Marketecture Live: Bill Wise and Grant Parker on the New Innovid

Summary

Marketecture Podcast Summary: “Marketecture Live: Bill Wise and Grant Parker on the New Innovid”

Release Date: March 24, 2025
Hosts: Ari Paparo and Eric Franchi
Guests: Bill Wise (CEO of MediaOcean), Grant Parker (President of Innovid), and Zvika (CEO of Innovid)

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1. Introduction to the Acquisition

In this episode of the Marketecture Podcast, hosts Ari Paparo and Eric Franchi engage in a live discussion with Bill Wise, CEO of MediaOcean, and Grant Parker, President of Innovid, following their official announcement of the combined company's new name, Innovid. The conversation centers around the strategic merger and its implications for the advertising and marketing ecosystem.

2. The Importance of Scale and Neutrality

Bill Wise initiates the conversation by probing the significance of the acquisition for the broader ad tech landscape.

Bill Wise [01:04]: "Let's start with what does it mean? Maybe Bill, you can tell us what does this acquisition mean for the greater ecosystem?"

Grant Parker emphasizes the necessity of scale and neutrality in competing with industry giants like Google.

Grant Parker [01:35]: “We believe there needs to be neutrality in the ad tech industry and there needs to be scale... you need that level of scale to make the investments necessary to compete with Google.”

He further explains that merging MediaOcean and Innovid achieves a quarter billion plus in revenue and approximately $100 million in EBITDA, providing the financial muscle to rival major players.

3. Name Change and Company Integration

The discussion shifts to the strategic decision behind the company’s name change and how the integration was approached.

Zvika [02:56]: “We chose the name Innovid because it represents innovation and video... Flash Talking and Innovid share the same idea.”

Zvika elaborates on the integration process, highlighting that the best aspects of both MediaOcean and Innovid’s technologies are being unified into a single platform. This merger aims to maintain the strong brand equity of both legacy companies while fostering a cohesive brand identity centered around innovation and video-centric solutions.

4. AI’s Impact on the Agency World

Grant Parker delves into the evolving role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within advertising agencies, particularly among large holding companies.

Grant Parker [05:05]: “Shortly after we announced Innovid, we announced that three of the largest four holding companies are actually investing in the combination of MediaOcean and Innovid.”

He highlights that these investments are primarily focused on integrating AI to enhance operational efficiency and tactical execution. Grant asserts that while many companies may overemphasize AI's short-term benefits, the long-term potential—especially in automating campaign management and optimizing operations—is substantial.

5. Future Roadmap and Product Developments

Zvika outlines the future direction of the newly combined Innovid, focusing on creating an omnichannel platform that seamlessly integrates creative, delivery, measurement, and optimization.

Zvika [08:13]: “Our roadmap actually delivers that in more places than ever across an omnichannel kind of platform, whether that's from linear to CTV, all the way to digital audio, social.”

He emphasizes the importance of relevant creative in maximizing ROI and discusses the platform’s capability to optimize outcomes in real-time based on which creative messages resonate most with audiences.

6. Brand Safety and Verification with Protected Media

The conversation addresses the competitive landscape of brand safety and verification, with a focus on Innovid’s subsidiary, Protected Media.

Grant Parker [18:56]: “We acquired a company called Protected and we've given it its own brand because it's that important.”

Grant notes that while dominant players like DoubleVerify (DV) and Integral Ad Science (ISA) currently lead the brand safety market, there is room for new entrants with superior technology and cost-effective solutions. Innovid aims to differentiate itself by offering integrated brand safety verification directly within its ad server, streamlining workflows and reducing manual processes.

7. Competition with Google and Antitrust Considerations

A critical part of the discussion revolves around Innovid’s strategy to compete with Google’s entrenched position in the ad tech ecosystem and the broader implications of antitrust regulations.

Grant Parker [17:39]: “Our take is we actually have a better product... we're going to continue to educate the market on why our solutions are better and they should adopt them.”

Zvika [17:52]: “Google is an incredibly important media partner. So for us, we want to be deeply integrated to Google and we are.”

