Following a record year for mergers and acquisitions in the digital advertising and media space, \u201cthe volume is going to continue\u201d in 2017. That\u2019s the forecast from LUMA Partners Founder & CEO Terry Kawaja, whose advice for startups in the artificial and virtual reality space\u2014plus the Internet of things\u2014is don\u2019t be too early.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Beet.tv, Kawaja reflects on two significant deals in the convergent television space in 2016 and explains why he feels addressable linear TV should be getting more fanfare than programmatic TV.<\/p>\n

Adobe\u2019s<\/a> November agreement to purchase TubeMogul brought to the Adobe Marketing Cloud a one-stop shop for video advertising and represented the recognition that Adobe \u201cneeded to be in the activation space, while primarily focus on digital but moving towards linear TV,\u201d Kawaja observes.<\/p>\n

The second deal is one LUMA<\/a> had a hand in: the acquisition of INVIDI Technologies<\/a> by the consortium of AT&T, DISH and WPP Group. Kawaja says it will have \u201csignificant implications\u201d for the way TV is changing.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously AT&T is a new entrant buyer, which is always exciting,\u201d Kawaja says, adding that the consortium buy is \u201cparticularly smart\u201d because it ensures \u201cthat this particular technology would be widespread. I\u2019m sure they will have conversations with other folks in the ecosystem because INVIDI is an ecosystem wide play.\u201d<\/p>\n

While programmatic TV seems to spark more industry talk than addressable linear TV, Kawaja emphasizes the latter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason being you already have a linear infrastructure, a linear market,\u201d says Kawaja. \u201cAll you are doing with addressable is bringing additional data, targeting and precision to a bulk reach channel that already exists.\u201d With addressable, \u201cWe\u2019re simply taking set-top box data and being able to target this massive spend category on much more of an individual basis.\u201d<\/p>\n

As he looks ahead to CES 2017 in Las Vegas, Kawaja sees a \u201cwide swath of buyers\u201d in a variety of different categories, with both foreign and domestic players in such varied areas as data, media, TV and software. \u201cWe are seeing a maturation of this space, which is very healthy,\u201d Kawaja says. \u201cLet\u2019s not forget the massive amount of fragmentation<\/a> that exists in this space. It\u2019s not sustainable. That can\u2019t last.\u201d<\/p>\n

At CES, his focus will be less on emerging technology than on strategic meetings and discussions based on the technological innovations on display. With regard to AR, VR and the IOT, it\u2019s the early worm that often gets eaten.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a business standpoint, strategic standpoint, what I advise people is that being early has the same financial profile as being wrong. You don\u2019t want to be too early in terms of pursing deals in some of these nascent categories,\u201d Kawaja says.<\/p>\n

This interview is part of our series \u201cThe Road to CES,\u201d a lead-up series in advance of CES 2017. The series is presented by FreeWhe<\/a>el. Please find more videos from the series here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following a record year for mergers and acquisitions in the digital advertising and media space, \u201cthe volume is going to continue\u201d in 2017. That\u2019s the forecast from LUMA Partners Founder & CEO Terry Kawaja, whose advice for startups in the artificial and virtual reality space\u2014plus the Internet of things\u2014is don\u2019t be too early. In an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[]},"categories":[6006],"tags":[5286,3459,5267,4071,4227,4473,5989,6003,6046],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44108"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}