A Few Industry Predictions for 2022

2021 was a year unlike any other for the ad tech industry. From continued growth across the CTV sector, to Google delaying its deprecation of third-party cookies, and the frenzy of M&A action, the year was full of change at every turn. 

As we begin 2022, Magnite experts shed some light on what they believe is in store for the industry in the upcoming year. Their predictions range from increased publisher consolidation transforming media companies to how the continued shift of viewing from linear to CTV and OTT will see advertisers increasingly adopt programmatic. 

Kyle Benn 
VP, Mid Market Demand Facilitation

CTV is democratizing TV buying by opening up the possibility of premium video advertising to first-time TV advertisers. In the coming year, I predict that we will see more local and regional advertisers enter the CTV buying space as more education bridges the gap between linear and digital TV buying. Both a cause and effect of greater interest and investment in CTV will be more innovation around digital attribution, driven by performance marketers.

Heather Carver 
SVP, Account Management

Buzzfeed’s IPO will mark the beginning of a new wave of deal-making and consolidation among publishers. This will enable media companies to grow and retain more control over their valuable content and first party data, the latter of which will play a bigger role in advertising’s future as third party cookies are set to retire. Stronger publishers will be able to more effectively wrest power away from the walled gardens which is a win for the open internet. 

Mike Evans
SVP, Demand Facilitation

As TV viewing continues to shift from linear to CTV and OTT, advertisers are leaning into programmatic to execute these buys. Heading into 2022, I expect programmatic guaranteed and private marketplace deals to increase in popularity. These deal types ensure that 1-to-1 relationships still remain integral to the buying process but bring the efficiency benefits of programmatic.

Gareth Glaser
Senior Director, Product Management

Prebid will become the centralization point for all programmatic publisher advertising technology. Having an open source framework that allows publishers to interoperate an ever increasing number of software solutions in a fair controlled way will prove invaluable to publishers going forward, especially as ad tech continues to evolve.

Matt McLeggon
SVP, Advanced Solutions

In the CTV ecosystem, the majority of programmatic bids are returned to the primary ad server today via a VAST response. By the end of 2022 I expect most programmatic bids to arrive at the ad server through oRTB and other advanced integrations. This transformative development will unify decisioning across programmatic and traditional direct, unlocking increased efficiency and revenue, easing competitive separation and PG execution, and accelerating the overall migration of CTV to programmatic.

On the advanced TV front, I expect next year will be marked by a significant uptick in growth of programmatic in the linear addressable space. This growth will be driven by a sharp increase in the number of SmartTVs adopting “glass-level” addressable technologies, MVPDs making technological advances to their STB footprints, and the overall growth of “programmer addressable.”

Ashley Wheeler
VP, Seller Accounts

Even though Google granted the third party cookie a stay of execution this year, publishers and ad tech companies alike will continue the work they have started to find viable solutions for audience and identity in preparation for the eventual loss of third party cookies. One of the most promising solutions for a cookieless future lies in publisher first party data, and in 2022 I believe we will see an increase in its value to buyers. While the true value in pub first party data as a replacement to the third party cookie lies in its ability to scale to the open marketplace, in the near term, I think buyers will start to increase their reliance on publisher first party data and publishers will lean into first party data as a key point of differentiation to drive revenue from the open marketplace into private marketplaces.

Kristen Williams
SVP, Strategic Partnerships

The future of data collaboration will rely on secure, data matching services that can allow agnostic collaboration and not require data to be moved. There won’t be one solution that will provide the answers to all of the industry’s identity needs so tools will need to be able to reach across service providers. From the view of an SSP, media owners and publishers are reimagining how to transact with evolving privacy regulation. Many are finding they can find the balance to still meet marketer needs by decisioning on audience and contextual data in their own environment. There are a lot of decisions that need to be made on the supply side and the coming year will be the time to lay the groundwork to address the gaps in our industry’s data and identity framework.