Magnite, Inc. (MGNI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
September 4, 2024
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Omar Dessouky
analystOkay. Good morning, everybody. Omar Dessouky here. I am on the Internet team at Bank of America. I cover five ad tech names, AppLovin, Magnite, DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science and Digital Turbine. And I also cover Take2, Electronic Arts, and Playtech on the video game side, and we do a lot of video game work as well. I wanted to thank Jessica for the opportunity to have Mike and discuss Magnite with him at this conference.
Omar Dessouky
analystSo we are a buy on Magnite. We recently upgraded -- was it back in May?
Michael Barrett
executiveMay. Right.
Omar Dessouky
analystRight after the Netflix announcement. And we're going to talk a little bit about the structural opportunity for Magnite, for a lot of media investors who may not be familiar with this name. So Michael, what's the first thing investors should think of when they hear the name Magnite?
Michael Barrett
executiveSo thanks, Omar, for the opportunity. Ad tech can be complicated, as we've talked about before. And I think that one of the easiest ways we try to position Magna and I'll get into a little bit more details. But I think a lot of people are familiar with a company called the Trade Desk. And they're, by far, the leading demand-side platform in the advertising-tech-area, and they service advertisers who want to buy programmatically, and that's how they get paid. And we are the leading independent supply side platform, or SSP, and we work with publishers who want to take their inventory and sell it to someone like a Trade Desk or the marketers that are behind Trade Desk. We'd love to be their size. We'd love to put up the quarters, the success, they've had. But I think that the consolidation is just occurring a little bit later on the supply side, so on the publisher side. And I think we're incredibly well positioned to be that company for publishers. And what is that company. Well, we work with all the leading global media companies. We interchangeably use media companies, publisher, whatever you want to refer to folks in the -- that create content. And we work with them to help them monetize their websites, whether it's a mobile website, a desktop website. We work with them to monetize their podcast. We work with folks like CBS to monetize digital out-of-home billboards. But one of the areas that is probably most exciting about the Magnite story, and close to 50% of our revenue is, we work with all of the leading streaming players, whether they're new to the space or broadcasters that are adapting to the connected television space. And we are their programmatic partner of choice. So if you look at how early stages we are in the streaming -- consumers always outstrip that chase them. So eventually, the ad dollars flow to where the consumer is. But when consumers adopt new media like the Internet -- originally, it took 5, 6, 7 years for the Internet to get its fair share of the dollars. People were still advertising in newspapers, because that's what they're used to. Well, people are still advertising broadcast TV because that's what they're used to. It's always helped them sell Tide. Little by little though, their core audience is now streaming and very little of those dollars have flown -- have come over. So you're talking about a TANIC that is anywhere from $60 billion to $170 billion if you look at it globally. And these dollars have always been out of touch for the kind of digital ecosystem because they never flowed through Internet protocol. And now they are. And so I think that's the real excitement about the Magnite story is our position in connected television.
Omar Dessouky
analystGot it. So we're going to double-click on CTV because I think that's really where the investment thesis is on the stock. We upgraded the stock back in May. And increasingly, we've seen Magnite's name appear alongside dominant media companies like Disney and Netflix in business media. You've been public for around 10 years. What you explained, is that the reason why now is Magnite's moment to shine? Is it because this later consolidation and this later shift of consumer eyeballs and dollars into CTV?
Michael Barrett
executiveYes. I think that's true. I think we started as one of the very first SSPs in a predominantly desktop world, right? And we were the Rubicon Project. And then, right around 2020, we became quite aware of the importance of Connected Television. It was a build by partner scenario. We threw partner out because it's too strategic build, we felt it was going to take us too long. So we actually acquired a company called Talaria. And right after we finished that, and right at the start of the great COVID pandemic. Another company came on sale, SpotX that was owned by RTL, Bertelsmann. And we acquired that along with an ad serving company. And so part of this 10-year journey hasn't been this -- kind of same homogenous company, we really made a conscious effort to turn ourselves into this omnichannel but connected TV first player. And it takes a while to integrate that. It takes a while to polish your offering, taking it to market. And I think when you see something like a Netflix who had the opportunity 2 years ago to pick a programmatic partner and then hire a bunch of ad salespeople that have experience go through that process and say, you know what, I don't think we have the right partner, let's pick the right partner this time and pick Magnite, I think it's a validation for us and the whole industry that says that is a leader.
Omar Dessouky
analystYes, and definitely indicative of timing when you get such a big customer. So the BofA's Magnite investment thesis is really underpinned, and I can say this because we're representing our person -- our own views as BofA analyst. It's underpinned by premium CTV publishers and broadcasters going programmatic. So we at BofA estimate that somewhere around 80% of the ad spend through Magnite is premium publishers spending. And they pay a take rate of 5% to 6%, we think. Now, the other 20% is fast channels and, I think, some custom work that you do with a much higher take rate. Right? But can you talk a little bit about the value proposition? Why will programmatic auctions eventually become the dominant distribution channel for premium CTV inventory?
