Luke Schoenberger on Simplifying Publisher Ad Tech with Playwire’s Wrapper

Summary

Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.

Episode: Luke Schoenberger on Simplifying Publisher Ad Tech with Playwire’s Wrapper
Host: Ari Paparo
Guest: Luke Schoenberger, EVP of Product Engineering, Playwire
Date: November 3, 2025

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Overview

This episode centers on the rapidly evolving landscape of publisher ad tech, with a focus on how Playwire is aiming to simplify ad monetization for publishers through its proprietary Prebid wrapper. Ari Paparo interviews Luke Schoenberger, exploring why so many companies are building their own wrappers, how Playwire positions itself within a crowded field, and what unique challenges and opportunities exist for both web and app publishers. The conversation digs deep into the technical motivations, industry trends, and strategic differentiators in the management of ad inventory and monetization.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Playwire’s Business Model & Market Positioning

• What is Playwire?

  • Playwire is a "sales house," one of the four largest in the industry alongside Mediavine, Raptive, and Freestar ([01:08]).
  • They handle end-to-end ad monetization for publishers, especially those with less technical expertise or resources.
  • Playwire provides a simple integration (just add script tags), manages auctions with Prebid, Amazon, Google Ad Manager (GAM), and consolidates analytics and payments for publishers.
  • Recently expanding aggressively into the app business as well ([01:08–01:57]).

  Quote:
  "If you are a publisher who has a website and you want to be able to monetize that website with ads and not have to worry about how to do it, you would come to us and we would do it for you."
  — Luke Schoenberger [01:13]

2. Not an SSP, but an Integration & Monetization Platform

• Playwire isn’t an SSP; instead, it integrates with multiple SSPs via JavaScript and manages auctions for the publisher ([02:03]).
• Main value: consolidates operational complexity into a single-source solution, especially beneficial for smaller teams ([02:03–03:15]).

3. Why Build Another Wrapper? Industry Trends & Differentiators

• Many big players are releasing their own wrappers (e.g., Playwire, Freestar, Mediavine, Raptive, Trade Desk, Hashtag Labs).

• Motivation:

  • Leverage Playwire's deep experience to address gaps and build something more robust and adaptable than existing market solutions ([03:31–05:29]).

  Quote:
  "We just thought we could do it better than a lot of other people were doing it ... We saw a bunch of different gaps that we felt like we could kind of build something really robust that solves a lot of problems."
  — Luke Schoenberger [04:39]

4. Technical Foundation: Built on Prebid, with Custom Flexibility

• Playwire's wrapper is based on Prebid, but allows publishers to select specific Prebid versions, a feature that's becoming increasingly important ([05:29–06:01]).

5. Key Advantages Over Plain Prebid or Other Wrappers

• Core Benefits:

  • Control and easy configuration (including rules-based approaches).
  • A/B Testing & Experimentation deeply integrated for continuous optimization.
  • Enables highly granular experimentation—different ad densities, behavior for different types of users (social vs. organic), etc.
  • Unlimited split tests on virtually any parameter ([06:10–07:37]).
  • Simplifies real-time analytics and reporting, reducing the complexity once handled with convoluted GAM ad hierarchies ([16:35–17:58]).

  Quote:
  "A/B testing is the fundamental layer. So at any given time you can have kind of like an unlimited number of experiments that you wish to run off of pretty much anything that can go into Prebid."
  — Luke Schoenberger [06:26]

6. Reducing Ad Tech Complexity for Publishers

• Playwire acts as a "wrapper on top of the wrapper," further streamlining set-up ([07:37–07:42]).
• Debate over whether publishers need multiple wrappers (Prebid, Amazon TAM) or can operate with just one advanced solution. Playwire aims for unified management ([07:44–08:39]).

7. Use Cases: When Not to Use Google Ad Manager (GAM)

• Commonly, publishers only go to GAM for AdX demand but this can be unprofitable for certain inventory (e.g., refresh). Playwire can instead auction some traffic directly via Prebid for faster, more profitable results ([08:39–10:49]).

