Last month, we spoke with Mediaocean CEO Bill Wise on his company’s acquisition growth and the opportunities that the company’s owner Vista Partners, has brought. We have republished that interview with today’s news.
Here is our original report on my conversation with Bill Wise for our series on innovation and value creation.
Entrepreneurs benefit when they work with investors at every stage of growth from startup to expansion and diversification. As co-founder and chief executive of advertising software company Mediaocean, Bill Wise has been through steps that have included being acquired by a private equity firm and buying other companies worldwide.
“It’s not a sprint. It’s also not a marathon. It’s a relay race,” he said in this interview with Beet.TV. “You need to know when to hand the baton off, and that’s through every facet of the company.”
Despite the negative effects of the pandemic on the global economy, businesses have many ways to find venture capital. Those sources can include technology entrepreneurs who want to diversify their wealth by investing in promising startups.
“People always say the best time to start companies is in a recession or a downturn,” Wise said. “So, it’s going to be really interesting in the next 12 months how many new startups we see coming out of this.”
Mediaocean has weighed different sources of financing throughout its growth, including the sale to private-equity firm Vista Equity Partners in 2015. At that time, the private-equity market was stronger than the public markets, and Mediaocean had more room to growth before considering an initial public offering (IPO) of stock.
“For us, we needed that next phase of maturation before exploring the IPO markets,” he said. “Who you partner with really matters.”
Mediaocean, whose roots go back to the 1960s with Donovan Systems, has been aggressive about buying software companies that Wise once described as “mini Mediaoceans” in other markets. The acquisitions include MBS and Symsys to expand into Europe, and PIN Systems and BCC AdSystems to push into the Asia-Pacific region.
When investing in startups, Wise said he looks for entrepreneurs who are passionate about their businesses and who are willing to change strategies as the market demands.
“I look for that fire in the eye,” he said. “I look for something that’s passion-based.”
A combination of stimulus funding and low interest rates is pushing equity markets to new highs and making stocks expensive compared with their profits. A handful of tech stocks are driving the overall market.
“There’s a sense of irrationality around technology,” Wise said. “Luckily for us in this space, advertising has become a technology-driven business and a software-drive business.”
The rich valuations of adtech companies is giving them more currency for acquisitions. Wise sees a need for a diverse advertising market outside of walled gardens in search, social media and e-commerce.
“We believe the industry needs a neutral and independent operating system,” he said. “There’s too much buy-side technology being driven by Big Tech. Google, Facebook and Amazon are the world’s largest sellers of media. They control too much of the buy-side ad-tech.”
Mediaocean last year acquired 4C Insights to expand into audience analytics and planning, and Wise said he is shopping for other deal targets.
“We think we can continue to consolidate to have a much more holistic offering across every single media type, every single market around the globe,” he said.
You are watching “Innovation, Leadership, and Value Creation: Strategies Explored,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Progress Partners. For more videos, please visit this page.
]]>With the acquisition of 4C last year, Mediaocean has become a cross platform player, expanding beyond its roots to planning, optimization and measurement.
These are some of the conversations in this podcast with Mediaocean CEO Bill Wise and guest host Matt Spiegel, EVP of Transunion and head of its fast growing media vertical.
Bill and Matt take a deep dive around the challenges of interoperability among digital platforms and TV, measurement vs. currency, the needs for identity, and the right balance between efficiency versus price. Lots covered here.
Thanks Matt and Bill. Great conversation.
Please subscribe to the #BeetCast on your favorite podcast service. The BeetCast is sponsored by Tru Optik, a Transunion company.
]]>With the financial backing of private-equity firm Vista Equity Partners, Mediaocean has pushed forward with the acquisition of almost a dozen companies to expand its range of services and grow its global footprint from five countries to 80 markets in the past five years.
For Bill Wise, CEO of Mediaocean, the TV advertising market is ripe for software solutions that help to see a more holistic perspective of platforms and regions.
Mediaocean provides automated buying and selling of advertising inventory. Its roots go back in the 1960’s with Donovan Systems which became Mediaocean in 2012.
“Marketers are acting more global — they want to have a 360-degree view of their audience, prospects and customers,” he said in an interview with Beet.TV. “In a lot of cases, we see a global marketer may have 12, 13 or 14 agencies across the globe. One of the consistencies in most of the major markets is Mediaocean.”
