measuring streaming is just, it's really painful. It's a really different world we're moving to. And it's not like a light switch. It's happening gradually over the course of a decade. And so you kind of have to measure both at the same time, which is just really, really tough.
[05:44]
A
Yeah, so is the problem. So Nielsen is the, is the monopoly in the space, in linear at least. And let's just focus on them for a moment. So they've been trying to become better at alternative ways of watching tv, at streaming. They've been expanding in all kinds of ways. If they had done a good job, would this have been solved? How much of this is the problem that they didn't move fast, as fast as the industry wanted them to look?
[06:14]
C
I mean, you got to look at it like what Nielsen is going through is actually not unlike what the traditional media companies are going through. You're in that position, you know, streaming is the future you want to be all in. But when the majority of your revenue and all of your profits are still in linear broadcast, you have to manage that transition really carefully. And on top of that, you know, Nielsen has an extra pressure that, that they have to keep those legacy and the new clients, you know, the new streaming clients happy through that process. And because of the. Harry, you are former Nielsen, we know not to use the M word because of their unique, because of their unique market position. You know, clients expect to be very involved, lot of heads up, lot of opportunity to give feedback. And, you know, that results in these crazy timelines where, you know, they announce a product and it's coming out in 19 quarters.
[07:18]
A
That's pretty difficult. The 19 quarter roadmap. So what's this current situation as far as you know about Gauge? What is it supposed to accomplish versus what is it actually doing?
[07:30]
C
Yeah, so I mean, important to say the Gauge is not an actual product. Yeah, the TV ratings product is what buyers and sellers use to transact advertising. The Gauge is a marketing product. It's a thought leadership product. It's been really successful in market, but it really just breaks down time spent across the different video channels and then around individual networks. And it does matter though, because people kind of use it as a barometer to understand how that shift from linear to streaming is taking place. And now, as I understand it, a Bunch of the changes that Nielsen has been implementing to the actual TV ratings product. They for the first time started to put one of those changes into the gauge. It all of a sudden changed the narrative, which had come out last year, that streaming had surpassed linear in tonal time spent. The streaming clients were not happy about that. The traditional media companies were, were happy about that. There was back and forth. They were planning to release it and then they decided not to release it.
[08:43]
A
And so, yeah, suddenly the number said that linear was growing and streaming wasn't growing as much, which seemed a little strange. And. And these numbers really matter because this is what people bill and. And book on.
[08:56]
C
Well, now the gauge numbers, they don't bill and book on.
[08:59]
A
Okay.
[09:00]
C
The ratings numbers, they bill and book on. So, you know, important distinction. The gauge is more, you know, a thought leadership market trend number.
[09:10]
A
And on the positive side, Nielsen has made a lot of strides in the last couple years to include things like out of home, which was a longtime complaint of, like, sports networks, that they weren't getting bars and they weren't getting, you know, people in each other's homes, you know, super bowl parties and stuff like that.
[09:25]
C
Yep, that, that was a big development for sports numbers. I think the specific thing that was going into the gauge that drove TB linear viewership up was kind of better. Call it better measurement of rural counties and some undercounted populations. So this stuff is complicated. And the problem is with every change, there's a batch of people that are winners, there's a batch of people that are losers. The losers tend to be a little more vocal than the winners. So then we get all this drama.
[09:58]
A
It's a funny situation where you're. You think of yourselves as selling a product to a customer, but the customer actually is relying on your measurement to sell stuff. And so if they're not happy with the product, they lose money. And it causes this pretty interesting, you know, back and forth where they get sniped out in the press by NBC or someone like that. But anyway, let's go back in time. So a couple of years ago, there was blood in the water, right? And I don't know, I would probably hesitate to give it an exact year, but sometime around the COVID world where streaming was obviously increasing, you had T vision and Videoamp and comscore and a couple of others that all were saying, like, now's our opportunity. We're going to make this transition to streaming in a way that big, dumb old Nielsen won't be able to. And there was a joint industry Committee, a JIC that sort of. I don't remember exactly what. They weren't going to select a vendor, but they were going to kind of approve vendors as being eligible. And it appears that that is dead. That whole wave is dead. I don't want to put words at your mouth. Maybe it's not dead, Maybe I just think it's dead, but it feels like it was a failure.
