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Julie Selman, SVP, Head of EMEA at Magnite

35m 18s

Julie Selman, SVP, Head of EMEA at Magnite

In this podcast episode from Advertising Week Europe, Judy Salman, Managing Director EMEA at Magnite, discusses her career journey from early digital advertising to leading CTV growth. She highlights the transformative shift from linear TV's broad, inflexible ad buying to the "new TV ecosystem" of connected TV, which enables data-driven, precise, and flexible campaigns, such as hyper-local targeting based on first-party data. Salman dispels myths that programmatic ads are lower quality, emphasizing they are premium and transparent. She notes that streaming complements rather than replaces traditional TV, as linear TV still offers shared national moments like live sports. Trust and brand safety are critical in programmatic markets, with curation and transparency preventing commoditization. The buyer's role is evolving with automation and AI, reducing mundane tasks but relying on human expertise for strategy. Finally, Salman stresses the importance of preserving viewer experience by using A/B testing to optimize ad frequency, relevancy, and placement, ensuring effective advertising without disruption. Overall, she sees the industry as dynamic and full of opportunity, with content remaining king.

Transcription

6237 Words, 33923 Characters

English
This episode of the Business of Marketing is brought to you by Path 7. The platform Powering Distributed Marketing recorded live at Advertising Week Europe. So I'm really excited to welcome to this episode of the Business Marketing Podcast recorded here live at Advertising Week Judy Salman. Thank you for having me. So Judy, you've built a career at the centre of digital advertising ecosystems across companies like Tabula, Freewheel and now Magnite. You've got deep expertise spanning early digital media, right through to today's streaming and connected TV landscape, you know, SPP, ahead of EMEA at Magnite, which is one of the world's largest independent self-saleside advertising platforms. And you're leaving growth across Europe and beyond. So you've spent your career at the centre. What originally drew you into advertising and media in the first place? Yeah, I think I mean I always had a love for media. So I love film, I love TV, I studied film and TV. I went briefly to law school but that was not really my passion. And then I studied film and TV and I just loved it. I worked on some film sets during my student days. And then we went on a trip I was thinking about that actually when I sort of was preparing for this. We went on a trip I think during my third year to New York, very cool sort of school trip during uni and we went to see all this medicine avenue agencies like Ogle V and things like that. And I just thought, wow, does he still glamorous and cool and just creative and so I thought, okay, I need to maybe do something in this. But I never really consciously looked for it. And then I moved to London to do a masters in media and sociology but that was more because I just wanted to live in London because who doesn't want to live in London. And then I needed a job and I thought, okay, how do I get a job? So I went in gum tree at the time and I found a temp job at an at tech company very sort of start up be called vibrant media which grew out to be quite big in the end. And that was sort of my first step into it and then it was so dynamic. Everyone was really young and it was really I think the beginning really of digital advertising. So even though everyone was very young, they sort of went out quite quickly and there was lots of opportunity, it was super interesting. And then I feel like I sort of grew up with digital advertising myself almost from the early days of digital advertising to mobile phone mobile, you know, the year of mobile that lasted about five years and had her bidding and things like that. And now sort of CTV and agentic and all these kind of things. So it's kind of never ending, never change, never stopped changing and it's still fascinating every day. I love that and I love the kind of parallels of the world we're in evolving as you are growing. I think that's a lovely way of looking at it. And when you look back, what do you think have been the most significant sort of shifts kind of in industry over that time? Yeah, I think I mean, I mentioned obviously already things like, you know, program out of our header bidding and you know, the many years of mobile. But I really think that connected TV, especially also with my background in film and TV for me that feels really full circle that I work now in a company that is so at the forefront of, you know, connected TV and advertising on connected TV. You know, the smart TVs we have now that content that's, you know, at your fingertips, like I grew up in the Netherlands, we had two TV channels and you had to sort of wait until Wednesday afternoon when children were off school to see like appropriate, you know, children TV. And now my children always complain, there's nothing to do and there's nothing on TV. I'm like, you don't understand. You have it. So that's been extremely exciting. And I think from an advertising point of view, of course, is this advertising week. That is a massive change as well. I think TV, linear TV was probably the last kind of medium that was still trading in that very old fashioned way, sort of, you know, based on, you know, broad audience. No kind of targeting or data that was already going, you know, in digital for many years. And now with the calming of sort of smart TVs and, you know, streaming all the data available as a super, super exciting part to be off part to be in and working. So I think that's kind of that sort of conversion between digital and linear. That's really exciting to see. And