Grant expresses confidence that despite Google's vast resources and legal defenses, Innovid’s focus on providing superior, neutral solutions for enterprise marketers positions them well to challenge Google's dominance in the buy-side ad server market. Zvika adds that rather than directly competing with Google’s scale, Innovid aims to serve enterprise clients with tailored, high-touch support and deep integrations with key media partners like Google.

8. The DSP Landscape and Future Competition

The discussion concludes with an exploration of the Demand-Side Platform (DSP) landscape, highlighting the fragmentation and emergence of specialized DSPs.

Grant Parker [15:15]: “DSPs are becoming exclusive access to data... advertisers, especially enterprise advertisers, are going to be across 10 to 20 different walled gardens or DSPs.”

Both Grant and Zvika agree that the increasing number of specialized DSPs necessitates a robust operating system to orchestrate these fragmented data and inventory sources effectively. Innovid aims to position its ad server as the strategic linchpin that manages these complexities, offering advertisers comprehensive control and optimization capabilities across diverse DSPs.

Conclusion

The merger of MediaOcean and Innovid signifies a strategic consolidation aimed at enhancing scale, neutrality, and technological prowess in the competitive ad tech landscape. By leveraging AI, integrating comprehensive ad management solutions, and focusing on enterprise-level client needs, the newly formed Innovid seeks to challenge industry giants and redefine standards in media quality assessment, brand safety, and campaign optimization.

Notable Quotes:

• Grant Parker [01:35]: “We need that level of scale to make the investments necessary to compete with Google.”
• Zvika [08:13]: “Whether that's from linear to CTV, all the way to digital audio, social.”
• Grant Parker [17:39]: “We're just going to continue to educate the market on why our solutions are better and they should adopt them.”
• Zvika [17:52]: “We want to be deeply integrated to Google and we are.”

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Transcript

[Host]

This podcast is brought to you by Adelaide Media verification and measurement are undergoing major disruption. Legacy players are pivoting to performance. Advertising AI is reshaping brand safety and attention is replacing viewability. Adelaide is leading the shift with au, a new way to assess media quality that scores placements based on their potential to drive attention and outcomes. Before your ads run, think of it like a credit score for media. Finally, a clear view of quality. Before you buy, take the guesswork out of your investment strategy and try Adelaide AU on your next campaign. This week's interview is with Bill Wise, the CEO of MediaOcean and Grant Parker, the president of Innovid. They were recorded live at marketexture Live in conversation with me after formally introducing the new name of the combined company with which will be Innovid. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

[Bill Wise]

Let's start with what does it mean? Maybe Bill, you can tell us what does this acquisition mean for the greater ecosystem?

[Grant Parker]

Yeah. So, well, first off, right person, right ad, right time, Kevin O'Connor, the original founder of DoubleClick maybe.

[Bill Wise]

I'd love to see it.

[Grant Parker]

I was there.

[Host]

You were there?

[Grant Parker]

I was there.

[Bill Wise]

What do you mean? Did he like it from his brain like that?

[Grant Parker]

Yeah. No, no, it came out on an investor call, an investor pitch.

[Bill Wise]

And he made it up on the fly?

[Grant Parker]

No, no, it was pre calculated. But I just wanted to, I just wanted to give the audience it's viable.

[Bill Wise]

That he came up with it. Yeah, okay.

[Grant Parker]

No, no, it's just the truth. It's just the truth. So listen, we, we believe there needs to be neutrality in the ad tech industry and there needs to be scale. And, and when you look at a lot of companies in the space, and this is because marketers are leaning in and making technology and data decisions. And so we look at it and said, you know, Flash talking was a great acquisition, kind of subscale. Innovid was a publicly traded company subscale. And you know, in adding the two together, you know, now we're, we're kind of at a scale and I look at scale as like quarter billion plus of revenue, you know, bordering on 100 million of EBITDA. And so, you know, you need that level of scale to make the investments necessary to compete with Google. Right, which were, you know, this entire room is competing with Google.

[Bill Wise]

So is the investment the key area where scale matters or is scale matter also in other areas?

[Grant Parker]

Scale matters across the board. Right. You know, Procter and Gamble, Unilever, General Motors, you know, aren't going to rely on their entire infrastructure with A company that isn't viable, profitable, and at scale.