Advertisers, agencies, media channels and other companies for years have used its software to keep records of media buying and selling, and to handle back-office functions like invoicing and payments. As TV convergences with digital media platforms, Mediaocean saw an opportunity to expand.
The company last month acquired marketing technology firm 4C Insights, whose focus is on audience data, media planning and analytics for streaming video and social networks. Streaming platforms like Hulu, Pluto TV, Peacock and Tubi are seeking a bigger slice of ad market, while social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat have added more video programming to attract more media dollars from major advertisers.
“We’ve seen a lot of solutions that are tailored to the buy side, and we’ve seen solutions tailored to the sell side,” Wise said, “but in terms of connecting those two and making it a much more seamless process, not a lot of companies are focused on that as it pertains to TV.”
In addition to the acquisition of 4C, the company has been aggressive about buying software companies that Wise describes as “mini Mediaoceans” in other markets. The acquisitions include MBS and Symsys to expand into Europe, and PIN Systems and BCC AdSystems to push into the Asia-Pacific region.
]]>That may or may not be true, depending on your persuasion. But a 2018 intervention by new blockchain technology could at least improve the quality of agencies’ lives in the foreseeable future.
That was the hope of one big-brand marketer, excited about the prospect for how the infrastructure which underpins crypto-currency could bring a step-change in transparency to the advertising business, speaking on a panel convened by Beet.TV.
The panelists were all members of “a blockchain consortium for the digital media supply chain”, announced by IBM and Mediaocean at the Cannes Lions festival:
The theory goes that a blockchain – in this case, one powered by IBM’s existing open-source Hyperledger infrastructure and plugged in to technology from Mediaocean, which processes $140 billion dollars of ad spend on an annual basis – should enable traceability for how every fraction of a cent gets decided, apportioned and siphoned off in the ad supply chain. Pfizer and Kellogg are also members of the consortium.
Kimberly-Clark global director of integrated marketing, media, and analytics Josh Herman:
“My expectation is that it will be a quality of life improvement. The ease with which you can defend the spend improves your quality of life. The extent to which you have confidence about the numbers that you’re putting in front of the meeting to make actual business decision, improves your quality of life.”
Mediaocean CEO Bill Wise:
“A lot of companies who have fraud running through their businesses. I think we all, as an ecosystem, want to clean that up.
“Our agency partners who are forward-leaning and run transparent businesses are pushing for this. They also want to be involved. We announced the marketers (first) because, at the end of the day, it’s your guys’ money, but the ad agencies are going to also be big participants in the pilot as well and we’re working very collaboratively with them.”
Unilever global media VP Rob Master:
“We spend so much time now around the reconciliation, around massaging the data, trying to track down the data, waiting for things to come in before we can actually spend our full amount of money.
“(Blockchain) allows us to actually spend more time thinking about the consumer.”
IBM executive partner for global marketing for IBM’s iX division Babs Rangaiah:
“We think about this initiative, in baseball terms, as the very first inning. We want to be able to show transparency of the money. The second piece is the speed of reconciliation. Lastly, if we can show any amount of improvement in that percentage of money that gets (ad-)taxed … I think that would be considered a great success.”
This video is part of a series produced at Cannes Lions 2018 on the emergence of blockchain in the media ecosystem. This series is presented by Mediaocean. For more videos from the series, visit this page.
]]>But a panel of industry executives convened by Beet.TV debated how blockchain technology could usher in a new era of transparency that could unblock this bottleneck.
The panelists were all members of “a blockchain consortium for the digital media supply chain”, announced by IBM and Mediaocean at the Cannes Lions festival:
A blockchain is a public, distributed, anonymised ledger of transactions that is supremely trackable and traceable. It is the technology that underpins digital currencies like Bitcoin – but, in theory, those “transactions” don’t have to be monetary.
Pfizer and Kellogg are also members of what IBM calls a “consortium”. Details of how that group will operate are not clear, but the theory goes that a blockchain – in this case, one powered by IBM’s existing open-source Hyperledger infrastructure and plugged in to technology from Mediaocean, which mediates trades between buyers and sellers – should enable traceability for how every fraction of a cent gets decided, apportioned and siphoned off in the ad supply chain.
Moderating, Forrester VP and principal analyst Joanna O’Connell said the analyst firm estimated fraud and non-viewable impression wastage at $7.4 billion in 2016, projected to rise. She asked the panel how blockchain will benefit…
Unilever global media VP Rob Master:
“There is a lot of darkness and the lack of transparency and accountability. Are we serving (ads) to actual human beings and not bots? Are people actually able to see our advertising?
