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The Big Story: Must CTV

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The transformation of the way TV advertising is transacted will be a major theme in 2021.

Everyone – both buy- and sell-sides – seems to be talking about addressability these days. Traditional broadcasters have reorganized around streaming and TV-related acquisitions have accelerated – one of the most notable being Roku’s $150 million acquisition of dataxu.

This week on The Big Story, the AdExchanger team welcomes Mike Baker, co-founder and former CEO of dataxu. Recently, Baker wrote a column about why ad dollars haven’t followed the surge in CTV viewing.

In a wide-ranging podcast discussion, he digs into the issues of transparency plaguing ad buyers hoping to invest in CTV. We also dive into other user experience challenges that stakeholders need to iron out, from managing ad loads to dealing with repetition.

We’ll also look at the way TV is changing as a whole. The broadcasters might want to organize around streaming, but how are they actually doing? Are the agency ad buyers following suit? And how can advertisers navigate an increasingly fragmented landscape, one populated with app owners, content owners and device manufacturers?

And of course, Baker gives his 15 billion cents (that’s the dataxu price) on all the TV-related M&A activity over the past few years. Has it reached its peak? And who else might be a tantalizing buy?

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