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On Monday, Tatari, a buy-side linear and connected TV ad platform specializing in performance-based measurement, announced its plans to buy CTV SSP TheViewPoint.
Tatari, with a buy-side offering, realized it needed an inroad to supply to better understand the inventory it’s building paths toward. Tatari declined to share the deal price.
A vast majority of connected TV media is controlled by the same 20-or-so networks, said Tatari CEO Philip Inghelbrecht. At least 95% of Tatari’s media buys transact through direct relationships with publishers.
Tatari acquired TheViewPoint to go after the remaining sliver of publisher inventory, but also to better automate the direct publisher paths that already exist. In short, Inghelbrecht said, the merger is a way to position the company “as close as possible to the supply side.”
Inghelbrecht said Tatari “courted” TheViewPoint for about six months, testing and operating its systems before making the “engagement” official. The SSP was attractive because its “squeaky clean tech” was purpose-built for CTV environments, he said, without any digital “baggage” that comes from retrofitting an SSP platform for CTV.
CTV-centric
TheViewPoint firmly believes an SSP built for digital and display houses many features that are “completely irrelevant” for CTV, including click-through rates, said TheViewPoint’s chief strategy officer, Daniel Elad.
CTV, an entirely separate ecosystem, needs “purpose-built” functions such as ad pod scheduling, server-side ad insertion (SSAI) and video ad-serving templates (VAST), he said. It’s why deploying digital tech to CTV environments is “not very intuitive.” Think of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
While many digital SSPs charge a percentage of media cost, TheViewPoint’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) model charges publishers a flat rate for every thousand impressions.
Programmatic SPO
Tatari and TheViewPoint view their combo as a form of supply-path optimization. It’s why Tatari CEO Inghelbrecht compares the move to The Trade Desk’s step toward SPO with OpenPath.
His logic is this: TheViewPoint’s inventory aggregation puts the buy side and the sell side “in the same room.”
This ad-network-like model appeals to publishers working with smaller clients that might lack competitive scale and/or CTV expertise, including DTC brands.
Tatari, for example, has made inroads with agencies entering the CTV space who lack “TV tech prowess” but want to offer scale to their clients, Inghelbrecht said. Building a path into TheViewPoint’s supply makes for an “incredible opportunity for growth,” he said.
Tatari tried the “build” approach before going for “buy” with TheViewPoint acquisition. Last summer, it rolled out “Cloud IOs” to automate the insertion order process by centralizing the workflow into a cloud software.
Now, Tatari plans to gradually pivot away from its current Cloud IO model. Tatari will integrate with all its publishers directly through TheViewPoint’s tech going forward.
This article has been edited.
