DSPs are building tools to bypass SSPs and SSPs are trying to cut out the buy side. It’s a dramatic tale, at least by ad tech standards.
But the real question in the noise is whether the technology improves advertising effectiveness, says Kara Puccinelli, chief customer officer at Nexxen, on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.
Point solutions are passé, but there’s a place in the supply chain for anything that provides value, and both DSPs and SSPs can provide value.
For example, a demand-side platform is better at helping control for reach and frequency, while an SSP contributes valuable insights on auction and pricing dynamics.
It’s not a bad thing for the lines to blur a little, says Puccinelli, who joined Nexxen in 2022 as part of Tremor International’s acquisition of TV-focused DSP Amobee, where she’d spent nearly 10 years in multiple executive roles, including as CCO.
“If we have technology that isn’t speaking on the same data layer [or] that doesn’t have the same identity solution connected,” she says, “then the whole benefit of having something be end-to-end goes away.”
Nexxen just so happens to position itself as an end-to-end platform. That’s simply the way forward, Puccinelli says – unifying buy-side tech, sell-side tech, data, AI and creative tools for better cross-channel advertising.
“The winners are the people that have the technology integrated,” she says.
Also in this episode: Nexxen’s big investments in AI for planning, activation, optimization and monetization; whether Chrome Privacy Sandbox testing was actually worth it; and Puccinelli’s love of adventure sports.
Plus: A quick trip down M&A memory lane to talk about all the different pieces that went into building Nexxen over the better part of a decade. (Remember Taptica and Unruly?)
