This Innovator Spotlight is an excerpt from our latest Special Report, FASTs Are The New Cable, Part 2: Advertising, which is a free download for now, thanks to sponsors like Magnite.

“The terminology around streaming can be very confusing because on the one hand people refer to ‘FAST channels’ which is a free linear stream that is delivered via a digital device, but then ‘FAST’ also refers to the services that aggregate all those linear streams as well as on-demand content,” notes Paige Bilins, Senior Vice President Product Management at Magnite.  “And now you have subscription services that also have linear and on demand. It can get confusing and that’s why we are still spending a lot of time educating the ecosystem about all the different types of streaming inventory.”

ALAN WOLK: What makes the inventory on FASTs so desirable for advertisers?

PAIGE BILINS: It's typically leanback premium content that creates a highly engaged experience. So the value is really around capturing that type of experience, which is unique to TV, and combining it with some of the best tactics from the digital world. You can, for instance, do all different kinds of targeting by taking advantage of all the data that’s available on streaming. That is something that simply is not yet available in linear.

ALAN WOLK: Is there a difference between how you serve up ads in an on demand versus a linear format?

PAIGE BILINS: From a technical perspective, serving ads into a stream, a simulcast, or even a live environment is very different from serving ads into an on demand environment. You need to build out a broad range of technical capabilities in order to do that well. So we have invested in technology that ensures that even hundreds of thousands of people can all start a stream at the exact same time and see the ads without any buffering—that’s going to be key as live sports moves to streaming. 

With on demand systems you never have those huge spikes in traffic, so you don’t get that tax on the entire technology infrastructure that you get in a live or simulcast environment.

ALAN WOLK: You are selling inventory across all types of FASTs. What advantage do you see from the OEM FASTS?
PB: The deterministic data they have from their ACR is a huge plus. They can tell you exactly who you're hitting and make sure that your targeting is extremely accurate and deterministic.

ALAN WOLK: What are some of the differences you are seeing in how brands make use of streaming?

PAIGE BILINS: Many big brands are looking to build brand awareness. It’s how they’ve used TV from a legacy perspective and they don’t think it’s a big deal if someone who is not in their exact target sees their ads—they’re still getting airtime and brand awareness with that person. One reason for that is because at another point, they might have a different offering where that person is indeed in the target demo. And they want that consumer to remember their name when they see that targeted offer. 

DTC brands typically have smaller budgets and they’re looking to reach people who are likely to make a purchase right away and so it’s a waste of money from their perspective to hit someone who is not in that demo because there’s little chance of converting them down the road. 

ALAN WOLK: One of the biggest differences between linear and the FASTs is that there is much more standardization on linear, especially around data and measurement. How is the industry dealing with this and how do you think it will shake out?

PAIGE BILINS: Standardization is a problem across the board in streaming. We don’t have a lot of infrastructure in place around context or measurement. So we do our best to try and support whatever the buyer and seller agree on, whether that's a particular data set or particular measurement vendor, and allow them to use whatever makes sense for the two of them. But the industry can’t support every ad tech vendor out there and I think we will see consolidation around a handful of trusted measurement and data vendors.

As for how Magnite handles it, we look to see which vendors perform the best based on the particular KPIs the advertiser is looking for. For instance if a buyer is looking for something very particular and scale is going to be a problem, we will try to curate an inventory package for them based on specific information we have that is unlikely to go out to the bidstream, to the DSP. That sort of experience and expertise is the advantage we bring.

ALAN WOLK: Transparency, or the lack thereof, is something we hear a lot about with streaming. Is that your experience as well?

PAIGE BILINS: I would say this is probably the number one issue that comes up when we get buyers and sellers in a room together. As a result, we’ve definitely gotten better at finding a solution that works for both parties, but it's an extremely complicated problem. 

I don't think it is just cherry picking, which is something you hear a lot, along with a fear that people will start reverse engineering audiences. If it was just cherry picking or reverse engineering, we could solve that with price. And you would hear advertisers say “I'm willing to pay, if you'll just tell me what I'm running on, and I see the value in it.”  

Unfortunately, it's much more complicated than that. There are privacy regulations that come to bear in terms of not being able to share particular information. There are carriage agreements between programmers and distributors that restrict certain data from being shared or being used, especially being shared downstream. For many programmers, especially the larger media conglomerates, they lack a comfort level  about sharing that information, they feel that it is a violation of the trust they have built with their viewers and they don’t want to feel like they're violating that trust.  

ALAN WOLK: So is there a way to get both buyers and sellers what they want in terms of transparency?

PAIGE BILINS: Brands just want to feel comfortable and safe about where their ads are running. It’s less about control than about a quality issue— is this the type of content they want their ads to run against?  As an industry, we have some steps to take before we're really really good at being able to layer on audience data to bring value to the sort of inventory that a brand might not otherwise buy, based on content alone. 

Fortunately, there are a lot of companies popping up to try to solve transparency problems and to make sure that brands feel comfortable and feel safe with where their ads are running.