Welcome to Strictly Business, Variety's weekly podcast featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm Tyler Aquallina with Variety Intelligence Platform. Today's episode is all about the connected TV AD market, that segment of the digital advertising business that includes almost all streaming video ads, as well as advertising on the smart TV interfaces many of us use every day. The CTV market is expanding rapidly,
but it's also facing some major growing pains. The digital ad pipelines remain complicated and often confusing. Amazon Prime Video recently brought a flood of new inventory to market, depressing ad prices. And then there's YouTube, which is increasingly dominating TV screens as well as mobile, making it difficult for other players to compete for viewers and ad dollars. There's a lot to discuss, and today's guest will get into
all of it. Dave Bernath is General manager of The America's at World, a subsidiary of appleven that helps connect streaming content owners and advertisers. Dave began his career in the cable TV business, but now he has a front row seat to the changes playing out in the streaming TV space. He's an expert in content strategy as well as the fast space that's free ed support and streaming TV and the perfect guest to break down this complex
but vitally important business. All Right, Dave Brenath, the general manager for the Americas at World. Welcome to the podcast, Dave, So, I do want to start off by talking a little bit about what World does and your place in the obviously very complex connected TV landscape. Can you tell us just a bit about what you guys do?
Sure? Yeah.
World is really the power the tech behind a lot of streaming channels and programmatic advertising across CTV. So think of big brands like A and E Networks or Bloomberg or Scripts with Ion, and then endpoints like Samsung and LG and Pluto. We power those channels that are on
those services. Really thousands of channels globally across you know, hundreds of endpoints, and that means you're talking about literally billions of hours of viewing every month and across that footprint, then giving our advertising partners access to really over ninety billion of als a month. So we're we're a key
technology provider across the ad supported streaming space. And we're also fortunate to be owned by a company called app Lovin, who's a dominant player in the mobile performance marketing ecosystem, and we sort of act as their streaming arm.
They brought us a number of years ago.
They're a great owner and together we have sort of a you know, a robust innovation culture which is kind of there in their DNA, and so it's exciting to be in the space we're in and also to have the backing of ownership like app love and yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
So it sounds like you guys have have a pretty you know, up close view to you know, what's going on in the streaming space and the streaming advertising space specifically, and you know that space really seems to be poised at a transformative moment right now. What are some of the big picture questions that the industry has been grappling with recently based on the conversations that you've been having.
Yeah, I mean, I think at the highest level, if we're being very simplistic about it, historically, money usually follows the audience from platform to platform, and we're in a lag right. I don't know what the exact numbers are. I've seen graphs from Evan Shapiro and other people that you know, and we have the Nielsen.
Gauge, but roughly, let's call it.
You know, ten to fifteen percent of television ad spend is in the streaming space, but forty five and growing percent of the viewership is in streaming, So there's a really big imbalance. So at the highest level, that kind of is the beginning and the end of the discussion. What are the things that need to happen to get that money to move to where the audience already is. So I think that's probably it's probably worth pausing after that comment because that's kind of that kind of is
the is the overarching theme. There's a lot of things inside of that, but I think that that is that, you know, that's certainly the main point.
Yeah, well, what does need to happen for that? You know, what, in your opinion, are some of the things that would help to you know, help the industry move to a more to a space that you know, more adequately represents where the viewership is actually going.
Yeah, I think, you know, a common currency around measurement and standardization is definitely an issue we all, you know, groaned about Nielsen forever, and I come from the cable TV business by background, But as imperfect as the currency was, it was a currency, g RPS, you know, Nielsen Ratings Share. All these kind of basic fundamental building blocks of measuring audiences were there, agreed upon, transacted upon. We don't have
that in CTV. And so every year I see the panels, Everyone talks about collaboration, everyone talks about getting there, but I'm still waiting to significant movement in that regard, and that that's certainly needed because planners need to be able to measure cross platform and buy across the ecosystem in a consistent fashion rather than you know, buy multiple campaigns instead of various walled gardens with different metrics and first
party reporting, et cetera. So I really hope with ib's leadership and everyone's saying the right thing that that will start to move in that direction.
But I certainly certainly measurements. It is a big one.