how would you describe that sort of emergence of what kind of people call the new TV ecosystem? Yeah, I think that, you know, that new TV ecosystem, it just reflects that converging, like I said, between traditional linear broadcasting and then streaming and sort of premium video being available now sort of digitally. For MagNide, it really is a great opportunity to kind of create some structure and clarity in that world. I think it's very overwhelming both for buyers and publishers. There's like a lot going on. So, you know, we want to help buyers to make it less complex automated, make it more efficient. And then publishers obviously to help them package that inventory and monetize it in the sort of new digital way. It's interesting because you know, you talk about sort of, you know, kind of complex and, you know, obviously alongside that complexity, you've got new opportunities. Yeah, what do you think kind of brands and agencies still sort of misunderstand about how this ecosystem really works? Yeah, I think there's many misunderstanding. So I did a panel earlier with Channel 4, you know, about sort of myth-busting. And I think one is, you know, is programmatic or sort of this digital buying versus like linear, is that maybe remnant inventory or is it less premium and, you know, do we want to even do that or is it cheaper? That's absolutely not the case. So I think that's a big misunderstanding. And then, you know, the data that you can apply and all the different things you can do now in this world of digital. But on the big screen and the power of that really, and I think that's not fully understood maybe yet or at least fully used as much as it could be. And from your perspective, how different is buying advertising in connected TV compared with traditional broadcast TV? It's completely different. It's fundamentally, it's more dynamic. It's, you know, like I said, it could be programmatic, not always, but it's data informed. So it's based on certain key audiences you want to reach versus, you know, linear TV was, okay, we're advertising to everyone in the nation on Christmas Day. And it's big budgets, very expensive, no targeting whatsoever. And now you can be much more precise. You can, you know, adjust your messaging to the search and audience and have a different audience, different messaging. So you can be very flexible and more precise. You can stop and start a campaign, you know, with Channel 4 this morning. They were saying budgets used to be of a certain minimum spend. They don't really have that anymore. You know, you can spend kind of whatever you want and need to spend because the data and the targeting are so precise that you can kind of really go for what you need as a brand. So I think it's, it's very, very different and it's, yeah, very unique. And bring it to life for me a little bit. Tell me about some of the kind of your favorite sort of examples of kind of what's really working kind of at the moment. Yeah, I think what's really interesting is when that data is used to, for example, look at certain signals. So an example from this morning again was this sort of hyper local targeting. So using first party data for, let's say, a delivery service and say, okay, I only want to advertise if it's raining in Manchester, you know, things like that. It's really specific. It's really data driven. And then you can immediately also see, okay, these are the results. Now what do we do next? And when you say there's no minimum budget, kind of make again, you know, what does that start and start from? I mean, that depends on on the media owner and you know, I'm sure everyone has different standards on that. But I guess the difference is that before in the let's say, old world, you had, you know, the upfront at the beginning of the year, you would have to kind of commit to a certain number. And then there was little flexibility on that word that's completely changed now. And obviously within the kind of ecosystem, I suppose, a lot of people arguing that streaming will eventually kind of become the sort of dominant environment for brand advertising. Do you think we're heading towards a future where streaming effectively replaces traditional TV ads? Not necessarily replacing more complimentary or I don't know, 50/50. I'm not really sure. I think one of the great things about linear TV, even if it's on a smart TV. So meaning linear programming is you still have those, you know, fantastic moments where the whole nation is watching. It could be live sports. It could be, you know, the traitors, a bake off, you know, these sort of flagship shows or a world cup Olympics, those kind of moments, which is really that, you know, in my old, old school view, you know, sort of old fashioned way of watching TV. It's different from, you know, you and I each watching our own show, you know, at different times and not really as a, you know, that sort of family moment. I think there's a lot of value still in that, you know, that life environment or that those sort of linearly programs shows. I don't think that's going away. A funny trend I noticed the other day and I don't know if this is a scientific or really, you know, a real trip, but I kind of noticed it myself is that broadcasters are now often putting new shows online or on their streaming platform and they'll put like all episodes and then streamers who traditionally used to do that and be like, here's all house of cards or something like that. They now tend to do one episode a week or the first four episodes of Love is Blind but you have to wait another week. So it's quite interesting because it's kind of the opposite of what they were doing traditionally. So I'm curious to see how that's going to pan out and what the full reasons behind it are. So that's quite interesting to see as well. - Yeah, it's really interesting isn't it? Because