  Quote:
  "For a regular publisher...going to GAM on refresh opportunities when they don't necessarily need to, you know, there's definitely some opportunities there for a lot of publishers."
  — Luke Schoenberger [09:41]

8. In-App Monetization: A Distinct Challenge

• Playwire is investing heavily in supporting app publishers ([11:29–14:54]).

• App monetization is distinct from web, even down to basics like impression counting.

• Playwire offers an SDK, supports multiple ad servers, and customizes setups based on app type (gaming, content, utility).

• Many app developers are small teams with basic monetization setups; Playwire streamlines and optimizes this ([15:15]).

  Quote:
  "There isn't a one size fits all best ad server for app, that's not really a thing. It definitely kind of depends on what your app is."
  — Luke Schoenberger [13:58]

9. Lightning Round: Competitive Advantages & Challenges

• Top Competitive Advantage:

  • Integrated, real-time analytics with dashboard customization ([16:35]).
  • Simplifies both analytics and ad unit setup, reducing the need for convoluted GAM hierarchies.

  Quote:
  "...Publishers will be able to kind of like create their own dashboards and reports and be able to share those to users at their company...analytics is a big gap in the industry for people that have their own wrappers."
  — Luke Schoenberger [17:16]

• Biggest Challenge:

  • Heavy competition; many are offering wrappers, but Playwire believes the appetite for solutions that reduce complexity continues to grow ([18:03–18:42]).

10. Industry Trends: The “Death” of the Open Web & Impact of Generative AI

• Display market is under pressure; traffic and revenue for many publishers are declining due to generative AI reducing search-originated traffic ([19:08]).
• Playwire's publishers are insulated somewhat by their focus on gaming and high-engagement content ([20:12]).

11. Playwire’s Company Ethos

• If Playwire were an animal, it would be a fox: smart, adaptable, pragmatic, focused on experimentation and results ([21:00]).

  Quote:
  "...We're definitely very smart. Right. Like, we don't necessarily believe in one big thing. We definitely think very probabilistically and we believe in, like, a bunch of a lot of different things...we're going to try it out. That's all we can do. And we kind of let the results speak for themselves."
  — Luke Schoenberger [21:00]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On why publishers need less complexity:
  "The last thing you want to do is try and figure out how to hunt down money from 10 to 15 different vendors."
  — Luke Schoenberger [02:57]

• On the proliferation of wrappers in the industry:
  "Never put it past ad tech to make things more complicated in the effort to standardize."
  — Ari Paparo [04:26]

• On market realities:
  "The open web is dead and display advertising is on decline ... we've definitely seen a significant drop with some publishers as far as their traffic goes, just with generative AI."
  — Luke Schoenberger [19:01 & 19:08]

• On adaptability:
  "If it's the best idea, we're going to try it out. That's all we can do. And we kind of let the results speak for themselves."
  — Luke Schoenberger [21:00]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Playwire’s publisher-focused business model – [01:08]
• Integration approach, not an SSP – [02:03–03:15]
• Rationale for building a proprietary wrapper – [03:31–05:29]
• Playwire’s wrapper technical foundation – [05:29–06:01]
• Key features: control, testing, rules – [06:10–07:37]
• Unified vs. multiple wrappers debate – [07:44–08:39]
• Avoiding GAM for certain inventory – [08:39–10:49]
• Expanding to in-app monetization – [11:29–14:54]
• SDK & cross-server approach for apps – [13:49]
• Small teams, big impact in app monetization – [15:15]
• Competitive advantage: analytics – [16:35–17:58]
• Biggest challenge: competition – [18:03–18:42]
• Industry headwinds: generative AI, open web – [19:08–20:12]
• Lightning round & company ethos (the fox) – [21:00]

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Summary

This episode offers an insider’s view into how Playwire is evolving to help publishers—both web and app—navigate an increasingly complex ad tech landscape. The discussion highlights the industry’s rush towards proprietary wrappers, Playwire’s distinctive blend of customization, analytics, and managed services, and the new challenges posed by generative AI and declining open web traffic. Luke Schoenberger’s insights make clear that the future of publisher monetization is about offering powerfully simple, flexible solutions—backed by deep expertise and relentless experimentation.

Transcript

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[Luke Schoenberger]

Foreign.