“This MVP (minimum viable product) with IBM and the promise of blockchain – actually, really at an exponential pace – scale the opportunity to really clean things up and provide a much cleaner digital ecosystem.”
Kimberly-Clark global director of integrated marketing, media, and analytics Josh Herman|:
“There’s been a little opacity as the industry matured and grew up – (there are) logical reasons, as the CMO has to traipse across the Lumascape and figure out how to put the Lego blocks (of software) together. You can only have complexity as a result.
“As a company (like ours) that’s 145 years old, you only have the right to survive or thrive if you either invent transformational technology or identify transformational technology that will allow you continue evolving. And so blockchain is one of those transformational technologies”
Mediaocean CEO Bill Wise
“This blockchain solution is actually going to be across all media – TV, print, radio, out-of-home, all forms of digital – because all media eventually is going to be connected through an IP address. So the plumbing for linear or traditional media is going to look more like digital.
“We think that’s why this solution is not a Mediaocean solution or an IBM solution. It’s an industry solution that we all need to prosper.”
IBM executive partner for global marketing for IBM’s iX division Babs Rangaiah:
“The great thing about what blockchain will do and what transparency provides is, you can figure out who the good guys are and you can figure out who the bad guys are. What we’re doing is setting up the underlying technology to be able to allow everyone to know what’s going on.
“There’s always going to be new issues that arise with transparency. We will catch those issues as they arise, or shortly thereafter”
This video is part of a series produced at Cannes Lions 2018 on the emergence of blockchain in the media ecosystem. This series is presented by Mediaocean. For more videos from the series, visit this page.
]]>“It’s going to rise all tides,” says Wise.
However, some of the boats navigating those tides might be looking at rough waters ahead. “If your business is reliant on margins that are above market value or if there’s fraud being laced within your ad exchange or SSP, then obviously it will hurt your business,” he adds.
It’s okay for the margins of adtech companies to decline in a more efficient and transparent market if the end return outweighs that decline, according to Wise.
“So if your margin goes down ten or twenty or thirty percent but the business opportunity is ten to twenty X, that’s a tradeoff I think everyone would make and I think that’s the opportunity here.”
He cites three main goals of the blockchain consortium: more transparency, interoperability with other blockchain solutions and faster invoice reconciliation.
“A lot of marketers didn’t know how much adtech tax, if you will, they were spending and how much was going to working media. And when they saw that in digital programmatic it can be as high as sixty to sixty five cents on the dollar, they were blown away. So the first thing we’re going to do is make all of that transparent, make the supply chain more transparent,” says Wise.
Interoperability with other blockchain solutions will yield improvements in supply chain management issues, plus problems like fraud and privacy.
As for reconciliation, “We’re going to be able to reconcile much quicker, which means the pipes are greased. We can pay quicker, we can invoice quicker.”
Wise calls the blockchain consortium the “natural evolution of Mediaocean,” whose systems handle some $140 billion in annual global ad spend. “It’s not about Mediaocean, it’s not about what happens to our business, it’s what happens to the industry,” he says.
This video is part of a series produced at Cannes Lions 2018 on the emergence of blockchain in the media ecosystem. This series is presented by Mediaocean. For more videos from the series, visit this page.
]]>In this video interview with Beet.TV, company CEO Bill Wise says Mediaocean will be making a blockchain announcement in the next few months, though initial activity in entered on discussions with potential partners.
Whilst blockchain is best known as the technology infrastructure which powers the likes of Bitcoin, over the last year businesses of all kinds have explored the potential it offers to record every action and modification in a distributed ledger.
For advertising buyers and sellers, who, over the last couple of years, have been plagued by the creeping realisation that much of their money is siphoned off by intermediary platforms without full disclosure, that could be mana from heaven – blockchain shine a spotlight on every fraction of a cent that might be taken by links in the chain.
“For every dollar a marketer spends, anywhere from 30, 40 cents is going to the end consumer or publisher, which means that there is 60, 70 cents going to the middle in ad-tech tax and data costs,” Wise says. “I do believe blockchain can help solve major issues as it relates to supply chain management, and transparency.”
So, what would a blockchain for ad-tech look like? Wise sees “an immutable, distributed ledger that starts with an agency getting authorization from their client to spend media on their behalf”. Then “all of that flow that goes through, and including the entire supply chain to the end publishers, and being able to measure all that”.