Yeah, what about you know, the I think we hear a lot about how how complicated the CTV marketplaces are. You know, is that an issue that continues to be a headache for for the key players?
Yeah, I think you're right. You know, if you look at a loom escape charter. It can be a little mind numbing across all the different DSPs and SSPs and d MPs and other providers that are part of the programmatic ad stack, if you will.
And you obviously have big players like the tra A Desk.
You know, but where buyers can buy you know, across various platforms, and we have the Roku Amazon announcement. But it's just so much more complicated, you know, than it is in legacy television. I know, I'm not an expert on on you know, on these various pieces. I just know enough to be dangerous and to try to help us grow our business. And we certainly are in the
solutions business. So world's really focused on how to make any part of this ecosystem more efficient, more optimized, more more understandable, more you know, transactable.
But but it is very complicated. I was at.
A I think it was maybe the Ad Club of New York, or maybe it was an IV event. But some some luminary got have made a quip about how, you know, we the collective we had kind of blown it with the first you know, sort of chapters of how CTV had been created and we need to kind of undo and rebuild a little bit.
And I thought that was kind of funny. Interesting.
So then you say, world's kind of focused on you know, solutions. What are some of the strategies that you guys are looking at to help with that process.
Yeah, I'll give you a perfect example.
You know, you might think that in a digital age because obviously at a high level, right, what makes c TV so exciting, Well, what makes it so exciting is that it's a digital delivery method that brings to television some of the capabilities that have worked on the webin and mobile right in terms of targeting. And you know, you're going to see a different ad than I will
because you live somewhere different. I'll see the Tri State FOD dealership, You'll see the southern California Ford dealership, assuming that you might be in LA and on and on and on, right, And so that's super exciting. And you would think that the signals that are flowing through the ecosystem, like what's the genre of the show that's playing right now, would be consistent and easily you know, pass through the bidstream.
It isn't.
Folks have got you know, maybe not great systems that manage their content. You know, it's been moved to digital, but certain things were never created in the first place, or spellings are different as the whole can of worms's about something as simple as what is the genre of the program that you're watching. And so at Whirl we have the ability because we're very content centric. We power fast channels, we work with content, we spin up all these channels globally.
We have the tools to be able.
To, for example, normalize genre metadata across streams so that the buyer is able to count on gaining a consistent information in order to buy across say news or you know,
or sports or drama or something like that. So that's a big thing that we do, like we can help improve and normalize metadata, and I think that speaks to what I would say would be sort of our core competency is that our supply and our ability to enhance supply with sharper signals, whether that's brand safety, whether that's brand discoveries, you know, emotional contextual targeting, which I'm sure we'll talk about, which is super cool because that that's
really going to help, right is because if the signal is unclear, then people can't buy what they want to buy. And so you know, we're sort of in the supply enhancement signal business in many ways on the ad side, and I'm really excited about what we're able to add to the to the situation there.
Yeah, yeah, you know, I'm curious, how has the kind of the increases in supply in the streaming ad space recently, you know, how is that impacting things? Obviously, Amazon Prime Video launched advertising recently and there's been a lot of chatter about how that's kind of flooded the market with with supply. You know, what's been the impact of that from from your perspective.
You know, just downward pressure own CPMs to put it simply, you know, and you know, like I said, I come from the TV business, so I'm not like I'm not a legacy like display or web guy, but I know enough about that space to know that in some ways that has become a race to the bottom with endless and depressions and smaller and smaller rates. God forbid, we let that happen to CTV because it is the largest
scream in the household. These are non skippable units, you know, the time spent on of people's eyeballs on the glass when an AD plays is unbelievable compared to mobile and web. Now we add on the layer of digital targeting. CPMs should be you know, macroeconomic conditions notwithstanding, they should be healthy and growing. And I think people say this at every cocktail party. It can right, It's like, you know, the downward pressure on CPMs is very concerning.
So just to clarify, CPMs are this this AD standard that's cost per meal, that's the cost for delivering a thousand views.
Yeah, to my earlier macro point, the audience is growing, so, you know, and the demand has been you know, has not followed. So then you throw on top of that, you know, increased supply, more viewership, more potential impression, but a lot of money that's not already there, you know. I mean, so we're not really poised to take advantage of the growing audience at the moment, which is obviously another factor that's going to hurt us, you know on CPM.