[Ari Paparo]

Welcome to marketecture where you can get smart fast with in depth interviews of leading technology executives. I'm Ari Paparo. I'm joined today by Luke Schoenberger, who is the executive vice president of product engineering for Playwire. Luke, thank you for being here.

[Luke Schoenberger]

Yeah, definitely happy to be here. Happy to, happy to be on the show. Happy to be able to talk with you today.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, so today's very publisher focused. We haven't talked about publishers in a while, so why don't we just level set to start? What, what is Playwire's general business?

[Luke Schoenberger]

Yeah, so Playwire is a sales house. We are one of the four largest sales house sales houses in the industry. So us, along with Mediavine, Raptive, Freestar, we monetize a significant portion of the open web. So if you are a publisher who has a website and you want to be able to monetize that website with ads and not have to worry about how to do it, you would come to us and we would do it for you. We also, and we can talk about this later, we also have started to have a growing app business as well, where we offer a very similar product to app publishers as well. That's something that we've kind of been growing out over the last year and that's been definitely a very interesting experience.

[Ari Paparo]

I bet. Yeah, we'll talk about that. But you're not an SSP yourself, right? You work with the SSPs?

[Luke Schoenberger]

No, we do not have an SSP. Right. So we essentially what we have is we have JavaScript that we load in the browser for publishers. Right. Integration from a publisher perspective is very easy. They essentially take off all their existing ad code, put a couple of script tags on page for us, we conduct the auction with prebid, Amazon, Gam, et cetera, have the ability to dynamically inject ads where it makes sense, which is like a big value add for publishers. Since a lot of the publishers we work with aren't necessarily the most technically savvy, they don't have a lot of developer resources and it's just easy to come work with Us put a couple tags on the page and then we take care of the rest. We provide them with a full suite of real time analytics that can report on whatever they want. And we also. One of the biggest value adds that we have for publishers is instead of having to manage payments from a bunch of different SSPs, they get one check from us at a specific date and time, which if you're a small shop, two to three people, the last thing you want to do is try and figure out how to hunt down money from 10 to 15 different vendors.

[Ari Paparo]

Totally. Yeah, I could see why that's pretty appealing to like long tail and torso publishers. Get it all done in one spot. So traditionally these publishers are using, I guess pre bid, assuming they have multiple sources of supply. But I understand that you're building your own wrapper, so. Tell me about it.

[Luke Schoenberger]

Yeah, so us along with it seems like everyone else right now we are building our own wrapper. I mean it's really interesting. Right. And I think that's a topic that we could talk about and in and of itself, right. Why. Why everyone is building their own rapper. Why it seems like there's more demand for this now than there was in the past. Because at this point, right. We have our own wrapper that we're releasing. Freestarty has theirs. I believe Mediavine and Raptive are also coming out with their own wrappers. And then. Right. Within. I don't know how long ago was it at this point that trade desk said that they were coming out with their own.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, I think it was last week.

[Luke Schoenberger]

Yeah, that's on top of. Right. Hashtag Labs who already has a wrapper. And then all the other maybe like ten to a dozen people, smaller companies, institutions that have their own as well.

[Ari Paparo]

Never put it past ad tech to make things more complicated in the effort to standardize. So tell me, I guess let's start with just your motivation since you know about that. So what, what is the motivation for building your own rapper?

[Luke Schoenberger]

I think we, I think we just thought we could do it better than a lot of other people were doing it. I think we. And I don't know, partially that may be like, that may sound arrogant, but kind of just from our experience from being in managed service for as long as we have been, and I mean, this is publisher monetization is pretty much all I've ever done. Like I've been doing this for 11 years at this point. A little over 11 years. I think with kind of all the experience that we have in kind of looking at the products in market, kind of a lot of the different legacy providers, we saw a bunch of different gaps that we felt like we could kind of build something really robust that solves a lot of problems that weren't being solved today by existing providers.

[Ari Paparo]

Right. So, but first, is your wrapper based on prebit? Is it a fork? Basically.

[Luke Schoenberger]

Okay, yeah. We do use pre bid. We will have the ability for publishers to pick specific versions of Prebid that they would like to use, which is going to become more relevant right now with everything with transaction id. The idea of us being able to support custom versions of Prebid is also something that we think is worth considering. But yes, today it is based on Prebid.