is it the format that's driving the trend or is the trend driving the format? You know, like, which way round is. - And I think ultimately what it comes to is and this is a very unoriginal fall but content is really king. So it's ultimately about the content and I think again, you know, national broadcasters have a lot of benefits there. They have sometimes by law, sometimes they choose to, you know, a brother, I would say, spectrum of sort of content they bring out. And I think they have often local language, for example, if you look at the rest of Europe, you know, it's not just English, Hollywood, but they'll have, you know, in France, they have a mandate to like produce a certain amount of local language content. I think that's really interesting and that was, I don't think that will go away and I don't think, you know, sort of global streamers will take that over. - And last one on that kind of content piece. Can you sort of almost attribute sort of moments that are kind of linked to major sort of, you know, series going like Squid Game, for example, you know, and you can kind of always link that to kind of behave your change, format change, buying change, that type of thing? - Yeah, I think so. I'm not really an expert on that, but I definitely think that there's, like you say, there's some shows or formats that have then sort of started almost a new format or a new medium on its own. So for sure, I think Squid Game is a very good example. I think for a while, this was more of my children, but there were like TV shows on Netflix where you could kind of could choose the ending, you know, sort of, sort of you had to sort of choose, okay, I want to go left or right, you know, and then you'd have a completely different ending, goes kind of things. So there's, yeah, I think there's still a lot we will probably see and new things will come, no doubt. - And as an academic and a fan, you know, that's exciting, right? - Economic, thank you. Yeah, no, definitely, that's definitely exciting. - So media buying is kind of, I suppose, in a sense, sort of been, you know, kind of at the heart of Magnite, you know, you're operating sort of one of the world's largest independent cell side ad platforms now. What role do those sort of microplaces play in helping publishers and boardcasters monetize premium video inventory? - Yeah, I think marketplaces or curation or these sort of buzzwords that we use are becoming more and more important, like we said earlier, there's this maybe misunderstanding about programmatic or, you know, automation that will lead to maybe less, lesser quality of inventory or less premiumness. And I think actually it's not the case at all. And I think these marketplaces help publishers package and sort of monetize inventory better by adding data and things like that. So I think it's a good thing. And I think we'll see probably an evolution in that as well, especially with the coming of AI and sort of agentic and things like that. So we'll see if I think it's a good thing. - Yeah, the ecosystem itself, you know, there's a lot of talk about trust and quality and brand safety. How important are those principles as the market becomes increasingly programmatic? - Fundamental, I mean, trust, I think in general in the media is pretty low at the moment. I think you know, things like AI slop and things like that. Like what is real, what is not real. So these kind of things are extremely important. And you know, any, I would say, transaction is built on trust. And you know, you can maybe do it wrong one time, but then that's it. So I think it's very, very important. I think because now there's more automation, less I guess human interaction that could erode trust or at least the perception of trust. So that's a tricky one, but I think ultimately, as you can see here today, there's thousands of people here. There is still very much a human, you know, businesses are still run by humans and it's still based on human interaction. So I think that is very, very, very important. - And what do you say to people that sort of argue that programmatic advertising risks commoditizing media? You know, do you think premium video environments can maintain their value in a programmatic world? - Oh yeah, definitely. It's kind of what I was saying earlier. I think that's a misunderstanding. - Yeah. - That was maybe the case in display a few years ago, but now with curation, even on this place, I think it's much less so. And there's a lot of work done on trying to make sure that, you know, from the cell side, it's much better understood what, you know, you're selling and the buyer gets a sort of deeper understanding of what they're buying. So there's more transparency and I think that idea of, it's commoditized or it's less quality is not definitely not true. - And to that buyer point, how do you see the role of the buyer evolving in the future? - Well, that's a very good question. I think we've already seen obviously because of automation that the role of the buyer itself has changed. I think, again, when I was young, children, when grandmother was young, I think, you know, we would like, after call the publisher and like send the facts. (laughs) You know, with an insertion order, all that, as obviously long gone out of the window, you know, traders now are very much like, you know, using very sophisticated tools to buy media. So it's much less about, you know, making those phone calls and it's already based on, you know, statistics and, you know, algorithms and things like that. But I think in the future, obviously with AI and agente AI, which is still very much at the forefront. But as we know, this will happen very quickly. That will change. And I'm not exactly sure what it's gonna look like. But I think, again, the human interaction, the intervention is still super-project. - And I'm really glad you