So and then the sort of economic uncertainty around the economy is an additional probably drag on the situation.
Yeah, as has that been you know, the focus of a lot of conversations you've been having recently. The kind of uncertainty in the economic climate right now.
I would say from what I'm hearing from our teams is that, you know, people say it, but we're not really seeing it turn up too much in the business yet.
And I think maybe what I just said is true for everything.
The stock market, you know, unemployment, everything's just kind of still the quote the same. What we all feel like, there's these larger shifts happening that could turn south. So you know Q four will be the big question mark, right because that is such a big quarter for everybody, you know, we have we don't have the political year that we had last year, so you know, that'll probably that'll be the ultimate verdict probably on twenty twenty five, is what happens in Q four.
Yeah.
Yeah, So let's shiftgures a little bit. You know, the the rise of YouTube on connected TVs has been a big topic of discussion recently. I mean really it's been an ongoing thing for a long time, but the amount of press attention on it has kind of multiplied more recently, you know, and I know you just did a presentation on this recently at the stream TV show. So what we're seeing is consumers spending more time with YouTube on
big screens. Basically, you know, what are some of the key trends that have driven this this shift in consumption.
Yeah, well, I think, I mean, I can talk about this subject for a while because it's so fascinating to me on many levels. I think people we'd all probably agree that it's been a big surprise, and that you know, when we think of YouTube as an app on CTV, if we're going back five six years, you know, we think of it as kind of a utility.
It's not really an entertainment destination. You know, of course it's there.
Because everyone's got to get an app everywhere, right, and and no economic arrangements with the platform to participate at that time. But maybe you don't think it's important if you're Sam sunger Roku, right, because it's it's just the
second largest video search engine. You know, it's not an entertainment destination, and just slowly but surely, you know, it has just grown and grown and grown to where now not only is it, you know, the number one essentially platform on television even including like the Disney portfolio completely and everybody else, but for itself, YouTube in the United States TV is now the number one consumption platform in terms of time spent, and so it's just kind of
this it's it's a sleeping giant. That's kind of I think on the industry. And you're right, lots of attentions being paid. But one of things I said in the keynote was that I still don't think the industry fully is grasping the trajectory YouTube is on and the implications.
Of that trajectory.
I feel like people have watched it, you know, rise to this level, but aren't necessarily thinking to themselves what if this continues? You know, I mean I made the point that you know, essentially one in four hours of streaming today in the US is on YouTube, a sentence that I still blows my mind. But it's likely to be one in three by the end of next year. And so you know, and you know, the platforms don't
participate in the monetization. You know, it's it's taking time away from the other ad supported players in the space, and all the demos are watching. The fastest growing demo is sixty five plus, you know, which might make you say, as an advertiser, okay, well, you know, we know CBS is number one, but they I have eighteen to forty nine's.
It's older people. But all the demos are growing. And if you look at the youngest demo, I think I equipped this in my keynote, the two to eleven's, they over indexed at one hundred and fifty percent, right, And so you have to ask yourself, if they over index at that level today as an eight year old, why would that change when they're fifteen, twenty one, twenty nine, right, And so call that like a demographic tsunami that's going to creep through the age groups over the next twenty
thirty years. You know, if you're not sitting down with your partner to watch White Lotus season six right in an X number of years, but you just want to quote see what's on and that becomes YouTube period end of sentence.
You know. That's uh, that's big news. It's scary a little bit. I think I.
Went a little melodramatic on you there, but you know, you know, and in the presentation, of course, I talk about the you know, the Albanian Army quote of Jeff Bucus. You know, so dis missing Netflix and I think Netflix has just astounded us. All it's just unbelievable what they've achieved. It's literally mind boggling. You just got to tip your cap to what they've done. They've changed the whole entertainment
landscape globally. I did have to laugh with Ted Sarandos's recent comment about you know, YouTube is in the killing time business and we're in the spending time business.
