Two great tastes that taste great together?
On Wednesday, Magnite announced plans to merge Magnite Streaming, its ad exchange and SSP, with SpringServe, its ad server and mediation platform, into a single unified product.
After a year or so in development, the combined SpringServe platform is about to go into another round of beta testing with Magnite clients and will be available for general audiences in early to midsummer.
So far, those early clients include heavy CTV hitters like Disney Advertising, Roku, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, LG Ad Solutions and Samsung.
Fusing these two layers of Magnite’s business into a single entity will help to create a “more efficient supply chain” for CTV buyers and advertisers alike, Magnite President of Revenue Sean Buckley told AdExchanger.
(And we all know that an SSP works better when tied together with an ad server.)
You got your SSP in my ad server!
Although Magnite’s streaming business was previously broken up into two separate products, many customers have been asking for a combined version for quite some time, according to Buckley.
Magnite Streaming, its CTV SPP, was itself built from a combination of technology from the company’s previous Magnite CTV and SpotX offerings and was announced in early 2023 as a CTV and OTT monetization platform.
Meanwhile, SpringServe’s ad server tech was a “transformational acquisition” for Magnite back in 2021, said Buckley. More than 70% of Magnite’s customers were already using the ad server before the deal went through. Even publishers with other ad servers, like the in-house one that Disney launched in 2023, can use SpringServe’s ad mediation capabilities to manage their programmatic business.
“They might do certain things themselves, but we’re intertwined into that, and they use us for other things where it makes sense,” said Buckley.
Building a one-stop shop
Some of the potential benefits of consolidation are fairly straightforward – after all, logging into one platform inherently involves fewer steps than logging into two platforms.
Which isn’t to say that Magnite Streaming and SpringServe were completely siloed off from one another to begin with. Magnite had already developed some integrations that allowed information from one source to appear on another, for example.
Now, however, all the capabilities that were possible in both platforms will be available in a single user interface. “So, building the programmatic capabilities natively into the ad server and mediation layer allows folks to operate that way.”
Similarly, the unified SpringServe features a suite of tools focused on inventory sharing, which Buckley said is not something that typically comes to mind in discussions about SSPs or ad exchanges.
Moving forward, Buckley and his team are already thinking through what to integrate into the platform next, including tools related to purchase intelligence, forecasting and livestreaming.
But those offerings are still a few months off, he said. Right now, the focus is on getting this new generation of SpringServe off the ground and into clients’ workflows – which will hopefully be a little easier to manage as a result.