kind of mentioned the humans again. And where do you see the balance between-- - I've got to like advocate for myself here. - Where do you see that balance between sort of tech and human expertise, you know, when you're sort of sitting in the next generation of media trading? - Yeah, again, I think there's already, those roles already have changed a lot. So I think the job profiles will change. They might be different type of skillset. But I think, again, the human is still very much important. It'll just take away maybe some, for example, we work with some clients and they said, okay, we started using whatever it is to and you know, this report took usually half a day and now it takes 10 minutes. You know, that's obviously a person was doing that report half a day, but maybe you can use the person for something more useful than just pulling reports from 10 different platforms, right? So it's, I think, still very important that someone understands what says into reports and analyzes it and things like that. But, you know, the sort of more mundane tasks can be really much quicker. And then in terms of the media buying, I think they'll be, yeah, again, a lot of change, but I don't know exactly where it's going to end. - Well, obviously there's another human in this, which is the viewer and that viewer experience is so important, right, in television environments. So how do you ensure sort of alongside all of the things we're talking about here, that sort of, you know, that advertising remains effective, but it doesn't damage the viewing experience? - Yeah, I mean, this is very, very important and very key. I think I don't know if you watched some streamers with ads at the beginning, let's say one day for a start it, but you immediately see, you know, the user experience can be quite sort of disrupted. Even listening to podcasts and it was very sad and also when you get a very sort of happy, happy ad and you're like, "God, this is so inappropriate," right, things like that. So there's things like how many ads, where do you put the ads? Are the ads relevant? Are we having the same ad, you know, all those things sort of basic user experience things are super important. I think broadcasters, for example, are extremely, extremely good at this, because of course they've done that for many, many years. They understand very well and often if they produce content as well, they make sure that they produce it in a way where they know where to put the ads. I think that's something that the streamers are learning now, like making sure that you're not disrupting the user experience too much. The good thing is you can test now very easily and A/B test and see what works and what doesn't work. So, but it's key. - And that sort of, I suppose, that kind of connectedness of the kind of the television content, the storytelling itself with the digital targeting, you know, of the viewer and sort of, you know, and the program and a kind of aspect of that. Sort of how do you kind of almost create that kind of holy trinity of sort of getting that sort of balance right? - Well, I mean, I'm definitely not an expert on that, but I think, you know, that's what everyone is trying to get brought to. Again, you can A/B test. You obviously work with tech partners who understand, and have the tools to navigate these things. So make sure that you don't have, I don't know, competitive ads or repetition in ads and frequency capping and things like that. Relevancy in ads, so like data, like we said, it's not just nice for the buyer, but it's also nice for the viewer because it's nice to get a relevant ad. You know, when you get, I don't know, this is in the US more, but you get like all these sort of ads on TV about different pharmaceutical companies, you know, you're like, why is this relevant to me? You know, it doesn't really help your brand, I don't think. So I think it's, you know, that's a very key thing and I think that's becoming better and easier now as well. - So we're in a position now where to use your earlier analogy of, you know, only serve this when it's rating in Manchester for delivery. How do you then kind of add the kind of a content, kind of, you know, and sort of aspect to that? So if they're watching this show and it's rating in Manchester. - I mean, I guess it depends on the brand and on what you're trying to achieve. I think if it's a delivery service, does it really make a difference what you're watching? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. Maybe you have different type of ads for different type of, parts of, you know, where it is raining, where it isn't raining, things like that, you can be very creative with now. Yeah. - And obviously streaming is not slowing down in terms of its growth and usage. You know, there's all sorts of new platforms, new forms of video consumption, new business models, right? In terms of subscription, non-subscription, you know, non-paid paid ads and so on and so forth. How do you kind of see the video advertising market kind of evolving over the next sort of five to 10 years? - I mean, we're seeing already a lot of consolidation. If that's the word for it, so you know, there's M&A happening, Paramount and WBD, if it's happening, it's not happening, Netflix, but Sky ITV, there's already a lot happening, I think. And then I don't think that's necessarily going to stop, but I think what we're also seeing is sort of partnerships that are maybe unusual. So TF1 or TF1 and Fran, stay, you know, are putting their content on Netflix, ITV is working together with Prime. So I think there's going to be kind of a combination of consolidation and partnerships and sort of maybe things that we were that seem unexpected now. And then again, God knows what happens with AI. - I'm going to ask you that. So you've got some time to think about that. Don't worry, I'll give you