I'm like, uh, yeah, yeah, you know, it's that certainly does seem to be to be changing. I think, you know, you mentioned YouTube has really built itself into this entertainment destination, you know, and I've had conversations where, you know, it's the creators there are really focused on, you know, driving more engagement, driving more kind of recognition for what they're doing,
the viewership they're delivering things like that. So it really does seem to be again a transformative moment for how the industry is approaching YouTube. You know, what are some of the other implications you know, for major avon platforms, you know, other players in the CTV space. As YouTube kind of steals more time on these big screen devices that used to be the domain of these other platforms, you know, how do they continue to compete?
I think, you know, on the panel that you and I did together. I made the comment about feeling like things were plateauing a little bit in the kind of the fast Davoud space, and we had some pushback on the panel from some of the folks.
I think some one person agreed with me a little bit.
And I meant it in a combination of monetization and audience growth, but also I think in the experience, and I say that in this moment answer your question, because the ux of these devices you know, and these platforms and apps you know are relatively similar, right, the sort of tile based carousel and then an EPG for channels, right.
And I think that YouTube success with short form content, which constitutes about half of the viewership on CTV, certainly points to what you'd call the question of what is your short form strategy?
Right?
You're not going to really be able to go after YouTube holistically that well, that's crazy. But within sports, within say lifestyle, within certain categories, is there a more short form feed like personal way to consume content, discover content, find shows, movies that is more akin to the way
that people bounce around social platforms and YouTube itself. I think there needs to be some experimentation there and so you know, like lessons from YouTube's success, You're clearly high profile creators from mister Beast on down are getting shots at having a show on Samsung or Prime Video whatever, And that's great. I think that makes sense for both sides. That won't really have an impact on the overall trend.
Those will just be the sort of the few that could graduate quote unquote to having a legitimate quote unquote show on these platforms. But the underlying overall trend of how people are using YouTube and the role of that short form, personalized kind of content experience, how can you replicate that in some form that works for your platform, I think is definitely a sort of thing to be tackled and it could be very exciting, right for a platform.
Yeah, absolutely, I mean I completely agree. I think we're long overdue for kind of a revolution in the streaming UX space.
I mean love I love the twov scenes, you know, product on their phone. I'm sure they're going to bring it to CTV And that's a very smart idea, right. I'm just scrolling through great moments from films and I find something to watch that way versus going through key art. You know what, a much more interesting, fun way to interact with my TV to find a movie to watch than rolling through still images, you know.
Right right, Yeah, that's fascinating. I do want to touch on fast briefly because I know you deal with you know, fast channels and providers quite a bit. You know, we've talked about that space is also maturing and kind of plateauing a little bit. You know, how has the fast sector specifically kind of been changing recently as it matures.
Yeah, I think yesterday I was actually in the office physically in the office in New York City with a major cable company that we work with that has you know, double digit numbers of fast channels, And what they said, which I have heard from others, other big clients of ours, is that their focus now is on sort of refining their approach.
They've got their.
Twenty channels, their thirty channels, some of them are crushing it, some of them are lagging, some of them maybe need a little refresh, and so their focus is on really quality and you know, honing in on what's working, maybe making some decisions about sunsetting certain concepts or ideas, trying new things. So there was kind of a rush there, you know, five years ago, four years ago, a little bit further back, WBD wasn't in the game, NBCU wasn't in the game. They both both came to the market
with you know, literally dozens of channels. That's that wave has happened, and so the platforms themselves are starting to sort of look at, you know, winnowing the herd a bit, cutting back a little bit, wanted to make sure they've got the best channels the content providers themselves after rushing in with so many channels. So I think you're seeing a kind of refinement and you know, curation and kind of you know, that kind of approach versus you know five years ago when it was really kind of a
land grab for beachfront property. So that that's what that's I say, that's what's happening broadly with the big guys. The smaller guys, you know, are facing that challenge. You know, maybe they were digitally native brand on YouTube or you know, and they were able to get fast carriage across the ecosystem six seven years ago and now they're maybe you know, dealing with some pressure on their numbers and how do they get them up? And so yeah, we're not We're
not in a real big expansion. I think we're in kind of a solidifying and focusing on.
Quality, which I think is good.
It's good because you know, we don't we kind of quickly replicated some version of cable you know, two fifty three fifty before you know it, and I don't know that that's necessarily the way to go.