[11:14]
C
Well, I wouldn't say it's dead. I wouldn't say it's dead. I think there was a wave of energy around this idea of alternative currencies. And there was a bunch of industry work through the jack, through the arf, through sim, these various industry bodies, just to try to get the industry aligned around definitions and what good looks like, all that stuff. And I think that was pretty successful to me. The idea of an alternative currency, it's kind of the wrong way to look at this situation. In actuality, the traditional Nielsen business of verifying did I reach my intended audience across publishers? Like that particular and especially looked at by a narrow set of demographic measures, that particular question is just going to be a lot smaller than it used to be. But if you look at the way CTV is being traded and will be traded, the total role that data plays in the picture, the number of questions that it answers, the role that it plays in selection, in execution and then in measurement on the back end is going to be much, much bigger. If you think of terms in terms of programmatic take rates, the take rate for data business, all data and technology in linear television, maybe 5%. What do you think is going to be in CTV? A lot bigger. So we are talking about a much bigger pie, the thing that Nielsen traditionally did. It's going to be a piece of it, but a pretty small piece of it. So the real thing is, how do these models emerge and who participates most actively?
[13:07]
A
I feel like we're sliding into the what does Antenna do? Territory. So what is your vision as the CEO of Antenna for the future of all this stuff and the measurement of streaming entertainment and content?
[13:21]
C
Yeah, so, I mean, we actually come at it from a totally different angle. We launched our business actually two weeks into Pandemic, so just as all this crazy streaming stuff was really taking off. But we launched it to measure subscriptions, the other revenue stream for these streamers. And so we have a panel of 2 million Americans. We measure their financial transactions, we use that to count the number of subscribers to all these services, but then do really deep analytics on acquisition and churn. More recently, over the past year, We've started to integrate ACR data directly into that panel. So now we're drifting into this space in a more more specific way. The angle that we're taking though right now with our Subscriber Views product is programming analytics. So we're looking at when people sign up for a service, what are the first shows they watch, what are the viewing patterns? In particular, shows that drive stickiness and retention. When interesting groups cancel a service, what do they go watch on other services?
[14:31]
A
So yeah, it's interesting you bring up the content side. It feels like the content stuff really does drive, churn and sign up especially maybe there's some cohort of money saving types who are constantly like, oh, the Game of Thrones is back, well, let's get HBO or Mandalorian on Disney and then they cancel as soon as it's over. How much of that is happening?
[14:52]
C
It's a lot. Programming really does drive the majority of activity. So the fact that we're able to tie those together, you know, we think is really valuable on the subscription side. It does, we think over time get to be an interesting part of the advertising equation as well. You know, thus far most of CTV ads have been sold on an audience basis, but we're just now getting to the point where the streamers are getting big enough audiences to actually sell around shows. So if you think like two years ago, our, our antenna numbers say that less than 10% of Netflix subs were on the advertising plan. Last month we measured 54% of people signing up for Netflix signed up for the ad plan.
[15:44]
A
Oh, wow.
[15:45]
C
Yeah, they're at a place where all of a sudden, you know, if you want to plan a campaign or build a package around the crown or stranger things, like you actually have the type of audience half that you can do that. And we think that's going to be exciting for brands and exciting for the streamers. And we think more of that traditional show based buying won't be the whole thing, but it'll be part of the equation going forward.
[16:10]
A