[Ari Paparo]

So what are some specific reasons why a publisher would be better off using your wrapper versus plain pre bid?

[Luke Schoenberger]

Just control. Right. So if they're using pre bid, they would still at the same time have to kind of like build out their own kind of UI for how they want to manage that and manage all the different settings or. Right. They have to sink a lot of development time into being able to customize exactly what they want in an ongoing basis. Right. Added on top of that. Right. They would need to figure out a way to be able to run kind of their own experimentation. One thing that's very native within the wrapper that we're going to be releasing is the concept of split testing. A B testing is the fundamental layer. So at any given time you can have kind of like an unlimited number of experiments that you wish to run off of. Pretty much anything that can go into pre bid and any different, I guess, settings for ad behavior on the page. So if you want to be able to test different ad densities for social media users. Right. Traffic that you get from social as opposed to ad density for organic users, you can do that. Opportunities are definitely pretty endless. Right. So there's the concept of being able to set up your own configurations, but on top of that have like a rules based approach. And kind of with this rules based approach, we feel like we're going to be able to solve a lot of the limitations that a lot of the software out there today has.

[Ari Paparo]

So it sounds like you're building a wrapper on top of the wrapper. It's a previd wrapper wrapper.

[Luke Schoenberger]

Exactly.

[Ari Paparo]

And do you think publishers end up with a single wrapper on their entire website or. Right now most bigger publishers have to have two. They have to have pre bid and Amazon tam because those are sort of incompatible. Do you think they end up with one, two or many?

[Luke Schoenberger]

I mean, I think you need like if you want to make your life more difficult, you can have multiple, but really at the end of the day you only need one. You really need someone. Something that just adds is kind of like a decisioning layer. Right. Whether you use gam, right. And you have GAM act as the decisioning layer or if there are certain situations where you want to exclude. GAM acts as a decision layer for you on page, which I think is definitely something that definitely adds a lot of value to publishers. Definitely in specific circumstances where going to GAM doesn't necessarily make sense.

[Ari Paparo]

What's an example of that?

[Luke Schoenberger]

I can give some examples. Right. So for video. Well, no, let's talk about display. I think display is like a more clear cut example for people. So right now the only reason that people go to GAM in general for most publishers is to be able to access ad exchange. Right. For a lot of publishers, direct demand, not really a thing. Like it does exist for some, but for a lot it's just not really a thing. So at that point you're going to GAM to be able to access Google Ad exchange demand. Yeah. And so for display, if you would like to monetize refresh opportunities on display, you have to declare that inventory is a refresh within gaming, which essentially pretty much makes it unprofitable. Right. Your, your ecpms will, will crater on top of you still having to pay the, pay the ad serving fee. Right.

[Ari Paparo]

So doesn't like refresh, is that what you're adex doesn't like refresh inventory.

[Luke Schoenberger]

They, they don't like refresh inventory and you still have to pay the cost. Right. Even if you're making the request. The request again. Right. And so we, we have the benefit. One of the, one of the reasons why a publisher would work with us and migrate to us is we have very good rates on ad serving fees. Right. From, from Google Legacy. Right. Better than that, they would be able to get off the shelf on their own. So for a regular publisher having to pay the off the shelf ad serving fees and going to GAM on refresh opportunities when they don't necessarily need to, you know, there's definitely some opportunities there for a lot of publishers.

[Ari Paparo]

So what you're saying is with your wrapper you could basically take some inventory and just auction it off using pre bid and show the ad and not even call GAM because it doesn't really matter.

[Luke Schoenberger]

Exactly. Yeah. So Amazon as well. Yeah. And the added benefit of that. Right. Is one, you don't pay the Ad serving fee and then two faster auction. Right. So you definitely would be able to capitalize on some opportunities where like ad load would be more of a concern.

[Ari Paparo]

Interesting. The obviously I'm a big student of this stuff because of I'm obsessed with the Google antitrust trial and stuff. So it's pretty interesting what you're saying. That wasn't kind of brought up by any of the witnesses, this idea that maybe you don't need GAM for certain types of publishers and transactions.

