FreeWheel; Tru Optik; TVision; Matthias Balk/picture alliance via Getty Images; Yutong Yuan/Business Insider
Execs from TVision, FreeWheel, Tru Optik, and Google are leading the charge into OTT
- A growing number of ad-tech companies are moving into over-the-top
advertising as ad dollars shift from TV to streaming video. - While ad-tech companies are clamoring to get a share of the OTT ad market that's coming from the $70 billion in TV advertising, not all ad-tech companies will actually be able to deliver.
- Business Insider polled a handful of ad buyers and compiled a list of 13 ad-tech companies that are at the forefront of shaping the future of OTT advertising.
More people are cutting the cord and advertisers clamoring to use data to target and measure video campaigns, but the $70 billion TV advertising industry has operated the same way it has for decades.
Ad-tech firms say that it's ripe for disruption, and a cottage industry of companies has sprung up to grab a piece of the revenue flowing to OTT advertising.
They're responding with everything from software firms that help brands analyze which programs they should advertise in to programmatic players that help publishers make money from OTT apps.
Like the sprawling number of ad-tech companies that rose to power ads on publishers' websites and mobile apps earlier, the rise in OTT ad tech companies specializing in OTT is one more challenge for marketers to navigate.
"If you had a Lumascape around OTT, it's endless in terms of the number of partners who have access to the inventory and the ad-tech that sits behind it," said Mike Law, executive vice president and managing director of US
One of ad buyers' biggest frustrations is that each ad-tech firm controls a small amount of the OTT ecosystem, making it hard to find the same scale of TV in OTT apps.
"We're very bullish on OTT overall, and we're looking for a couple of other additional scaled players to come to the market to be able to continue to move dollars in that direction," said David Cohen, president of North America at Magna Global. "One of the challenges with OTT is that it doesn't exist in a vacuum - you want to understand the trade-offs in moving from OTT to YouTube and Facebook. Trying to get someone that can create an apples-to-apples comparison is important."
Agencies often end up using multiple companies to tackle the same problem. For example, an agency may work with two or three tech firms to measure the impact of their ad spending because each firm's capabilities are different.
"The reality is that across all of these partners, it's a little bit of a patchwork quilt," said Lisa Giacosa, EVP and global managing director, head of data technology, analytics and insights at Spark Foundry.
Picking the top OTT ad-tech players
Business Insider talked to a handful of ad buyers to figure out which ad-tech companies are furthest ahead with OTT. We also talked to the companies themselves and looked at factors including their clients, reputation, and how much of their business is related to OTT.
It's a sign of OTT's infancy that several companies on this list work with both publishers and advertisers, which is unlike online advertising. The same company that helps publishers monetize their content might also find an advertiser to fill the ad space. That's because publishers and advertisers are still figuring out OTT, and the rules are still taking shape.
Roku and Hulu are known as platforms for distributing content but are on the list because they've each built their own ad-tech tools and stacks specifically for OTT.
There are also a few notable companies that we didn't include. Despite their massive clout in linear TV, Nielsen and Comscore are not on this list because digital measurement companies can gauge viewership at a more granular level than Nielsen and Comscore can, said an agency source.
Also missing is AT&T's advertising and analytics firm Xandr, which has bold ambitions to change TV and digital advertising but is too new to be considered a formidable player.
Below are the 13 ad-tech companies that stand to win the most in OTT, listed alphabetically.