[Bill Wise]

Right, right. And Grant, I kind of made it sound in your intro like you changed your name. You didn't change your name, you changed your title. You're the president of Flash Talking Now, Innovid. So tell us about the name change and how you thought through it.

[Zvika]

Yeah, I think so. I was president of Flash Talking now president of Innovid. Zvika is the CEO, former CEO of Innovid, now still the CEO of Innovid. So we have this kind of legacy. We chose a name that we had kind of the choice of, do we create something new and then you give up all the brand equity that both groups had, or do you pick one or the other and they both have really strong brands. And ultimately we felt like the name Innovid represented innovation and video. While we are an omnichannel solution, video still the most important thing to advertisers. Sight, sound, emotion. And so I think the other thing about Flash Talking kind of going away as you see it, what is a brand? It's an idea. It's tech and it's people. And for us, Flash Talking and Innovid share the same idea. And Bill talked a lot about it. Independence, unbiased at scale. Our tech is not going away. The Flash Talking and Innovid tech are both coming together. We're taking the best pieces of both to merge into one unified platform. And then the people, Zvika and I are both partnering together to merge these two companies.

[Bill Wise]

Yeah, I mean, I personally think the Flash Player is ready for revival, but maybe I'm just.

[Zvika]

That may have played a role.

[Bill Wise]

So what does it mean to clients in terms of integration timelines, how their products are changing, et cetera?

[Zvika]

Well, first I think just to. To talk a little bit about what this represents for clients and play off of what Bill was saying. Clients have had this, like, difficult choice. Do I go with the easy button where I have this consolidated tech stack, I have no control, no transparency, but it feels really integrated and easy, or do I create a ton of control and transparency, own the supply chain, but I have to stitch together a bunch of point solutions, and then all of a sudden I'm back to fragmentation and challenges.

[Bill Wise]

Yeah.

[Zvika]

Now we feel like by consolidating this omnichannel solution across flashdalking and Innovid, we can actually deliver on the best of both, where you get integrated, consolidated, easy, but you still have choice, control and transparency.

[Bill Wise]

So I talked a bit about AI and impact across the board. Bill, could you tell Us a little bit about what you're seeing in the agency world, especially the big holding companies who I know you're very close with.

[Grant Parker]

Yeah. So for those of you who don't. No. Shortly after we announced Innovid, we announced that three of the largest four holding companies are actually investing in the combination of MediaOcean and Innovid. And so now they're shareholders and a big part of that is actually their investment in AI because they're such a people intensive organizations. So we're working very closely with them to look at how can we enable AI on top of them. And so, you know, you know, to be, to be determined. But you know, a really, really intelligent guy that works for me said I think a lot of companies are, you know, over indexing in AI in the short term and under indexing and AI in the long term. By the way, that was Grant. I just wanted to get that out before he did. And so, you know, we're so, we're excited. We, we think there's a massive amount of opportunity and a lot of it is, is really in, in leveraging kind of the tactical execution. It's not kind of strategy up in the cloud. It's like, how can AI increase the operations and efficiency of our business? Like tomorrow.

[Bill Wise]

Do you have any specifics? Have you seen any specifics without naming company names, like where investment is taking place?

[Grant Parker]

You know, a lot of it is in the actual execution of campaign management.

[Bill Wise]

Campaign management.

[Grant Parker]

How can you automate it?

[Bill Wise]

Right, right. So do you think that's, you know, I geek out on this stuff. Do you think there's an AI layer in front of tools like the new Innovid or other tools, your competitors? Or do you think the tools themselves have the AI embedded?

[Grant Parker]

All the above. Right. I think those people who have a lot of people doing, you know, simple things like trafficking, which can be automated optimization, which can be automated, will layer on their own AI. And then I think, you know, we have seven initiatives within Media Ocean and a lot of them are more tactical in nature than strategic in nature. Right.

[Bill Wise]

What's your take on that?

