Magnite

At CES on Tuesday, media and ad tech veteran Kris Johns unveiled AdGood, a nonprofit with a connected TV ad platform and a mission to help other nonprofits access streaming media.

Forrester released its first SSP wave since 2014 last week, and there’s a surprise. The research firm ranked Google – whose sell-side ad tech platform is facing federal antitrust charges – as a mere challenger.

CTV advertising continues to drive significant growth for Magnite. That’s all thanks to “increasing programmatic adoption by the industry’s largest players,” CEO Michael Barrett told investors on the company’s Q3 earnings call this Thursday.

While there are plenty of reasons for political ad buyers to be cautious about CTV, streaming media has one major selling point: programmatic targeting.

On Thursday, the US district court in Alexandria, Virginia boarded a time machine back to April 18, 2019 – the day of a tense meeting between Google and publishers.

The SSP revised its full year outlook down by $10 million, due to a DSP partner adopting first-price auctions and weakness in key ad verticals. But it highlighted mobile in-app as a new key revenue stream.

Although the full revenue impact of Magnite’s exclusive SSP partnership with Netflix hasn’t hit yet, simply announcing the deal “created significant momentum for our business,” Magnite President and CEO Michael Barrett told investors.

Ranker saw a 5% increase in demand from a new fully automated Prebid wrapper optimization feature in Magnite’s Demand Manager.

Investor, industry veteran and former SpotX CEO Mike Shehan returns from the ad tech sidelines to join the C-suite at Telly, a startup that gives away free TVs in exchange for viewer data.

In today’s newsletter: SSPs lead the way on ad tech’s M&A resurgence; Disney rolls back CPMs to court more streaming ad demand; and why dating apps struggle to grow and monetize their audiences.