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Ramsey McGrory on Reshaping Prisma and the Future of TV Ad Infrastructure
00:18:43
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- [00:01]
A
This podcast is brought to you by audiohook, the leading independent audio dsp. Audiohook has direct publisher integrations into all major podcast and streaming radio platforms, providing 40% more inventory than what could be accessed in omnichannel DSPs. What's more, audiobook has full transcripts on more than 90% of all podcast inventory, enabling advanced contextual targeting and brand suitability. Audio Hook is so confident that in addition to CPM buys, they offer the industry's only pay for performance option where brands can scale audio and podcasting with peace of mind. Mind knowing they are only paying for outcomes. Visit audiohook.com to learn more. That's audiohook.com welcome to Marketecture where we can get smart fast with in depth interviews of leading technology executives. I'm Ari Paparo and I'm joined by Ramsey McGrory, who is the new president of Prisma at Meet MediaOcean. Just got a promotion. Ramsey, congratulations on the promotion.
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B
Thank you, thank you.
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A
Just a couple more years in the ad tech business and you'll really get to get ahead, right?
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B
Yeah, it's a marathon, actually. Bill Wise says it's a relay race, which is absolutely true.
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A
It is, but there's no end. You just keep going around and passing the top to each other. So what is it? So MeteOcean has been on the show before as one of our first interviews with Architecture a couple years back. So what we're hoping to get out of this call is like the latest and greatest. But let's just start with what does it mean to be the president of Prisma?
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B
Sure. Well, five years ago, Prisma, or the legacy MediaOcean business was all the revenue of the company. And we went on a journey, an M and a journey acquiring 4C for Social DSP, Cross Media Planner, Flash talking for personalization and video ad serving, and then some smaller acquisitions, Drizzium and Imposium, video rendering and computer vision. And then our latest and largest was the acquisition of Innovit. So when we looked at the business, we really had sort of two and a half or three businesses. It was the financial contractual of MediaOcean that we have rebranded under Prisma. PRISMA has been the digital workflow, but now we're converging linear workflow together. So it's the financial contractual, almost Fintech if you will, an ERP for the largest agencies and brands. And then Innovid captures the video ad surveying personalization, identity, social ads, dsp. And then we have Protected, which is sort of a standalone startup, a Second mover in the verification business that we allow to run separately, but it's integrated into both businesses. So we, we just felt like given the size and scale, the speed, the cultures of the business that we would separate the three. And so I'm running the Prisma business and then I've got the growth piece, the, the protected business as well.
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A
Right, that's interesting. The protected. A lot of people don't know that Meteocean has a standalone verification and quality solution that you don't need to use your ad server. Is that correct?
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B
That's right. That's right. We've integrated it into Flash talking. We're finishing the integration into Innovid. It's an MRC accredited solution. So you click a button and you don't have to tag wrap. It's a consolidated log file. So lots of advantages of embedding it into the ad server. And then we've got a set of IP patents around CTV verification where we still think there's a lot of work to be done on, you know, verification, fraud, viewability, brand safety, suitability and attention. So we've always been a TV oriented company, Media Ocean overall. And even with these acquisitions we continue to be foundationally thinking about television, all the different pieces of it.
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A
Right. So it's been, I don't know, how long has it been? Five months, six months since the Innovid acquisition closed.
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B
Closed in February.
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A
Yep, February. Okay. So what's the state? We announced at the market Live conference. So the name is going to be Innovid, has a cool new logo. But what else is going on?
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B
Well, the team is working hard on consolidating the vision and the products. There's a roadmap against that. At the time of the close, the product and engineering teams had already agreed on what the strategy would be and the timing associated. So the team is working on that and we're in market as the largest independent ad serving solution with all the component pieces. So I'm excited about the progress. There's no lack of innovation that's happening on core ad serving with AI, all the different component pieces. So far it's been great. The teams have worked together. The team was combined a month after the acquisition and are in market aggressively, as you know, they were in can and we'll continue to do that through the rest of this year and into next.