[Zvika]

Well, I think AI, you need massive data. Right. You need the ability to automate complex steps. And yes, then there's this third component of generating new outputs that are kind of human level. But I think it starts with do you have massive data? Now we can clearly say that we do. We've been critical to the workflow for advertisers for a long time and we can automate those steps. And I think a lot is made of Gen AI. And I think it will be an important piece. But to Bill's point, it's kind of overlooked. You know, do you own the data? Do you have control of the data? Do you know how your data is being used? And then do you have enough consolidation of your tech stack that automating these steps actually matter?

[Bill Wise]

And what matters the most to agencies right now? What's the step that's like, oh, that's a low hanging fruit.

[Zvika]

I mean, big picture creative and media are still so divided, right? So I've got like totally different agencies, workflows and even strategies between my creative process and my media process. I think there's a ton that can be done to automate how those come together, both at a high level strategy, but also at a tactical. Like I just need to get the right message in front of the right person instantaneously.

[Bill Wise]

Got it. Let's talk about the roadmap. So what are you guys working on? What do you want to talk about?

[Zvika]

Well, I think we're excited about the fact that both companies have been investing in AI for a while and now this kind of supercharges that. But when we think about what does the platform actually do, right? It's creative, it's delivery, it's measurement and it's optimization all stitched together. I think from a creative perspective, you know, Flash Talking and Innovate have both been leaders in the creative optimization space. I think it's often overlooked in terms of how do I get the most ROI out of my media. And if you don't have relevant creative, it's the same as an unviewable impression, right? An irrelevant impression is just equally bad. And so I think our roadmap actually delivers that in more places than ever across an omnichannel kind of platform, whether that's from linear to ctv, all the way to digital audio, social. And then I think from a measurement perspective, it's about reach and frequency across DSPs, right? It's about being able to optimize outcomes in real time based on which creative message is resonating. And so I think that kind of optimization layer has often been more at the micro kind of DSP level versus at the macro level across the entire investment.

[Bill Wise]

You say macro level, so are we including linear in that?

[Zvika]

Yes.

[Bill Wise]

So it's really so for the big holding companies that use like your Prisma software, you've got a view about everything they're doing, even if you're not executing at all 100%.

[Zvika]

And a lot of what, you know, ad tech Platforms, especially ad servers, they haven't necessarily had media costs as a variable. And so they can do a lot of optimization on resonance, reach and frequency, even outcomes. But what about cost? Media Ocean is obviously where most of the, at least in the US the advertising ecosystem manages their supply chain. And so having pairing the cost with the actual optimization technology and delivery technology, I think is unique and allows us to do more.

[Grant Parker]

And listen, everyone's been calling for the death of linear television for years. And, you know, we've been processing $70 billion of linear television for 30 years now, and it continues to be $70 billion. And so when you think about sight, sound and motion advertising, being able to create one marketplace design across linear television, national and spot and local video and ctv, put that all together. That's the power of what we're creating here.

[Bill Wise]

Right. So one of the things that Innovid announced in the past year, they were on my pod and I was at their event, was their Harmony initiative. And for those of you who don't know Harmony well, why don't you explain Harmony and how it relates to your future?

[Zvika]

Yeah, Harmony is the brand that kind of represents optimization and that flywheel effect that I was talking about. So there's a couple different products. One is around supply path optimization, being able to deliver with the ad server directly to the publisher where it makes sense, and then also being able to see across reach and frequency for the user or household across all different channels, and being able to actually impact that by sending signals into the media environment to either add frequency or decrease frequency for households and users. So that's where we're at right now. But I think as a brand, it represents a much bigger opportunity to do even more in terms of changing budgets, optimizing creative, being able to actually influence the many different places where biddable is taking place.

[Bill Wise]

Right, Go ahead.

[Grant Parker]

Yeah. Well, we've been talking about waste, fraud and abuse, you know, here in the US with doge, you know, Doge for edtech. Yeah, we're Doge for ad tech. It's, you know, look at waste, fraud and abuse. That's for your employees. And expose it all. And expose it all. By the way, I just made that up.

[Bill Wise]

Well, yeah, might want to workshop that one a little bit. So Harmony, one of the things Harmony did, the first release was what you call it spo. Basically, it enabled the buy side to create programmatic, guaranteed deals effectively without a dsp. That's kind of a dumb way to put it, but, you know, what's the vision of Media Ocean about the future of DSPs. Because you guys don't have a DSP, right? But you're doing a lot of things around it.