a few minutes. Alongside the sort of the growth, obviously, you know, we've got, as you just mentioned, that TF1 kind of coming in, you know, there's also kind of a raft of, you know, entirely new, I suppose, more niche kind of long tail style, kind of platforms entering the market as well. Sort of, you know, where do you think the kind of, the biggest growth opportunities are going to come from? - I think it'll be a combination. Again, consolidation, I think broadcasters will invest more in streaming and going more that way. And then I think those long tail platforms or channels, you know, they will have to consolidate. I think scale is extremely important still, even though, yes, with data, you can go smaller et cetera. You still need sort of to have the scale to then be able to go smaller. So I think it'll be probably a mix of broadcasters and streaming and then, you know, platforms. And I think the smaller ones will have to either consolidate or they will disappear. - And do you see as, you know, as I said, you know, you're a global business. Do you see kind of different kind of, you mentioned the US, which is mentioned here. If one, do you see sort of different kind of trends and behaviors and levels of maturity as you look at it from a global perspective? - Oh, yeah, absolutely. I'm not a global expert, you know, my expertise. My remit is Europe, but the US for sure is much further ahead. And then within Europe, I would say the UK is a different place than let's say, Italy or something. It really depends on the influence of the broadcasters in some countries, broadcasters, really national broadcasters are really still very, very dominant. And then if you look at something like Asia, you know, where it's all mobile. So it's a completely different world. So yeah, I think there's massive differences depending on where you are. Everyone going probably in the same direction at some point, but a different pace. - And with your EMEA kind of remit sort of hat on, I suppose, in a sense. Like how does that kind of work when you're trying to sort of distribute campaigns across multiple markets? Look at different regulatory environments, media landscape. You know, what are the big challenges in scaling, you know, business like this across Europe? - Well, those are really two questions. - Okay. - I think from a campaign perspective, you know, so if we are working with an advertiser and agency to run a campaign across multiple countries, I think it could mean that the campaign will look different in each country. So some countries, they might be, and that also depends on how well we are integrated in this country, but you know, some countries will have, will just look slightly different, the media plan than in other countries. In general, how we work as a business, I think one of the things is that very much misunderstood often by maybe US companies or UK companies or non-European local companies is the complexity of a place like Europe. I have a colleague who works, you know, on the Asia side and I'm sure it's 10 million times more complex, but Europe itself is also quite complex. It's not just a language, it's GDPR, as you said. There's other tax implications and laws we just open in office in Spain was quite complicated, actually, not so easy. Labor law, all these kind of things are very different, and then of course, the state of the market, so where are we in the, you know, the sort of penetration of programmatic and CTV, for example, in some countries it's zero, other countries it's watch a fence, like UK, so it really depends. I think the complexity is to be able to kind of see the nuance, but then as a global company we also want to have a global strategy, so kind of bring that in where possible, but at the same time make sure that is within the confines of that whatever country you're in, I'm making sure that it still makes sense there. And sometimes it doesn't, I need to say, okay fine, we won't do XYZ here. And sometimes we do it even though it hasn't been done and it could be a success. Yeah. And from a brand and by kind of campaign, kind of perspective, you know, you've talked a lot about sort of the ability to be really hyper local, but obviously the flip side of that is to say, well, we know I can buy nationally, I can buy regionally, I can buy globally, is in a kind of, where are you seeing that at the moment in terms of trend? Yeah, that really depends, I guess, on the type of brands and agency teams for example you work with, we have, you know, we are very privileged to sit in London, so we have a lot of global and European teams sitting here that buy on behalf of really big global brands and they'll buy across 80 countries or something, maybe 80s, etc. Let's say 20, wow. Wow. But you know, they can go everywhere essentially. And the cool thing about, you know, Progobetic and this world is that with our platform, you could do that. And then as you said on the flip side, we'll have, you know, we have, take six offices in Europe, so we have a very local approach as well, which is very important and, you know, there you'll see the local brands spending in those sort of piper locals, targeting and things like that and kind of benefiting from that. So it depends a bit. I think the brands that usually go global are global brands that have maybe a less need for a local message because it'll be, you know, the big FMCG brands that you would say for Zappi. If you're, I guess, you know, you've got premium storytelling kind of environments. Does that sort of naturally kind of, you know, open up a big opportunity to kind of then deliver more intelligent sort of advertising delivery? Yes, I mean, I'm not sure if I understand the question. I guess it's like just, you know, like if you're running, if you're running the Super Bowl kind of, or the World Cup, right? Then obviously you've got