How big does a show have to get before it's worth selling on its own? I mean, I know that's very subjective, but what have you seen anecdotally?
[16:18]
B
Yeah, yeah.
[16:19]
C
I mean, I think the, the streamers are experimenting with that now. I mean, if you think about how that translates to in traditional linear, you know, certainly shows that are doing whatever, you know, a few million, several million are. Those are properties that advertisers will build a plan around. And so, you know, if it translates to the same type of numbers in ctv, we're reaching that point, at least for the top shows.
[16:51]
A
So where does this end up? What's like the measurement nirvana for these publishers? What do they want to see in their dashboard? And will it be one vendor, two vendors or N vendors?
[17:02]
C
Yeah, so I mean I think it's pretty clear in. It's pretty clear to the marketplace now. It's not going to be one provider, it's going to be a mix. Some of it's going to be, you know, integrated into the dsp, Some of it's going to be driven by first party, some of it will be by third party. So I think that that work around standardization that we talked about, that the JIC and the industry bodies did that, that's going to be important in driving some principles around, around how people think about the space. But then individual brands and individual publishers, you know, depending on their brand goals or the strengths of their audience, they're going to find different flavors of it to monetize most effectively in their environment.
[17:52]
A
You still have a gatekeeper effect because you don't want just any little startup doing measurement that pretends to be an alternative currency. You still need the MRC or the JIC or whomever. I assume that's going to be part of it.
[18:05]
C
Yeah, well, in the industry bodies as a function to establish those standards, provide some sort of framework for evaluating vendors. That's, that's a really valuable part of the ecosystem.
[18:18]
A
Yeah. One thing we covered on this pod a while back is the, the sort of mashing together where podcasting is becoming a player. You have Netflix signing podcast deals, YouTube signing podcast, YouTube becoming the largest podcast distribution channel. And it feels like it's just fragmenting even further where you have smaller and smaller called shows. Maybe they're just influencer channels that suddenly are important parts of the media mix. Like how far does it scale downwards to the smallest content? Because that's really the fundamental problem is the downward scaling. Measurement.
[18:53]
C
Yeah, yeah. Because we're dealing with digital measurement. The measurement scales quite well. The problem in traditional linear and some of the challenges I think that traditional measurement has had in porting over to streaming is it wasn't designed to deal with things that weren't the biggest mass channels. The mechanisms that we have now we're panel based, but we're 2 million, so that's 1% of the audience. That's a big panel. And a lot of the measurement systems are essentially census based. They're working with the actual ad transaction data, the ad delivery data, things like that. So it will scale quite well.
[19:43]
A
Kind of. The last topic, it wasn't actually on the agenda, but I'm sure you have some insight in it is where does sports fit in? Because the NFL rights are being negotiated over the next, I guess, 18 months or something like that. And the first of all, I'm sure in your data, you see they have a pretty strong effect on signups, but I'm just wondering how you think that's going to play in and what you hear in the industry.
[20:09]
C
Yeah, I think it forces a lot of this transition to happen faster because the big sports rights have, over the last couple years, really flipped the switch to go aggressively after big streaming deals. And so then all of a sudden, you've got 20 million people watching Thursday Night Football on Amazon, all on CTV or almost all on ctv. Well then all of a sudden, you need those hardcore traditional TV metrics to work in that environment. So that's forcing the function a lot faster.
[20:48]
A
I swear, I don't want to sound like an old man, but every Thursday I'd be like, how do I watch Prime Video again? Or, where is this game? I would be Googling Prime Video because logging into my Amazon account, I'd be like, I could either reorder some printer cartridges or I could watch a football game. So I think that's a challenge. All right. With that.
[21:16]
C
Topic for another edition.
[21:18]
A
Topic for another edition. Okay. This is a super interesting continuing area. Eric, you had something you wanted to add?
[21:23]
B
No, I'm just laughing, actually. Maybe one. Just. I'm kind of obsessed with Paramount in a number of fronts. Do you have data on when Paramount did the UFC deal where they basically bought the rights to ufc? Did that have, like, a big bump in subscribers for them?
[21:45]
C
