If you’re buying TV through a DSP and calling it a strategy, Tatari CRO Andy Schonfeld has some notes.
On this episode of AdExchanger’s Inside the Stack podcast, Schonfeld — who has spent seven years building Tatari’s revenue operation across 350 brands and 100-plus agencies — argues that programmatic is simply a tool, and not a TV media-buying strategy.
To make that point, Tatari put a billboard on the Palais at Cannes calling out DSPs at the industry’s largest gathering of the year. He says, “If you’re only accessing programmatic TV, CTV specifically, through a DSP, then you’re missing a big portion of the TV marketplace.”
The problem? A lot of what people think of as streaming inventory isn’t actually accessible through a DSP. When consumers cut the cord and watch live sports through Hulu Live, roughly 90% of that inventory is still sold as linear passthrough, direct to the networks.
“You need to be connected directly to the network — whether it’s CBS, Fox, Disney — to be able to reach my household when I’m watching those live sports,” he says.
That’s the gap Tatari’s Upstream technology is designed to close — automating direct IO buying with major networks, improving measurement and allocation using $8 billion in historical spend data, and cutting out the fees that holding-company audits are now surfacing.
Also in this episode, we discuss where programmatic actually makes sense (spoiler: right after the NBA Finals buzzer) and how AI is compressing a 40-minute media-planning process into one minute.
Plus, Schonfeld explains why the future of TV comes down to three words: direct, automation, and convergence.