more premium inventory. So therefore does that then sort of link, you know, naturally kind of mean that you can then kind of think about a much more kind of intelligent kind of, you know, advertising strategy delivery strategy? Yeah, definitely. And I think those, we spoke about it before a little bit, but I think those events are so valuable. And you know, we hear, we talk a lot about this live. I think it's still slightly on tap. There's actually improv about it because it is so unpredictable, right? Like you have spikes and then you have kind of, you don't know when the break will be, maybe it's extra time, you know, it's very, very unpredictable, but therefore it also means that your audience extremely leaned in. So the quality of the audience that you're, you know, getting is very, very good. So there's massive, massive potential there. We see that, you know, around things, like Super Bowl and, you know, the World Cup, and you have massive sponsorships around that. And then, you know, you'll have a huge spike in different advertising. as they're trying that out. And even around it. So I think now you have things like fast channels around F1, for example, they only show maybe old races, but they'll spike around the actual race, right? Because that's when everybody sort of wants to find out more about for stop-in or whatever. So I think, yeah, there's definitely a lot of value in that. - Yeah, I've heard a lot about sort of, they're upcoming World Cup in the States and the soccer for a World Cup, right? - Yeah, there's all sorts of consultations going on at the moment around sort of, you know, playing and teasing and coming up with more creative new formats. What do you kind of see, you know, kind of on that horizon? - I have to say, I haven't seen that much yet. But I'm excited to see what's, what will happen this summer. 'Cause I think it's compared to four years ago, you know, there's much more technology available now. Everything we've talked about already, right? I don't want to repeat myself constantly, but you know, data, AI, all these things. So I think it'll be interesting to see what happens this summer. And I'm excited about it. - Okay, I'm gonna ask you three questions, like quick-fire. Okay, first thing that comes to your head. What's one advertising trend that's currently over-hiked? - Well, Zuckerberg just canceled the metaverse, didn't he? So I think that was definitely probably not the best hype. I remember when that sort of first kicked off and my children have, you know, the-- - Mac requests. - Thank you. - Yeah. - And they love things like row blocks and things like that. So I was, you know, I saw it more through their eyes 'cause I'm not really into the metaverse myself, but I was always wondering, like, do you really want to have a, I don't know, fashion brand sweater in the metaverse? And I never saw, and they're quite like, I would say, materialistic beings. I never saw that hype. So I think I called it, and I was like, yeah, I don't think that's gonna work. - One capability every media organization needs to develop. - The human capability, you know, I guess that there's a lot of AI Slope, I keep hearing that word. I think it's quite a good one, a good term, you know, both from a actual media. So, you know, their Sora now, it is sort of AI, what is it, Instagram, but AI made, I guess, and then fake news and, you know, everything that's happening in the US, I think the human creativity, you know, I love long reads, I think, I love good investigative journalism, you know, I love murder, I had to say, like, real murder mysteries and things like that. And I think that's really what people will still tune in to. And so we need that human touch, the human creativity. So they should invest in their humans. - A brand you think is using video, particularly well today. - Well, as you can see, I'm a little bit blind. And so I love spec sabers. They do fantastic ads, they also sponsor Emmerdale and then they do these really funny clips that are kind of like soap, I love soap operas, that's why I wrote my thesis on soap operas. So, as an academic, also, soap operas. I love that. So they do these funny capes where it's like, you know, they sort of do this soap opera, I eat moments where, you know, she thinks he's cheating on her and it's a dog because she can't see it, I just think it's hilarious. And they've been doing that for 10 years or something, but it just works. And I saw the latest one was a hearing aid, but you don't really see what it is. And it's this sort of super swath, sexy thing. And you're not really sure what it is. And it's like this device will bring you together as a couple. And it's very suggestive. And then it's sort of in the end, it's like, and even in meetings, you know, like in meetings. And it's basically hearing aids, it's just amazing. And I just love what they do. So brilliant. And finally, some advice to the next generation. What's the one thing that you would give to someone who was thinking about building a career and advertising tech or media today? Curiosity and be comfortable with change. If we're not changing, we're dying. This is what I tell my team a lot as well. And be comfortable with problems. You need to constantly solve problems. If there's no problems, then there's no need for you. So four problems better, change is good. And to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. - Julie, spend a pleasure. Thank you, Virginia, today. - Thank you so much. - Thank you. - This episode of The Business of Marketing was brought to you by path 7, the platform powering distributed marketing. (upbeat music) For more podcasts like this one, be sure to check out advertising weeks ever growing roster of podcasts for the advertising, marketing, and technology industries. You can find those at www.avortizingweek.com/podcast. (upbeat music)

