Meet Bill Swanson, SVP of EMEA at Video Technology Company: Connatix

Connatix is a video technology company, at the forefront of content innovation benefitting both publishers and advertisers. We work with both the supply and demand side, over 500 publishers across 4,000 sites and 1,000+ advertisers worldwide, to help them deliver and monetize successful, engaging video experiences.

We offer a cutting-edge video player, optimization engine, and suite of turn-key video monetisation formats, to help publishers drive video revenue while delivering great user experiences.

Connatix was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in New York City. We currently have offices in New York City, Tel Aviv, Israel, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, London -UK, Miami, Florida, and Chicago, Illinois. My focus in my new role here will be to drive the company’s expansion in EMEA.
 

How did you decide to join the Connatix team?

 
I knew of Connatix from my background of working and running the EMEA operations for global SSPs, Connatix has historically worked very closely with all elements of the programmatic ecosystem so personally I have known Connatix for 5-6 years but from a certain distance.

However, when I looked deeper into Connatix’s recent history and how it has evolved as a business, it became very obvious that not only was Connatix offering a publisher solution, but also a buy side solution, and I felt that with its unique technology and significant partner investments, the company stood apart from its competitive set in many different ways. Plus, everyone on the team really seemed like they were fully committed to the journey and the company’s growth. I was excited that they wanted to build the business and scale internationally. It was honestly too good of an opportunity to turn down.
 
 

 

What do you think makes this company unique?

 
Every company is unique, but obviously it’s the people that make the business. After having spent ten days with the Connatix executives and the rest of the team in the New York office, I was impressed and inspired by everyone’s commitment to growing the company. I think Connatix is seen as a challenger brand in this rapidly changing industry, especially in EMEA where we currently have a smaller headcount and footprint, but it’s very exciting being in that position.

In addition to that, Connatix is set apart by its technology, perspective, platform, and the way we offer solutions to both the buy and the sell side, meaning that there are multiple conversations that we can have on many different levels. For example, not only can we speak to a publisher and their editorial and operations teams about how our technology can better help them produce and distribute content but also lead to greater content consumption and longer, more engaged user sessions, but we also can speak to their revenue or programmatic teams about how we can also help them grow revenue.

On the buy side, we’re showing how contextual targeting is critical as we prepare for a cookieless future. Our team has been able to build the most intuitive contextual solution on the market that captures consumers real-time interests and delivers unmatched contextual insights through our proprietary technology that combines deep learning, computer vision, and natural language processing for multi-layer content analysis. As we prepare for the demise of the third-party cookie, Deep Contextual will help advertisers align content, creative, and customer experience for better video outcomes.

I think that makes us pretty unique in terms of having offerings for both the buy and sell side, but also the multiple different discussions we can have with the various stakeholders within those businesses.
 

How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?

 
We started as a publisher focused business, selling technology solutions to publishers, but more and more we are focused on growing our advertiser footprint and putting solutions in place for the buy side. That being said, our publisher focus has not diminished in any way, we simply have more opportunities for our publisher clients based on the growing demand side presence and focus we have to ensure we connect both sides of the market.

We’re also looking to explore CTV, which will become more of a talking point and actual business proposition for 2023, again for both sides of the market. I would like to point out that we are not looking at CTV because it is a current buzzword and a space that everyone wants to get involved in, but because our client base is asking us to work on solutions that currently don’t exist – it is simply product evolution for an increasing market need. CTV is also an area that I personally have worked in over the last 3 years and am very excited about the possibilities for Connatix and our customers as this space continues to evolve and grow.

We have seen that our Deep Contextual offering provides a valuable solution to the marketplace and have made significant investments in it over the last year or so. We’ll continue to invest there over the next few years as market demand for contextual with video and CTV continues to grow and the ‘death of the cookie,’ in essence, forces the market to look at viable buying solutions that support brand goals.
 

What can we hope to see from Connatix in the future?

 
The conversation around contextual will become more important. We are also expanding in the UK and EMEA and expect to grow in other regions as well, the programmatic landscape is global and we will continue to build out our global footprint.
 

What are your goals for your new role?

 
I will be focused on growing our market share, both on the buy and sell side and diversifying new revenue streams outside of the current US footprint. Most importantly I want to ensure our growing team enjoys working at Connatix – we spend a vast percentage of our time at work (or remotely working) and we should have fun whilst doing so!