So interesting to circle back to an earlier topic a bit. You know, I was just reading an article that the increase in supply, you know, among subscription ad supported platforms has has also put more pressure on the fast space because advertisers want to be on what they perceive as you know, these these premium platforms as opposed to these channels that are showing you know, older content. Have you been seeing the impact of that from conversations that you've been having.
I would I would say the impact is maybe a little bit more back up this food chain or the upstream or some metaphor that I'm mangling in the sense that I think that.
Advertisers, savvy buyers.
I think understand that fast channels aren't in many ways just like cable. They are high quality library. That's what most of cable TV is, even if you're going to buy the Bear or the Daily Show right on Comedy Central or FX. Your buy includes a wide swath of run of network placements that are across repeats of old sitcoms and old shows from South you know, South Park, you name it, always Sonny, that's what you that's what you're getting, you know. And so Fast doesn't have that
Tiffany premiere piece. But you know, if you're looking for the right audience, right, you're still talking about premium television content. So I think there's some level of Fast doesn't quite get its due, And so I think that's a bit of a factor before the s fods even bring in an ad tier, right, and so that that feeds into that probably reality a little bit, as you just mentioned, because they have those bright, shining, new fantastic shows that can be the hook for someone to make a buy.
But so I think there's some education around that.
But again back to my point, right, whether it's twelve thirteen percent of the money forty fifty percent of the viewing, do you want to reach the audience or not? Right, if you're trying to sell Hamburgers or get people to go on to vacations to the Bahamas, you know, with your ad and they're watching you know, the bay Watch channel on fast or you know Axe Men or you know Ion on a fast service, you know, for a couple hours on a Tuesday evening.
You know that's a premium moment to catch them.
You know, yeah, yeah, you know, I would be surprised if you know, after to be aired. You know that they're Super Bowl simulcast this year. I would be surprised if that trend didn't continue. I'm CBS has next year's Super Bowl if I'm not mistaken. So I'm curious if they'll integrate it with with Pluto TV in any way.
And they made the savvy decision to require people to register because you know, there aren't things that just to do a little circle back when we talk about YouTube, you know, you have a lot of personal personalization, and not everyone you know, in my house when I hit on, when I hit YouTube on my CTV, it' asked me, you know, obviously which one of us. Because I have a couple of kids, I click on my icon boom
them into Dave's YouTube. I know some households maybe it's moms or dads or but in general, you have a significant portion of people that are within their YouTube experience on CTV, which is the ultimate level of personalization. Whereas a Pluto or if to be heretofore right, wants to have as a free service as little friction as possible. Right, they might give you an option to sign in a register, but you can skip it, And so to B was wise to use the Super Bowl as a way to
drive registration. I think you'll see Pluto on others and then you think of it beyond that, Well, how much more can we try to force this on our users? You know, we might lose a few folks, there might be some churn. But on the other side, right, if x percent say okay, cool, look at the way you could up your level of personalization and understanding your audience. So you know, that's another factor. And obviously the s
FOD guys have a different dynamic. They've got that already because you're having to pay.
Yeah, yeah, that's a really good point. Last question, do you have a go to fast channel that you go to for your personal quote unquote lean back viewing?
You know, one of the things that you know fast is followed cable a little bit right in many ways, and like cable. It's largely you know, repeats of great library for now and over time it's going to slowly get more and more like TV and probably have some original programing. There are people actually making things for Fast. The reason why I'm saying this is because that means that sports will be the last thing to get to
Fast in a meaningful way. But one of the first things that came into Fast, which is a really great product, isn't news. The news on Fast is awesome. I mean, you just turn on, you know, whether it's NBC Now or you know, Bloomberg, So, you know, I find that like having that right there. I can just pop on and watch the news and it's like as good as anything on quote television is pretty cool and it is
a really strong value. And I don't I don't feel like I'm watching like some streaming lesser than version of regular television. So I would say news. I really in news. News is a big one for me on Fast.
Interesting.
Well, obviously lots to discuss with these topics, but unfortunately we're going to have to leave it there. But I want to thank you again Dave for joining us on the podcast today.
Thank you Tyler, Thanks for listening, be sure to leave us a review at Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music. We love to hear from listeners. Please go to Variety dot com and sign up for the free weekly Strictly Business newsletter, and don't forget to tune in next week for another episode of Strictly Business