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A
So if I was a brand and I wanted a new buy side ad server and I called you up, which product would you sell me?
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B
Well, it depends on what you are trying to accomplish. We're going to sell Innovid, will sell an omnichannel solution. Most brands are at some state or at various stages of figuring out how much of the advertising supply chain they want to control and whether it's the platform agreements, the data actually in housing capabilities. They're all at different points. And so we have conversations with them and sometimes that may be Prisma, sometimes that may be Innovid, that may include protected as well. So I don't think we're selling a vision, I think we're selling a vision of supply chain transparency and control that is fit for what the brands and the agencies are trying to accomplish.
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A
Right. If you think strategically, it feels as though the heyday for buy side ad serving has passed. There's more fragmentation and there's more focus on things like media mix modeling and cross channel measurement and optimization than there is about digital specifically. I'm going to assume you're going to disagree with me on that, but why don't you give your case as to why buy side ad serving still matters so much?
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B
Oh my God. Wildly, wildly disagree. I think the role of an ad server and sort of broaden it, whether, because whether you're talking about serving open web CTV or whether you're talking about social video where the assets are actually in the platform overall, you're still orchestrating the creative and media together. And in the world that we're in, especially in the TV world writ large of linear online video, ctv, social video, it's still a very fragmented place to operate and the brands still want to generally understand everything and nothing changes. Brands still want to orchestrate the media and creative, understand reach and frequency against specific audiences. And also in a world where CTV is largely controlled by about a dozen sellers, those sellers are selling directly to the advertisers. But as you saw with the Amazon and Roku and you know, the Amazon, Google's and trade desks are also trying to integrate into the largest sellers. So when you have those multi channels, the multiple channels of reaching consumers, then one of the most important things to do is how do you cross media plan, activate and measure. So this has been our thesis since the beginning of our aggressive M and A spree is media and, and creative orchestration is fundamental in a fragmented marketplace. And so we have the pieces of PRISMA as financial and contractual innovate for the actual creative audience and media orchestration and then protected, providing trust and safety in the supply chain.
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A
Right. This is an interesting perspective. One of the things I've written about I think is a trend is that there are fewer and fewer really walled gardens and that there's opening up. This sort of hedge gardens are the modern thing. So Spotify being one easy to understand example and that seems to be good for your kind of business because if you can get into these proprietary apps and measure, is that an important part of the strategy? Do you agree with the trend and what sort of measurement can you get out of these systems?
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B
So across open, hedged and walled gardens, we're still trying to accomplish the same thing which is orchestrated the creative and the media. So I don't know that the trend wildly impacts us. I think fragmentation is the reality for at least the next 10 or 15 years. And our role is to try to consolidate and simplify the supply chain the way it was 20 years ago with linear again, everything and nothing changes. The brands and agencies still want to control reach and frequency. They still want to understand whether it's currency, which is a validation of the audiences that they're buying, or the outcomes. So I feel like we're spinning the wheel faster but still trying to do the same thing. And however, we need to integrate into the largest sellers CTB for the financial contractual, that's Prisma, to ensure that the ads are serving properly, especially in live environments. That's innovid and trust and safety built in. I think the way verification happens is happening now can fundamentally be changed and be a partnership between the buyers and the sellers. So I don't think the hedge or openness or close of the platform matters as much as there is massive fragmentation and we play a role in as an independent consolidator and integrator for the largest brands and agencies.
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A
Right. Well, specifically though, if you're, let's say a given platform doesn't want to let verification vendors in, or only wants to let them in at arm's length without code running on the page. Well, that, that diminishes the advertiser's ability to, to have the vision that you're offering.
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B
It does, it does. And I think there are ways to, you know, brands and agencies continue to have the power of the purse. Yeah. And over time they'll, they'll wretch crowbars in there.
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A
That's, that's what's happening with the hedge guards.
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B
Yeah, that's absolutely what will happen. So it's a journey. I, I think that the, the buy side wants and needs trust and safety, visibility, transparency. Large sellers have the leverage to say no for various reasons and we have to work with the reality of what we have to provide as much transparency as possible in, in the process.