Several vendors out there have already gone to market with bold claims for blockchain in advertising. Mediaocean appears to be taken a cautious and consensual approach.
Wise is convinced: “We can provide that level of transparency by converting our databases into a block chain.” But he says: “We’re talking to a lot of partners right now. We have a working demo. We’re talking to major marketers and their agencies about creating a consortium pilot, which we’re really excited about.”
This video was produced at the Advanced Advertising Summit in New York. Please find more videos on this page from the Beet.TV series presented by 4C.
]]>“If all we do as an industry is make television look like digital programmatic today and the mess of the supply chain that exists out there, then we will fail,” says Mediaocean CEO Bill Wise. “We need to keep the economics of TV today and leverage the targeting and the data available for digital but we need to do it efficiently.”
Wise sees convergence “as not necessarily a buying problem but a planning and measurement problem” that it has sought to help remedy with internal solutions and partnerships with 4C Insights, VideoAmp and TubeMogul, among others, he explains in this interview with Beet.TV.
Since Mediaocean’s sale in August 2015 to a private equity company, it has made six acquisitions, expanded globally and expanded its customer base, 90% of which had been agencies. It now deals directly with CMO’s on a planning workflow solution called Lumina and with TV broadcasters and publishers through Prisma for Sellers.
“Planning and buying need to come together and buying and selling need to come together,” says Wise.
He notes that 4C has done “an amazing job of creating platforms” to plan, buy, measure and optimize all in one system, through advanced data, artificial intelligence and machine learning.
“The tricky part is being able to respect what makes TV the most efficient media marketplace in the world today and it continues to be. While moving it into the digital future.” Wise thinks the next few years are going to be “very interesting to watch” in the measurement space.
“I think Nielsen has done a really, really good job of expanding their datasets to be more relevant in the digital age,” Wise says, adding that comScore “has actually created a nice, viable alternative.”
Others will follow as MVPD’s “are leaning into platforms like 4C and VideoAmp and potentially TubeMogul” to leverage set-top box viewing data “and what we’re seeing is the market is almost open to there being another player in that space.”
Then there is Oracle with its acquisitions of Datalogix and Moat. “We will evolve as the industry evolves,” Wise says.
This video was produced at the Advanced Advertising Summit in New York. Please find more videos on this page from the Beet.TV series presented by 4C.
]]>But that threat to mobile could benefit another media, one ad tech exec reckons.
“It is incredible. Things like ad blocking, view ability and fraud – it feels like there’s going to be a step back, as it relates to digital display in mobile,” according to Mediaocean CEO Bill Wise.
“At the same time, video is exploding – there’s not enough good display for video. Those markets that look and feel more like TV will inherently benefit, because it’s not just around the direct response dollar, it’s around the brand dollars.”
Mediaocean’s Recent Sale
Mediaocean sold a majority stake to Vista this summer which valued the company at $720 million. Wise says the sale to Vista is all about finding a partner to accelerate growth.
“We’re going to get very aggressive in terms of acquisitions, we’re going to get very aggressive in terms of developing new products and overall market development, we’re going to hire a bunch of people as well,” he adds.
]]>But, asked if that was happening yet, agency ad-buying software platform Mediaocean’s CEO Bill Wise says: “They’re not converging. TV is vastly different from video, which looks and feels like ad tech infrastructure.”
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Wise refers to the difference between “auction-based modelling versus upfront markets”. But Wise reckons things will start to shift by next summer.
Mediaocean helps ad buyers plan, execute and analyze advertising on TV using software. In November, it announced integration with Videology that will make online video ad inventory amassed by Videology buyable by Mediaocean‘s customers within their existing Spectra dashboard.
Wise was interviewed for Beet.TV by Ashley J. Swartz, CEO and founder of Furious Corp, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Beet.TV coverage of CES 2015 is sponsored by Adobe Primetime. Find all our coverage here.
]]>The new platform comes on the heels of Mediaocean’s partnership earlier this year with Freewheel and AOL to integrate FreeWheel into Mediaocean’s systems, says Bill Wise, CEO of Mediaocean in an interview with Beet.TV. “TV Buyers who use our software can now access inventory through FreeWheel,” he explains.
Mediaocean is known for its reach in TV buying, and digital is the next phase of expansion, as well as a broader global reach. The company operates in six markets and is aiming for 20 in the next year, he says.
]]>