Yeah, yeah, we saw, you know, on order of a million new people sign up for that first fight, which is a fantastic, fantastic pop. And then I will say also that we saw it was absolutely one of the most watched programs that Paramount has had amongst new subscribers. The other thing that we saw is, and clearly Paramount knew this and making that big bet, it's a very loyal audience. So the retention of that group both to the ensuing fights, but also to Paramount, plus subscription, has been quite strong.
[22:24]
A
All right, on that note, let's take a quick break. We'll come back with a lot of news this week. As usual, AI and some interesting people moves. So we'll be right back.
[22:37]
D
This is Ad Tech God, and I command you to listen to this house ad. So if you're listening to this show, just know that you've really stumbled upon a giant network of content across advertising, marketing, media, publishing and of course the people that work in this great advertising industry. So go to market. Com, check out all of our brands. We have multitude of shows from the Brand Forum, the Advertising Forum, the Monopoly Report, the Ad Tech God Pod, the Market Example pod and more. We are bringing more podcasts to our network. We are consistently and constantly bringing on new shows. So check it out marketecturemedia.com or search for any of those brands in the app that you use to listen to this podcast. Enjoy the show and see you all soon.
[23:26]
B
All right, we are back with the refresh all the news of the week. So few things. We have some platform stuff, we have some AI stuff, we have some people stuff. Something for everybody. Let's talk platforms. So this week we had two big announcements. Two companies did a couple of announcements. So let's start with Index Exchange. Index launched Index Cloud. So effectively a way to bring the buy side closer to the sell side and tapping into Index's new neutral compute environment, which I say will help bring down costs, improve efficiency and maybe create some competition in the DSP market.
[24:06]
C
Ari, do you have a chance to
[24:07]
B
check out this one? What was your take?
[24:09]
A
Well, on the one hand, I'd say it's great that Index is differentiating. All the other SSPs are rushing to add buying platforms. DSPs within the SSP and Index is not. They're saying, well, we're going to lead effectively in curation, letting people come in here and do what they want to on our inventory. So I think that's pretty interesting and differentiated. And I've talked to Andrew Casale. He's actually, I think he's going to be our guest next week. We're still working on scheduling, so we'll hear a lot more about it. Then on the other hand, on the little skeptical side, I have two skepticisms. One is like this is not new. I mean, this is Brian O' Kelly's pitch for App Nexus circa 2006. You know, basically put it in our cloud, it'll be faster. We give you compute. And the second question I have in general is fragmentation. Are you as a buyer going to have a real opportunity here in Indexes Cloud when you can't get, say, you know, I think Hulu is exclusive to Magnite, for example. So suddenly you're going to have everything except Hulu. And also Google adx still has a lot of inventory. You can't get it anywhere else. So, you know, the data curation use case makes a Ton of sense. Does the DSP use case make sense about putting a real bidder there? I'm a little skeptical.
[25:27]
B
Yeah. No, those are, those are good points. My partner, Joe Zawadzki, he, he's been saying for some time now the DSP market will either be like three company market or a 300 company market.
[25:40]
C
Right.
[25:41]
B
And this may be, you know, how the, the latter gets realized. First company that is launching on this is bedrock platform which, which we invested in at a barrier and we had Shane on when they very early on and they were basically talking about this idea that, you know, DSP needs more competition. DSP can, you know, compete in different ways and go bringing costs down. Could be a way for, you know, challenger DSPs to compete in this era of behemoths with unique data. Unique, unique inventory. Jonathan, it's been a little while, but you have some DSP DNA. What do you think about this?
[26:21]
C
I think the concept of how the DSP market shakes out and consolidates is really interesting. I think there's a lot of benefit to big brands that comes from scale. So I think on the top end of the market it'll be pretty consolidated. But when you go down into specific niches, there's really pretty great ways for specialists to differentiate.
[26:51]
A
And I wrote about this in my newsletter this past week. I wrote an article that everyone hated called it's the Data Stupid, about how if you have unique data, you effectively have your own dsp. And if you don't have unique data, it's pretty tough sledding. So I think that's kind of relevant here.
[27:07]
B
