Laying The Tracks For TV’s Future: Bill Wise On The Rise Of Mediaocean + Innovid

The deal that brought Mediaocean and Innovid together was one of the biggest stories in ad tech last year. The two companies had complementary technologies and sizable market share. We sat down with CEO Bill Wise to get a better understanding of the thinking behind the acquisition, which was finalized this week, what the industry can expect and why a house of brands is better than a branded house. (And why both beat being a house brand.)

ALAN WOLK (AW): Why did Mediaocean acquire Innovid? What did they bring to the table?

BILL WISE (BW): A few things. For a long time, startups had the advantage in ad tech. You could be small, nimble, solve a specific pain point. But now that the big brands are leaning into ad tech, scale matters.

When you look at ad serving, there were three major players: Google, Innovid, and Flashtalking. Google, obviously, has the vast majority of the market. Innovid and Flashtalking were about the same size, but both were subscale. So now, by combining them, we have a real number two with double the scale.

More importantly, they actually fit together really well. Innovid was all about video and CTV. Flashtalking was stronger in dynamic creative and personalization, more focused on the open web and social. We were fierce competitors, but when you put the products side by side, they complement each other. Now, we have one platform that covers everything—CTV, web, social, personalization, measurement, and ad serving.

The other big thing? The two fastest-growing areas in ad tech are CTV and retail media. This deal gives us a dominant position in CTV, and that’s huge.

AW: Do you have names picked out yet?

BW: Mediaocean stays as the parent company. But we’re rebranding our core ad infrastructure business as Prisma, and the combined ad tech business—Flashtalking, Innovid, 4C, and our other acquisitions—will now be Innovid.

We were in a great spot because both Innovid and Flashtalking actually meant something to people. Innovid was better known for CTV. Flashtalking was stronger in creative. But at the end of the day, Innovid had the edge because they were public, had brand equity, and were literally synonymous with CTV.

AW: So we can expect to continue to see water-based puns as far as Mediaocean is concerned?

BW: Definitely.

AW: I get Innovid, but why rebrand Mediaocean’s infrastructure business as Prisma?

BW: Too many people just called the ad infrastructure side “Mediaocean,” and we wanted to be clearer. Mediaocean now has three business units: Prisma for ad infrastructure, Protected for brand safety, and Innovid for ad tech.

You can either be a branded house or a house of brands, and we decided to be a house of brands. Prisma was already our digital product, and now that we’re rebuilding all of linear into it, it made sense to call that entire side of the business Prisma.

AW: Now that Flashtalking and Innovid are under one roof, what changes should advertisers and agencies expect?

BW: We’re combining the best of both.

Flashtalking had the strongest personalization platform, no question. Innovid built a great DCO (Dynamic Creative Optimization) business for CTV. We’re keeping the core of Flashtalking’s personalization engine and layering in Innovid’s CTV expertise. So instead of two separate platforms, we’re building a single system that covers all digital screens—CTV, web, social, everything.

This also ties into ad serving. Nobody wakes up and says, “You know what I feel like doing today? Replacing my ad server.” It’s not on the first page of priorities. Maybe not even the second. But long-term, it’s critical.

I always say, it’s like laying railroad tracks. Once they’re down, they stay there for a long time. And what runs on those tracks? Everything—personalization, dynamic creative, measurement, supply path optimization. You get that infrastructure right, and everything else gets better. That’s what we’re doing.

AW: What advantages does this give you over Google?

BW: Google’s whole business is about making their inventory more valuable. They’re the world’s biggest seller of media. And then, at the same time, they help publishers optimize their yield—which means they’re basically competing with the advertisers they claim to serve. That’s what the DOJ is looking at right now.

And it all starts with the ad server. If Google could move everything into DV360 and kill off third-party ad serving, they would. That’s why they bundle it with Google Cloud, throw in some free credits, and push people toward their ecosystem.

But here’s the thing—once you’re locked in, you’re playing by their rules. And their incentives? They’re not aligned with advertisers. They’re aligned with Google.

Our advantage is simple—we don’t own media. We’re not trying to optimize yield for publishers. We’re here to make advertisers and agencies more effective.

And honestly, our products are just better. We provide more data. We give advertisers more transparency. Our dynamic creative is leagues ahead of theirs. We’re more efficient. And in most cases, we’re cheaper.

Google is the easy button. I get that. But if you’re still giving them all your business, you’re either not thinking long-term or you’re just being lazy.

AW: How soon until clients start seeing changes?

BW: We’re already rolling things out. The transition to the fully combined platform will happen over the next year, but clients don’t have to wait for benefits.

Flashtalking clients are getting access to Innovid’s XP measurement suite almost immediately, including Harmony, which covers reach, frequency, and supply path optimization. Innovid clients are getting access to Flashtalking’s social buying platform.

And we’re not just merging tech—we’re making it easier to use. Innovid clients are getting better DCO. Flashtalking clients are getting deeper CTV capabilities. That’s happening now.

AW: How does this acquisition fit into Mediaocean’s long-term vision?

BW: Even before this deal, Prisma was where ad budgets started. About $170 billion in media flows through it today.

Agencies and brands have a ton of platforms to work with. Prisma connects directly to Facebook, The Trade Desk, and all the big players, pulling everything back into a single system. We’ve always taken a partnership approach to bringing the industry together.

But there are things we needed to own—because doing them ourselves makes everything more efficient.

Now, Prisma integrates best-in-class ad serving, which was Flashtalking and is now Innovid. We layer in DCO. Protected enhances brand safety and verification. And we do it all at a lower cost than the incumbents—including Google.

Nobody thinks about plumbing and electricity—until they stop working. We provide the infrastructure that makes digital advertising actually function. That’s what this deal is about.