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Judy Salman, Managing Director EMEA at Magnite, was drawn to advertising through a love of media (film/TV) and started in digital advertising at a startup, growing with the industry from early digital to CTV.
  2. The most significant industry shift is the convergence of digital and linear TV into a "new TV ecosystem," where connected TV (CTV) allows data-driven, precise, and flexible ad buying compared to traditional broadcast's broad, inflexible approach.
  3. Misunderstandings persist that programmatic or digital TV ads are remnant or lower quality; in reality, they are premium, data-informed, and can be hyper-targeted (e.g., ads triggered by local weather).
  4. Streaming is not replacing traditional TV but complementing it, as linear TV still offers shared national moments (e.g., live sports) that hold unique value.
  5. Trust, quality, and brand safety are fundamental in programmatic markets, with curation and transparency helping maintain premium value and countering commoditization risks.
  6. The buyer's role is evolving with automation and AI, shifting from manual tasks to strategic analysis, but human expertise remains crucial for interpretation and decision-making.
  7. Advertisers must balance effectiveness with viewer experience by limiting ad frequency, ensuring relevancy, and avoiding disruption, using A/B testing and tech tools.

Summary:

In this podcast episode from Advertising Week Europe, Judy Salman, Managing Director EMEA at Magnite, discusses her career journey from early digital advertising to leading CTV growth. She highlights the transformative shift from linear TV's broad, inflexible ad buying to the "new TV ecosystem" of connected TV, which enables data-driven, precise, and flexible campaigns, such as hyper-local targeting based on first-party data. Salman dispels myths that programmatic ads are lower quality, emphasizing they are premium and transparent.

She notes that streaming complements rather than replaces traditional TV, as linear TV still offers shared national moments like live sports. Trust and brand safety are critical in programmatic markets, with curation and transparency preventing commoditization. The buyer's role is evolving with automation and AI, reducing mundane tasks but relying on human expertise for strategy.

Finally, Salman stresses the importance of preserving viewer experience by using A/B testing to optimize ad frequency, relevancy, and placement, ensuring effective advertising without disruption. Overall, she sees the industry as dynamic and full of opportunity, with content remaining king.

FAQs

She always loved media, studied film and TV, and was inspired by a visit to Madison Avenue agencies. She started with a temp job at a digital ad tech startup and grew with the industry.

The rise of connected TV (CTV) is key, as it merges digital and linear TV. It allows data-driven targeting on smart TVs, unlike traditional broad-audience linear TV.

Many think programmatic inventory is remnant or lower quality, but it is premium and data-driven. The power of big-screen ads with precise targeting is often underused.

It is more dynamic, data-informed, and flexible—no minimum budgets, precise targeting, and the ability to adjust messaging per audience. Traditional TV was broad, expensive, and inflexible.

Hyper-local targeting using first-party data, like advertising a delivery service only when it's raining in a specific area. This shows immediate results and allows quick adjustments.

Not necessarily—linear TV still offers shared national moments like live sports. Both will coexist, with streaming offering data-driven ads and linear providing mass reach for big events.

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