You got a lot of hate on that one.
[27:09]
A
A little hate, yeah.
[27:10]
B
Just because I didn't own unique data.
[27:13]
A
Yeah, a little bit that also. I don't want to call it a correction, but the Nexon people are all over me because they were not included as a decent DSP in my little list. And they do have unique data, apparently. Next instance, I bought a mobi has quite a bit of non video. So they were upset that they weren't on the list. So now they're in the podcast.
[27:34]
B
All right, half a correction right there.
[27:36]
A
Work, work the refs. Work the refs.
[27:39]
B
Speaking of unique data, I thought this one was interesting too. Another one on the index front. So they're making Unity one of the big gaming ad platforms. Their data available through curated marketplace deals. Right. So this idea of index, just enabling curation of unique inventory, I think this is a really cool use case. And they say gamers are a hard to reach market outside of the games. So I think this is a neat deal.
[28:06]
A
Yeah. And Unity. Maybe I'm getting this totally wrong, but I believe they shut down their ad network recently. They had IronSource, they had acquired. Then they. And they shut it. So Chris FIO is over there, he's doing their ad business and there's definitely shaking it up. They're trying different things here.
[28:21]
B
Yeah, this has Chris's fingerprints all over it. Him, you know, coming out of Experian, Experian having Autogen, them seeing the power of curation, I think. I think the breadcrumbs are there. All right, let's talk about ttd. So TTD this week launched KOA Agents, which is their agentic platform. It's a system called Open Agentic Kit, which I think kind of competes with ARTF and adcp. Maybe not in the announcement. Two things. So first is Stagwell was announced as the first partner. So shout out to Stagwell. And Jeff Green had a really interesting blog post that at once sort of announced this and gave a lot of
[29:04]
C
credit to Stagwell, but then at the
[29:05]
B
same time continued to throw not in name some other holdco's under the bus and I'll pull one out. We're increasingly focused on powering the advertising companies of the future, those who make things more efficient, not those who exploit inefficiencies. Good quote. All right, Jonathan, now it's time for you to weigh in.
[29:24]
C
Yeah, so I think this is a place where Trade Desk's heritage really gives them a great advantage. Trade Desk, from day one built itself in what at the time was a really contrarian approach of being a deep partner to the agencies. And so while the rest of the industry has done a bunch of pivots to try to follow, Trade Desk has just had a big lead in kind of DNA that's been tough to match on that front. So when you think about something like, okay, what's the system, you know, what's the buying system that's going to best figure out agentech workflows that fit into an agency structure. You know, I think Trade Desk is, is really well positioned to lead there.
[30:13]
B
Makes a lot of sense. All right, what you got?
[30:15]
A
Yeah, I, I think there's sort of this vibe in the industry right now that that AI is not for sort of point to point use cases like, hey, tell me what segments you have. And it's more about orchestration across the more complicated workflows that the customers have. When you're talking about planning, buying, optimizing, creative et cetera I heard a very similar pitch from Triple if this week. I spoke at their little, they had a little afternoon thing. I was their moderator on a panel unrelated to AI. But over there, Dave Heimlich and team are very much talking about this. Like we want to be able to do the complete suite of AI activities, not just the point suite. Hopefully that was under embargo, but we'll see.
[31:00]
B
Hopefully not.
[31:01]
A
It's good pitch for them, but I'm hearing this more, you know, like, because the, the simple point to point stuff is trivial nowadays with AI and Claude. So.
[31:10]
B
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. One to watch. Also, TTD phased out the much maligned periodic table UI and it is being replaced with something that is more akin to what people expect. So that's probably another good positive just given, you know, simplicity of the UI is, is, is paramount.
[31:33]
A
When it's not working, you got to give up and, and just product managers everywhere don't use metaphors. Metaphors don't work for UIs. Metaphors are good for product naming, but not for the ui. Just make the UI and boring boxes, tables, lines, searching, filtering. Don't do weird metaphors.
[31:51]
B
We're back to the boxes and tables.
[31:53]
A
I love clouds.
[31:54]
B
Good job, ttd. Okay, cool, let's move on. AI stuff. So this rolled out last week and after the pod, it's probably worth us talking about. So Claude launched Claude Design with the launch of Opus 4.7 and basically it's ridiculous capabilities that take on companies like Figma and Canva. Have either you guys played with this thing yet?