[Grant Parker]

Yeah, well, so if you think about just the overall supply path, it bothers me when agencies and listen, I don't think anyone in their priority list, anyone like replacing your ad server doesn't make the first page, probably doesn't make the second page. Right. But if you think about it, the ad server is like laying down railroad tracks. Once you have them, they're done. You don't need more railroad tracks. Except if you are the company that owns that railroad tracks and you start, you know, pushing through products, you know, drugs or whatever. And you know, and that's where the, the ad server is incredibly strategic. So when we go to agencies and we talk about replacing the ad server, it's not about replacing the ad server, it's the ad server is the starting point. If you care about optimizing creative, if you care about orchestration and personalization of your paid, owned and earned media, if you care about optimizing the supply path, if you care about really efficient brand safety and verification, those are the things that we're working with our agency partners on and say, do you want Google to own that starting point or do you want an independent neutral ad tech company to control that starting point? And so that's starting to resonate, but it keeps going back to the easy button, right? And Google's the easy button. And so, you know, we need to be strategic about it. We need to be thinking about, you know, for each marketer, what is their pain point? Does personalization really matter to them? Does you know, eliminating, you know, eliminating non working media costs, does that matter to them and work from there?

[Bill Wise]

Yeah, that really resonates for me because like I used to be the product manager for DFA and the cynical point of view, which I had because I'm always the cynical person in the room is that this product doesn't do anything like cfa, all it does is count stuff. But the more proactive point of view is that your buy side ad server can do a lot of things. It's just hard because you don't control the transactions.

[Grant Parker]

And then specifically because your question was about dsps is the ad tech marketplace is a lot of duopoly, natural duopolies like the top two seem to get the most market share. But now, and you know, and a few years ago I would have said, yeah, the duopoly is there, it's DV360's trade desk. But now you're starting Amazon. Their DSP is having a lot of success. Yahoo. DSP, particularly with all the data from Yahoo and having that graph is getting a lot of play. Vyant has done a great job overlaying AI into their dsp. So the more fragmentation we have in the DSP landscape we think is good for the market, it's good for us. And then also you're now starting to see SSPs create, you know, some buy side capabilities. And now I think what you're seeing is DSP is trying to go direct to publishers, SSP is going direct to marketers and agencies. And so we think that level of fragmentation is good. And that's where an ad server actually becomes very, very strategic.

[Bill Wise]

Right. You don't care there could be a thousand DSPs.

[Zvika]

Yeah, well, there was a, there was a assumption, I think, to Bill's point, that there was only going to be one or two winners in the DSP race. And I think what we see now is I almost feel like DSPs aren't that different than walled gardens. Walled gardens are exclusive access to inventory. DSPs are becoming exclusive access to data. So. Okay. Or in some cases inventory as well. But advertisers, especially enterprise advertisers, are going to be across 10 to 20 different walled gardens or DSPs, and each of them is going to provide unique data optimization capabilities, their own AI. But that's a ton of fragmentation. So you need an operating system over the top to help orchestrate the whole thing.

[Bill Wise]

It's fascinating because in the early days of Programmatic, before we even called it Programmatic, everyone assumed both the DSP and SSP market were going to turn into enterprise software products where there would be just a couple, they'd be really big and you'd pay them on an annual flat fee. And none of that turned out to be true. Both businesses turned into media businesses which have the inherent fragmentation around audience and data and things like that. So now the buy side ad server market is effectively a duopoly. Right? Google and Media Ocean. I know you can't say that, but I'll say it. So let's talk about Google then, your main competitor. So what's your hot take on antitrust? No, that was really, you're the boss. You can't let him hang himself on that one.

[Zvika]

Yeah, well, thank you, thank you.

