Magnite’s revenue grew 69% YoY to $82 million in Q4 2020. Not including its merger with Telaria, revenue grew
20% YoY.
The company will nearly double in size once the acquisition of SpotX closes in Q2. In Q4 2020, SpotX had $71.6 million in revenue.
Here are the seven highlights you need to know from Magnite’s earnings:
1. Agency supply path optimization deals are going deeper. Magnite is cutting big supply path optimization (SPO) deals with agencies (similar to what PubMatic touted in its earnings yesterday). Magnite expanded its work building out a trusted marketplace with Omnicom, said Magnite CEO Michael Barrett. With Havas, it’s working on a “meaningful media marketplace” that focuses on premium, curated and transparent inventory. “It’s a major priority for them in 2021,” Barrett said.
2. Magnite revenue will mostly come from CTV. Once the SpotX deal closes, Magnite’s revenue will be 65% CTV, transforming it into a video-first SSP. In its Q4, Magnite reported $15.3 million in CTV revenue.
3. Software products with different pricing models are growing. Magnite is beta testing a product that enables programmatic and reserved CTV inventory to compete with each other, dubbed Unified Decisioning, that will operate with a different pricing model. Demand Manager, which operates with a SaaS-like model, will double revenue in 2021, to a projected $8 million from $4 million in 2020.
4. Disney is staying on for another 18 months. Hulu had been one of Telaria’s marquee clients. Magnite renewed the deal for another 18 months, with an expanded remit. If an advertiser buys cross-platform with Disney, like on Hulu and ESPN, Magnite’s tech will make that cross-platform deal happen. “We’ve built some great software for them,” Barrett said.
5. Three identity solutions will dominate after IDFA and third-party cookies go away. Without third-party cookies or the IDFA, marketers will turn to publisher first-party data. And Magnite expects that it will be able to aggregate those segments from publishers and package them together, allowing marketers to buy publisher first-party data at scale. The other two solutions that will survive are open-source identifiers based on logged-in users, like those offered by The Trade Desk and LiveRamp, and the Privacy Sandbox, Barrett said.
6. No more take rate or ad spend details. As Rubicon Project, the company reported both ad spend and take rate every quarter – which it eventually dropped in favor of an annual ad spend disclosure, similar to what The Trade Desk does. Now it’s not reporting annual ad spend or take rate anymore. One reason is the complexity of its business as it rolls out products like Demand Manager. The other reason is “competitive sensitivity around take rates,” CFO David Day said.
In the past, Rubicon Project’s variable take rates got the company into hot water, forcing the company to eliminate buy-side fees back in 2017 as its competitors got into a price war, slashing rates. The ruckus caught the attention of marketers, who initiated their own discussions with SSPs – and has since prompted SPO deals where they ensure transparency and negotiate lower fees in exchange for consolidating spend with a partner like Magnite.
7. Magnite is done making big mergers and acquisitions. Further acquisitions will be “rounding out the edges” vs. “swinging for the fences,” Barrett told investors.