[32:20]
A
I've not. But if you told me it helps me avoid using Canva, I'm all in. They got my money. Take my money.
[32:28]
B
How about you, Jonathan? Did you give it a shot?
[32:30]
C
No, I haven't dug in yet. Weekend project.
[32:33]
B
All right. As the resident guinea pig on the pod, I always do this stuff so I can bring some feedback. So I tried this and. Oh my God. So the use case is it's for sales and marketing teams. So you know, like either just upload something that you know is like reflective of your core brand guidelines or actually like feed it into Claude and then say, give me a one sheeter, give me marketing collateral, like give me anything. So I took like a really big aperium deck, like one of those just like, you know, tons of slides. You know, it had our brand guidelines, had everything into it and just said, make this a one sheeter. And it made it a one sheeter that like I would have paid for. You know, it took like two minutes. You know, I probably would have changed some of the wording but from a design perspective, layout like hidden things about 90%. It was great and way beyond my like, you know, borderline design capabilities. So this is like really, really exciting stuff. I think this is going to be like used all over the place, particularly like with sales and go to market teams. Everybody should try it. It's super neat.
[33:39]
A
Yeah, I'm excited about this. I think it's sort of. Figma and Canva are different use cases. Obviously the figma is under pressure because while figma is a great tool for product designers, increasingly people are asking whether they need product designers or if product designers need to be in the loop on every project. Or more like an establishment use case where you figure out the design system and then other people run with it. Whereas Canva, the whole point of Canva is to, is to make it easy to create designs. That's like their value proposal is like let non designers create useful collateral for design and it feels like AI just kind of blows that out of the water to some extent.
[34:19]
B
It does, it does have to try it to like, you know, I think fully appreciate it. But whereas with Canva you kind of need to know what you're doing. You know, it's like start with, start with a template. Okay, how do I like, you know, put an image in here. This is just like purely hands off. So like really, really impressive stuff. All right. On the ChatGPT front, two things. ChatGPT officially rolls out CPC pricing with average CPCs in the three to five dollar range. So moving along the continuum of making their ads more available, more performance based, more competitive with the other platforms.
[34:56]
A
No real surprises here. I mean I think we all said all the smart money said the exact same thing when they rolled out like the $65 CPM, it was that this is just to get money fast. They're building product, it's going to look like Google search, you know, no surprises. The surprises are the people who reacted badly and said, oh, OpenAI has no idea what they're doing. You imagine a CPM price. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just wait three months, dude.
[35:20]
B
Exactly.
[35:20]
A
Chill out. Yeah.
[35:21]
B
And speaking of CPMs, there was a leaked, I'll say, quote unquote leaked. I don't know if it was like leaked internally or somebody got all of it Dec with Stack Adapt, who I guess is a partner of ChatGPT has CPMs quoted in the 15 range, so no more 60 in the marketplace. So it's kind of rolling out as we thought it would.
[35:41]
A
Yeah, nothing Nothing too exciting here, I think on separate news. I'm not sure we have this anywhere, but Kevin Weil left OpenAI. So he's an old longtime ad tech guy who, who got promoted up, up, up to head of product for Instagram and then I think it was briefly head of product for OpenAI. Then he turned into a different role and now he left. So Opening Eye has a lot of staff turnover.
[36:04]
B
Yeah, I mean that's part of the game, people stuff. So Magnite.
[36:14]
C
Yeah.
[36:14]
B
Some shuffles at. At Magnite. So Adam Soka certainly friend of the pod. He was head of product. He departed cmo David Herog departed and chief strategy officer and head of Corp Dev Eric Obanac departed. All public all, you know, putting their stuff out there on. On LinkedIn. Interesting. When three C level execs all depart.
[36:37]
A
Yeah. And I think they had all been there a long time. Right. So this is not a case where the company has a lot of turnover like some other companies. This company is. Has had an exec team. Adam's been there for like eight, nine years. So. So it could be a natural evolution, I think. You know, the question of Michael Barrett going to be there forever or is there some future CEO going to be there? It's interesting. I'd love to. I think the other shoe hasn't necessarily dropped here.
