A Chat with Zvika Netter, CEO and Co-Founder at AdTech Company: Innovid

We caught up with Zvika Netter, CEO and co-founder of Innovid, to discover his thoughts on the current state of converged TV measurement, what advertisers are demanding, and where the industry is headed.
 
 

 

What is your top-view assessment of the TV advertising landscape today?

 
Today’s TV experience is no longer bound by time, platforms, locations, or devices. And because of that, the global TV advertising industry has evolved faster in the past two years than it has in decades.

Major investments in content, the launch of numerous new services, and audience fragmentation have driven advertisers to adopt a more dynamic view of the TV universe called “converged TV” – what Innovid defines as linear, CTV, and digital video. Essentially, it’s all “TV.”

While this fragmentation brings challenges for advertisers, it also opens the door to more ways of reaching and engaging with audiences “where they are.” It’s forcing them to think differently about how they buy, measure, personalize, and optimize a much more diverse, cross-platform, dynamic video mix that reflects today’s always-on world.

There is innovation happening everyday … it’s a very exciting time for this industry.
 

In your conversations with advertisers, what do you find they expect from measurement providers today?

 
They expect a lot – as they should!

When it comes to measurement, there are a couple of things that are becoming table stakes for all advertisers.

They want a unified, consistent, cross-platform view of their converged TV campaigns to understand audience reach and the outcomes their ads are driving. And they want independent, transparent, and harmonized metrics that can be used to inform the video mix, which should be continuously adapted to align with the ever-changing ways audiences consume content, and continuously optimized for better reach and performance.
 

TVSquared was acquired by Innovid earlier this year. How has that changed Innovid’s place in the adtech market?

 
Fifteen years ago, I co-founded Innovid with the goal of helping advertisers “do more” with digital video – tell better stories, reach the right audiences, and prove its business value.

We did this in three ways. Our global ad serving platform, encompassing 1,000+ publisher integrations, is used by brands all over the world to deliver CTV and digital video ads. We serve more than 1 billion ads daily, the equivalent of 300 years of video content. Our portfolio of creative technologies also enable marketers to develop highly relevant and engaging ad experiences that are personalized and delivered to the right audiences. In fact, we were the first to file a patent for interactive video ad insertion. And, finally, we provided CTV measurement, offering the analytics to prove the impact of their creatives and campaigns.

But what we heard from our clients – including 40% of the top U.S. brands – was that they wanted to see the impact of their linear and CTV campaigns combined. That’s where TVSquared came in. They brought legacy linear data and outcomes-based measurement to the digital world. Together, we have the most comprehensive view of audiences and advertising available. We’re taking all that data and powering measurement that consistently counts, attributes, and analyzes reach and outcomes, at scale, across every platform.

Today, Innovid sits in a very unique spot in the adtech space because we bring together ad serving, creative personalization, and cross-platform measurement in one independent global platform.
 

The past few years have seen massive shifts in how TV ads are served and measured. What do you expect to see in the future?

 
The convergence of TV will continue to have a profound impact on every aspect of the advertising industry – from finding and reaching audiences across platforms and leveraging data-driven technologies for scale and personalization, to meeting demands for transparent measurement standards and adopting real-time optimization strategies for the video mix.

This is a fast-evolving space, so expect more fragmentation, more measurement, more ways to transact, more ways to engage with audiences in personalized and interactive ways.

For Innovid, we will continue to innovate across measurement, personalization, and delivery to help our advertisers meet modern TV viewers with relevant, impactful creatives wherever, however, and whenever they consume content.