[Luke Schoenberger]

Yeah, right. There's definitely some instances where. So this is the thing, right. Like not everyone plays by the rules with this. Like people can serve addicts on refresh and not declare. Right. That's still an opportunity to them. So it's interesting, right? Like it's at the end of the day you have to sit down, look at the numbers and kind of see what makes sense for you as a publisher.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah. So you mentioned in app, which is, you know, a whole can of worms, mediation still exists. You have multiple SDKs. So what is the Playwire approach in App?

[Luke Schoenberger]

Yeah, so In App is something that has become big for us over the last year. It's been one of our major initiatives. Our two major initiatives right now are kind of everything that we're doing with our self serve wrapper that we plan to offer beginning or sometime in November. And then our second biggest initiative is In App. In App has definitely been a big learning experience for us. We have a lot of publishers that currently run app today, but we felt like we could kind of just put more of an emphasis on it and make this something that we can reach out and offer to app publishers that don't necessarily have web properties and still really have a very compelling way to be able to monetize for them. So the big learning for us was that app has very little to do with how web works, even down to how you basically count impressions. It's completely different. And it's interesting that app got to this point. Whereas web is still at where it is at. It's been interesting because app in some way is more evolved than web and then in other ways still behind. Right. So for example, for App, Google does monetize, right. Google, Google Inventory does monetize outside of Cam, right. In Applov and Max, right. You can have an integration with GAM and you can have an integration directly with AdMob as well, where AdMob is directly bidding on inventory. So that's been interesting to see what we kind of feel like we have as a product to be able to Offer is the same thing that we do for web, where a web publisher would come to us, we take care of everything for them, let them focus on being able to make valuable content. We feel like we're at the point now where we can be able to do the same thing with app, where if an app publisher wants to come to us, they just want to focus on being able to build the best app product possible. They can rely on us to be able to provide the best monetization possible in app. And we're doing some interesting things today.

[Ari Paparo]

Do you actually have your own SDK though?

[Luke Schoenberger]

We do have our own SDK and that definitely provides us a lot of value in being able to have a lot more control. Right. One thing that I learned is we kind of went down this path is for app, there isn't a one size fits all best ad server for app, that's not really a thing. It definitely kind of depends on what your app is. Are you gaming, Are you utility, Are you content? And how we've kind of approached it is we. I can't get too into the weeds to this, but at a high level, what we do is we support multiple ad servers. Right. And we've been able to get a lot of value out of that and have been able to provide value to that publishers that work with us today by doing so. And so if anyone that's listening is an app developer and this sounds interesting to them, definitely reach out. We definitely feel like kind of the direction we're headed in is the direction that the industry in general is going to head in in the coming years.

[Ari Paparo]

Well, yeah, there are huge differences by types of apps. Like you don't do rewarded video in a news app. Right. You know, that's a gaming sort of property. That's how AppLovin makes all of its money and stuff like that. So it's an interesting space. The. And it's also, you know, for publishers, I hope you agree, it's like a real burden to maintain their app setups.

[Luke Schoenberger]

Yeah, right. Because a lot of these people, it's one or two people. Right. I mean, even when you look at like large app publishers that are doing, you know, have millions of users per month, it could just be three people that are running the entire company. And we've definitely onboarded or talk onboarded and talked with app developers where we've looked inside what they're doing in their AdMob account. And these are people that are doing, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars of a month. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. And they have extremely rudimentary setups. And it's not because they're not smart enough to be able to have a better setup. It's because they have a million things going on. Right. And the ad monetization just isn't necessarily as much of a point of emphasis. And so what we do in web. Right. Like, that's definitely something where there is a gap in the industry right now. And we feel like we have something that definitely fills that gap that exists today.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, makes sense. All right, let's transition to our, what we call our lightning round. We'll have sort of relatively quick questions, relatively quick answers, see how we feel about it. So to start, like, what's your number one competitive advantage for managed service?