[37:06]
B
Yeah, yeah. One to keep an eye on. But yeah, you're right. These are all three, like awesome execs. Did a lot of great stuff. They're from the days of Rubicon. I know Eric was the architect of a lot of the. The M and A that created Magnite. So look forward seeing where all they move on to what they all move on to rather fluency. Who you had on the pod? I think it was Monday.
[37:27]
A
Yeah, we had a. We had Fluency on. On Monday. It was a good conversation. And they just hired another friend of the pod, Eric Picard, who was. He was head of product for Pandora. He'd been at Microsoft ads back in the long, long ago. Interesting. Keep your eye on that company, I think.
[37:46]
B
Yeah. Agree. They're doing some neat stuff. One thing we missed last week that I thought was interesting in apropos having having Jonathan on the pod this week. So Netflix, their ad revenue again is set to double in 2026 to $3 billion. And Eric Suefer picked this up. 50% of the revenue is programmatic. So they're continuing to climb. $3 billion is a legit ad business.
[38:11]
C
Yeah. Yeah. And as I said earlier, over half of people signing up For Netflix, pick that ad plan we have about. We have them at about a third of all US subscribers now on the ad plan. So it's. It has become a major part of their business, for sure.
[38:28]
A
And I think their integrations are broadening. I think they have four or five DSPs now who can beta in. A couple aren't in there. And I've heard complaints, you know, people saying, why can't we get Netflix? But I think their strategy is to expand that.
[38:42]
B
People come to you with all their complaints.
[38:44]
A
They do, because they think I could solve their problems, and I can't. Here's an example. So I get the most common thing anyone ever reaches out to. To me about cold reach out is like, hey, I want to get my SSP integrated into Beeswax. Can you put me in contact with the. The guy who's in charge of that? Right. Who. And is a really nice guy, many of you know, named Matt Clark. And I text with Matt Clark all the time. He's a friend of mine. Matt Clark has me on standing orders to never, ever introduce any SSP to him. It's the only thing he's ever asked of me. He, he. It is a standing order, no exceptions. And it's the only thing anyone ever wants for me. And so I have to tell them, like, no, you're on your own. The dude's name is Matt Clark. Go LinkedIn him and spam him, but he will ignore you, and I will not help.
[39:30]
B
Jonathan, do you get requests for TTD integrations?
[39:36]
C
Well, I do get a few of those. I think I get more requests for introductions into the recruiting process.
[39:42]
A
Yeah, yeah, I get that too.
[39:44]
B
Yeah, for sure. All right. I think with that, we should call it a pod. This has been a good one.
[39:51]
A
Yeah.
[39:51]
B
You got something?
[39:53]
A
No, it was a great conversation. So, Jonathan, thank you so much for being here. You're the co founder and CEO of Antenna. Where can people find you to sign up on Antenna for a free newsletter or something? LinkedIn.
[40:07]
C
You know it. Antenna Live.
[40:10]
A
L, I V E. All right. I remember the name because Beeswax actually launched a product called Antenna at the exact same time you did. Launched your product. And we didn't have the URL either, but your product was a lot more successful than ours. Appreciate that.
[40:24]
C
We had that trademark lawsuit ready to go, too.
[40:27]
A
Exactly. Well, we'll see you all in Miami, probably. So stop. Say hi to Eric or I or Jonathan, you can be in Miami.
[40:34]
C
I'll be there. I'm a proud possible investor.
[40:39]
A
All right, sounds good. Thanks, everybody.
[40:41]
B
Bye. Bye. Thank you for subscribing to marketecture.
[40:45]
A
New interviews are added every week at marketecture TV and your favorite podcasting app.

Episode 170: The Streaming Measurement Mess. Jonathan Carson Helps Us Make Sense of the Chaos.

Episode 170: The Streaming Measurement Mess. Jonathan Carson Helps Us Make Sense of the Chaos.

Marketecture Podcast Episode 170 Summary

Overview

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The State of Streaming Measurement

2. The Nielsen Dilemma

3. The Buyer-Seller Tension & Industry Politics

4. Antenna’s Perspective & Approach

5. How Measurement Will Evolve

6. The Growing Role of Sports

Notable Quotes & Moments

Important Timestamps

Related News and Industry Trends

Final Thoughts

Marketecture Podcast Episode 170 Summary

Overview

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The State of Streaming Measurement

2. The Nielsen Dilemma

3. The Buyer-Seller Tension & Industry Politics

4. Antenna’s Perspective & Approach

5. How Measurement Will Evolve

6. The Growing Role of Sports

Notable Quotes & Moments

Important Timestamps

Related News and Industry Trends

Final Thoughts