Programmatic Tech Bytes with David Kashak, Founder and CEO of Connatix

Last week, we covered the launch of Connatix Programmatic Syndication, the first-of-its-kind programmatic solution in the market. Yes, we mentioned that the new solution will provide an end-to-end audience extension for publishers, giving them the ability to scale their programmatic video monetization by distributing content and programmatic demand as a package across Connatix’ brand safe network.

To know what the company has in store for the programmatic space, we interviewed David Kashak, Founder and CEO of Connatix.

MTS: How deep are you into programmatic? How do you see ad tech changing/evolving further as the programmatic market grows?

David Kashak (David): Connatix is 100% focused on serving publishers, as one of their greatest pain points is achieving scale to deliver on programmatic campaigns and meet agency expectations. To fully exploit programmatic demand, it’s critical that publishers are able to find their audiences off site without paying for unnecessary impressions. We were first to market with an end-to-end audience extension product for distributing video content and programmatic demand as a package across Connatix’s brand-safe network.

MTS: Which industry in digital media, according to you, benefits most from programmatic technology?

David: Up until recently, programmatic technology seemed to benefit the advertiser far more than the publisher. This is because the creators of premium video content were treated as equals by the advertiser to the creators of lower-quality video and sometimes even unsavory-video content. Now, publishers who produce quality content can provide buyers with a brand-safe environment to bid on programmatically and are rewarded with higher CPMs.

MTS: On a scale of 1-10, how much value would you attribute to data science in Native Programmatic?

David: The science itself is in ad-decisioning*. Using our yield-optimization algorithm, publishers can get the most out of their programmatic demand, prioritizing demand partners with higher fill rate and better eCPMs.

(Editor’s insert- So, we essentially have a 10/10 score for data science’s involvement in Native Programmatic based on ad decisioning)

MTS: When you talk of improved web and mobile video viewability, what are the factors you consider to make programmatic work effectively?

David: Viewability and player size are two main factors for programmatic buying, while other KPIs like completion rate, click-through rate, etc. are also important to other buyers.

In order to maximize their revenue, publishers must package different segments of their inventory to meet these KPIs. Connatix’s technology utilizes a machine learning algorithm to automatically optimize inventory and yield.

MTS: What is the kind of expectation you have from SSPs and programmatic Ad Exchanges to justify your innovation?

David: Our innovation is driven by the needs of our publishing partners. Mashable, for example, has used us to syndicate their direct sold video campaigns. We then heard from similar publishers about their need to syndicate their programmatic campaigns. And, since programmatic tags respond as little as 10 percent of the time, until now, there was no way for a publisher to fulfill the campaign without buying 100 percent of the impressions.

MTS: How is mobile marketing changing with video formats?

David: Marketers understand that as audiences consume more video content on mobile devices, they must also find a way to engage those audiences with sound and motion. The experience on mobile is different because the screen is smaller, and most of the time users are viewing videos with no sound and their attention spans are very short. To boost performance, marketers need to adapt to the experience by creating shorter video formats using engaging visuals and experiment with vertical video formats.

MTS: Investments into video formats are still negligible compared to other martech categories. What is the one thing you would say about videos that CMOs should listen-heed-and-buy?

David: Facebook is already eating into TV-ad budgets, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

MTS: Location-based analytics and people-based marketing are critical to the adoption of programmatic. How do you see stack analytics boosting mobile targeting and retargeting in 2017?

David: The goal is to deliver the right content, to the right audience, at the right moment. That requires constant ingesting, analyzing and acting on live-data streams.

MTS: Thank You, David, for answering our queries. Your programmatic tech bytes are informative and we hope to see you back on MarTech Series very soon.

Stay tuned for more on business insights on video ad tech, programmatic and header-bidding technology market.

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