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A
Right, got it. All right, well, we've talked about two of the big platforms. Let's talk about the, the legacy one, I guess. Prisma. So is, is Prisma the brand name for the whole thing, including the. Was traditionally known as Donovan and then Media Ocean, including the more modern parts that do media planning too?
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B
Yeah, it is. So we consolidate all of the processes into Prisma. So Prisma started 11 years ago, 11, 12 years ago, as the digital workflow. And over time we have rebuilt the linear workflow into Prisma. Not just replicating the way a linear buyer and seller interact, but now thinking about if you have linear and digital in one place, how would you think about activating? And the reality is the buyers, the agencies are at various stages of that journey. You have agencies who have consolidated buying and they're just buying TV in all its forms. You have folks that are still doing brand and performance. So we built into Prisma all of the capabilities to do linear or digital or converged buying. And that is both good for us. We need one global code base to operate with. It allows us to deprecate legacy platforms that largest agencies are using and modernize the foundational bill pay that has been core to what the agencies have used us for.
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A
What about the aspects of Prisma that are more forward facing around like planning and AI and using the data? You know, I've been hearing from you and from Bill for a while that you know, Prisma was all about transacting, not necessarily just bill pay. So what's the current state of the PRISMA platform with, with regard to the stuff that happens earlier in the process?
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B
Yeah, so we're going, we're going through, we have seven or eight different AI initiatives. Some are the mundane things like Chatbot, some involve more generative AI. And we have to think about what data do we hold, what rights do we have and what applications are we building. Also remember that the largest agencies have bought data companies and believe it's their right, their obligation and their opportunity to do that. So we have to create the framework to allow for decisions to be made in platform, but also for those decisions to be made out of platform and allow for that connectivity to come back and forth foundationally. This PRISMA is a buying platform and so we will be a foundational partner in creating master data rich and normalized metadata to create the API infrastructure to pull and push that data together. And over time, as we find simplified applications of AI that we can include in there, we'll do that. And we'll have to work through that with all the clients to make sure that they're not just a recipient of it, but a partner in developing those.
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A
Yeah, you mentioned that the agency clients have their own data. I want to tease that out a little bit. So are you saying that because they're agencies have been investing in user data stores that they want to plan using that data as opposed to sort of aggregated line items and budgetary data, or am I reading into what your point was? Exactly.
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B
I think there are steps along the entire plan to pay process, strategic planning, tactical planning, pre buy ordering, reporting and optimization, all the way to attribution and bill pay. And each, each represents an opportunity to make different decisions. And so our work is to make sure that the workflow supports that so that we can simplify as much of the process of doing it and allowing the agencies to build their platforms, plug in, so that they take advantage of all of the literally billions of dollars of investment that we have done in creating this plan to pay process.
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A
Right. Okay, that makes sense. Okay, so just to finish it off, what are you excited about as the future unfolds for us?
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B
Obviously, AI is important. I think we're focused on nailing a couple of really important things. One is consolidating the linear and digital workflow is a huge priority for us. The second is I think we want to create as much simplicity in the TV buying experience to give the buyers, brands and agencies the choices on whether they want to do direct contracting between them and the seller, whether they want to use a programmatic capability. There is still a lot of manual steps that happen in that buying process. And I think it's our obligation and our responsibility to automate as much of that as possible. So it ain't the sexiest thing, but the simple thing of automating the TV buying experience the way it was 20 years ago across online video, linear, social TV and CTV is, is probably the second largest priority that we have. And then we're always looking at how do we partner across supply, tech and data to take advantage of innovations happening in the market and address the needs of the buyers.
- [18:18]
A
Right. Makes sense. All right, Ramsey McGrory, again, congrats on the promotion. We're excited for you. And thank you for sharing everything that's going on with Prisma and Media Ocean.
- [18:27]
B
You're welcome.
- [18:40]
A
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 news at News Market tv. And if you're feeling social, we operate a vibrant Slack community that you can apply to join@adtech God.com.