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ARTICLE

Why MediaMath, Why Now

June 21, 2017 — by MediaMath    

We’re living in challenging times. Publishers are fighting to win back media spend that has largely fled to a small handful of players. Buyers are fighting to make sure that they don’t run against unsafe — or untrue — content. And ad enablement platforms are fighting to justify the share of media dollars that they take out of the ecosystem. The result is an overcomplicated, often irrational framework that sits between marketers and consumers.

We would all agree that there’s got to be a better way.

In my view, buyers aren’t shunting the lion’s share of budgets to those few players because they necessarily want to king-make an oligopoly — rather, buying on those properties is easy to do, and carries an ostensible halo of brand safety. If you believe that premise to be true, then it naturally follows that if another entity were to offer equivalent levels of ease, brand safety, addressability and scale, it would create a compelling alternative for media buyers to consider.

Historically the task of curating inventory has fallen to individual exchanges and publishers. What that effort offers buyers is incomplete at best — it checks the safety box but doesn’t necessarily address ease and scale. Seeing this behavior across the industry, MediaMath is radically innovating around media curation and addressability.

In my conversations with members of the MediaMath leadership team, I was immediately struck by how much respect the organization has for the supply side. The company makes its money by selling to advertisers, of course, but is keenly aware of the critically important role that high-quality inventory plays in its ongoing success. Having run supply businesses at display, video and mobile platforms, I saw an acute connection between the passion I have for empowering publishers and making digital advertising simpler, and MediaMath’s core values.

Most would agree that programmatic in its current form needs improvement. MediaMath’s first major step was to introduce the Curated Market product — easily accessible premium, audience-informed, hand-picked inventory with a brand safety guarantee. Next comes addressing operational inefficiencies inherent to OpenRTB — bidding against yourself, dynamic floors, low win rates and unnecessarily high eCPMs. Taking these steps will permit the company to meet buyers’ needs while helping restore budgets to a diverse array of premium publishers.

We’re here to make programmatic a cleaner, safer, simpler, more cost-effective experience for buyers, and to help publishers take back control over their futures. I couldn’t be more honored to be a part of this team, and to work with so many of you as partners.