[Luke Schoenberger]

Wrapper. Both. Wrapper. Let's start with wrapper, because that's kind of what we want to put out there. For Wrapper. I think we have a number of different competitive advantages. One is the analytics. Right. So with our wrapper solution, analytics is built natively into it. Analytics is real time. Within 5 to 15 minutes, publishers will be able to report on an endless number of dimensions and metrics. And then on top of that, one of the big things that we have is that publishers will be able to kind of like create their own dashboards and reports and be able to share those to users at their company. So one piece of feedback that we heard as we kind of went down the path of building out our own wrapper is that analytics is a big gap in the industry for people that have their own wrappers, Analytics. And then also a lot of publishers that we've spoken with their ad unit hierarchy in GAM and they're set up in gam, they feel like it's complicated, not necessarily because it needs to be complicated, but because they need that complexity to support their ability to report on what they want. And so what we have to offer, we feel like it's also going to be able to help simplify what publishers do inside of GAM at the same time.

[Ari Paparo]

And the converse, you know, what's your biggest market challenge?

[Luke Schoenberger]

Competition. Right. I mean, we just talked about it, right? Like, we rattled off, you know, maybe like there's 10 to 15 people that are already doing this. We feel like we have a very competitive product. The counter to that is we do feel like this is a growing market. I don't think it is. Is necessarily static right now. I definitely think there's a lot, a lot of large enterprise publishers who this is an appealing offer to. Right. Because they can kind of not have to spend as much development time working on this area of their business. They can focus on their core business and get a lot of features and capabilities that they didn't have before.

[Ari Paparo]

Right, right. So it's not. The display market's under a lot of pressure, but you're saying that the market's coming towards you because people just don't want to manage the complexity. Is that how I'm interpreting it, or is the display market growing as well as far as you're concerned?

[Luke Schoenberger]

I think the. I guess. What do you mean by display market growing? Could you say more about that?

[Ari Paparo]

Well, the common wisdom is that the open web is dead and display advertising is on decline and those sort of things.

[Luke Schoenberger]

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely going down. I mean, that's undeniable, Right. I mean, literally this morning I was looking at the. For our network by website, the percentage of page views and sessions by website that are bots. Right. And a lot of these. Right. It's just AI just, you know, having a good time taking the content and using it for what they do. But we've definitely seen a significant drop with some publishers as far as their traffic goes, just with generative AI. People going to generative AI for information as opposed to a lot of these legacy publishers. At the same time, though, we've definitely been very fortunate in the sense that a lot of the websites that we work with are gaming. And as of today. Right. It's not like there's any generative AI that's creating games for people to go play. And so we've definitely been affected by it a lot less than other people.

[Ari Paparo]

But, yeah, less dependent on search traffic. That's probably a really big factor.

[Luke Schoenberger]

Yeah, definitely. And we have a lot of content where it's involved around engagement, user engagement, whereas gender of AI user engagement isn't as big of a thing right now. And I guess to give an example, one of our biggest publishers, amazing website and app, letterboxd.com, where it's. Are you familiar with Letterboxd?

[Ari Paparo]

I can't recall.

[Luke Schoenberger]

It's a social app based around movies. Right. Okay.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, I've heard of it.

[Luke Schoenberger]

You can go on rate movies. You can see what other people are rating movies. I use it personally because the main focus of that is the user engagement. They've been able to stay very strong.

[Ari Paparo]

Gotcha. Okay, last question. If Playwire was an animal, what animal would it be?

[Luke Schoenberger]

That's a good question. Like a fox. Right. Like, we're definitely very smart. Right. Like, we don't necessarily believe in one big thing. We definitely think very probabilistically and we believe in, like, a bunch of a lot of different things. Right. And so at the end of the day, we're definitely focused on being able to make the best decisions possible for our publishers. Right. And being able to do whatever we can to be able to increase performance in them. So one thing that we're very big on is it doesn't really matter who has an idea. If it's the best idea, we're going to try it out. That's all we can do. And we kind of let the results speak for themselves.

[Ari Paparo]

Sounds great. Well, Luke, thank you so much for being here. Luke Schonenberger, the EVP of product engineering for Playwire. And I believe Playwire will also be speaking at marketexture Live. So if you hear this before the event, please make sure to hear Jason, the CEO and in conversation with me on stage. Luke, thanks for being here.

[Luke Schoenberger]

Yep. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Bye.