[Grant Parker]

Listen, I actually don't think they're going to spin out dfp. I also don't think it's going to be a fast and swift thing. I think they're going to fight it you know, I think Google has more lawyers working on this than most ad tech companies have engineers. Right. So they have hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of people in Washington right now. And so, you know, our take is we actually have a better product and you know, kind of ripping up railroad tracks isn't an easy thing to do, but we have a better product, we are neutral, we have better solutions for the buy side. We're not talking about the sell side ad server. We're exclusively on the buy side. And so we're just going to continue to educate the market on why our solutions are better and they should adopt them. And I think we have a fair shot to become larger than Google in the buy side ed tech market.

[Zvika]

All right, my take on antitrust, I don't really care. To Bill's point, we're not trying to compete with Google. Google has 20,000 customers. We don't want to have 20,000 customers. We want to focus on enterprise marketers being able to solve their hardest problems, being able to have a team that's dedicated to them, no one, 800 numbers or help websites. And so that kind of white glove kind of partnership is very different than what that large scale company represents. The other thing I'll say is that Google is an incredibly important media partner. So for us, we want to be deeply integrated to Google and we are. And so you have to kind of separate out Google from Google's buy side technology solution for advertisers in the enterprise segment. That's what we want to compete with and we've been really successful so far doing that.

[Bill Wise]

All right, let's talk about two other product areas that you compete in that are interesting. One being the whole sort of verification, viewability space. So many people may not know or as I didn't know, so I assume other people didn't know, which is that you have a full brand in that area called protected media, I believe. So. A lot of stuff going on here. You have controversies, you have Brian O'Kelly entering the market, you have the Goodheart brothers entering the market. So it's kind of interesting space. Any thoughts there?

[Grant Parker]

A lot of thoughts. So again, in the spirit of kind of these natural duopolies, there was a time where Trade Desk was kind of the startup against kind of turn in media math. Right. And those two companies had large market share. So you know, there is an ability for a new entrant to come in with better technology, to do it more efficiently with a better mousetrap. We believe that's protected against EV and is and so we acquired a company called Protected and we've gave it its own brand because it's that important. And we also just think that the martial the market is paying way too much for brand safety and verification and so we have a better product that's cheaper. But again it's hard because DV and IS are great companies providing great solutions and have done fabulous jobs in the market. And so we were kind of on our own. And by the way, you never want to be the third horse in a three horse race. And that's what we've been the last couple years. So our available market was really companies that use our ad server. And so, you know, last year we signed Adobe, we have Proctor Gamble using us for a little bit. And so that business has really grown. We won the TikTok business. So we're kind of the brand safety verification for TikTok's own O. So that business has grown really nicely. But obviously Divi and IS are kind of the heavyweights in the space. And so it's actually comforting that, you know, smart people like Brian O'Kelly and Jonah Goodhart are also looking at the space because they see opportunity.

[Bill Wise]

Isn't there sort of a dynamic where because the risk of not using the well established vendor is like you could lose your job. It's like, hey boss, I chose vendor number three instead of is. And then our ad showed on a pornography site that like better mousetrap doesn't matter because it's like the rational thing to do is to have is to keep going with the well known brands.

[Zvika]

Well, I think you have to go through the work of proving yourself and that takes time. Right. So we went through the exhaustive efforts of getting MRC accreditation in all the major areas of brand safety and viewability for that brand. So there's a third party that's actually said yes, this is the same quality, the same assurance, then you have to kind of scratch and claw to get those first couple customers and that establishes credibility and that's kind of where we're at now. And, and look, I think we're going to continue to be independent and integrated. So we want to integrate with dv, we want to integrate with iis, we want to integrate with Jonah's new thing. But I think what's really important to us is that we also sorry, offer consolidation and the automation that I talked about. So having something built into the ad server is incredibly important. There's nothing more annoying than having to have all this automation and then you have to send it to another company. Wrap the tags, send it back, wait for it to make sure. You know, there's a lot of manual steps. Now we can just click a button and it's done. And so there is some workflow that outweighs the potential risks. But I also think we've mitigated the risks and proven that it's like a.

[Bill Wise]

Business school case study to watch what's going to happen in that space for the next couple of years. All right, well, I think we'll call it there. So everyone give a big round of applause to Bill and Brad.

[Zvika]

Thank you.

[Grant Parker]

Foreign.

[Host]

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