Michael Barrett
executiveYes. And auctions mean different things everyone right now. So auctions in the open web, right, is the idea that you sift through trillions of impressions to find that mom with young kids and then bid on that in an auction format where the publisher may or may not be aware of the type of ad that's going to run on their site, but they really don't care because they have so much inventory on their mobile website or their desktop website. It's always going to be quite different in connected television, especially with the premium players because you have finite inventory. Even though we have a surplus of inventory right now, that really is just more reflective of all of the major services having an ad tier all at the same time, all going to market at the same time during kind of a muted macro ad environment. And, as we talked about before, a slow shift from broadcast to streaming. So yes, we think that biddable is the only way the economics work on this. Because biddable means a couple of things. Number one, it means you're absolutely monetizing at the highest value. You're running an auction. And, ergo, if that impression is more valuable to someone who, let's say, they're selling a dog food and they know it's a dog food household, they're going to bid more than someone selling soda. And if you don't have that dynamic, you're always going to be stuck with this kind of legacy upfront where, I don't know, $35 sounds good CPM across the board. And so you have to -- you have to take that unit and split it up 100 different ways and having people bid on it so that I see a different ad in my room. In my study, you see a different ad in the family room because it's targeted to the user is targeted to their viewing behavior, and we are in so early stages right now that we're still doing the $35 CPM sounds good. Let's do it that way. So it's the only way it works because, obviously, the economics are quite different. No retrans fees. Those days are over, right? And so you have to stand on your own and the most popular tier by far is the lowest priced subscription tier with the most amount of ads for the consumer, and that doesn't look like it's going to change anytime soon. So if you don't start to emulate -- the media companies to start to emulate growth rates like tech companies, it's just not going to work economically. So I think it all points to that. Now, will it be the Wild West? What we're seeing a big increase in is invitation-only auctions. So, in other words, I'm Disney. I've known these 500 advertisers forever. I'm going to let 300 of them in an auction to go after this auction package that I've defined, which is moms of young kids that visit Disney World. It's obviously very appealing to a lot of folks, car manufacturers, diaper and [indiscernible] sales. So, in other words, they are invited to auction onto that audience segment. Disney knows the creative ahead of time. They know the advertisers ahead of time. And that's probably where you start to see it evolve quickly, and that is the invite-only auction area.
Omar Dessouky
analystI want to challenge you on this.
Michael Barrett
executiveOkay.
Omar Dessouky
analystOkay? So we're talking about price, I think, here. And I think when we did research, sole direct, and executed [indiscernible] is something like 50% of ad spend in the industry. Those are our estimates. So...
Michael Barrett
executiveI would say more.
Omar Dessouky
analystOkay. So you have a huge structural opportunity sitting in front of you if all of that moves to programmatic. But the industry has been doing it that way for a long time. And presumably, it's been economical. And it's in somebody's interest to do it that way.
Michael Barrett
executiveThe sellers.
Omar Dessouky
analystRight. Well, okay. So those sellers still need to move on board with this -- this other way of doing it. Why -- is the market efficient yet on the programmatic side? And do the market participants actually want an efficient market? Which is what is alluded to in an auction? Does an inefficient market through sole direct and executed [indiscernible] advantage to anybody that wants to kind of keep that advantage?
Michael Barrett
executiveYes. Advantage is buyers and buyers have a lot of power right now. So in other words, no one -- if you're the buyer, the big ad agency, you didn't like the upfront structure all that much. You felt as though it was pretty inefficient, kind of had a gun to your head if you needed to have -- launch a movie in Q4. Well, to get that inventory, you get it by this inventory and it's all at the same price. Targeting -- meh, maybe by show, but I won't even tell you the show. So the sellers had a huge advantage. I mean name another business where your audience is declining 20% a year and your CPMs are increasing 20% a year. I mean that's a great gig. I'd try to keep it going if I were them, too. But the simple fact is, if you looked at this year's upfronts, programmatic, programmatic, programmatic, programmatic and what buyers mean by programmatic is, hey, I want targeting. I have clients that are questioning the efficacy of broadcast advertising. I need to come to them and show them that this works and it delivers. And how can I do it by continually spraying and praying; and just hoping that, yes, GRPs is the way to do it as opposed to actually targeting specific households based upon their behavior. So there's this -- never let a recession spoil a way to gain leverage from a buy side. They were using this tremendously in the upfronts to say 50% of it has to be programmatic, and of that, we'll deal with 30% being targeted. But yes, there's a big sea change in terms of where the balance of power rest. And you have new players coming to market. And Amazon was never a player in the upfront, right? Netflix never a player in the upfront. They're coming to market with a whole different mindset. [indiscernible] participates in upfronts because you're going to be in sports, right? And that makes sense for an upfront, right, finite schedule, but they're crashing the party, and they're much more automated.
Omar Dessouky
analystAnd just to be clear, I do want to focus on kind of the most high-value content and the most high-value inventory. Is that what we're talking about when you make these comments?
Michael Barrett
executiveYes. I mean it's a little pejorative, right, because we always think of like the shows that we watch. Those beautifully produced $1.5 million episode shows. That's quality, everything else sucks. But the reality is, if you look at some of the best targeted inventory on the Internet right now, it's coming off of the glass. So in other words, the Samsungs, the LGs, the VIZIO, they have this ACR data that's awesome that they know exactly what the household is watching. So, if you are wanting to advertise certain something that appeals to action movie folks, they can give it to you that a publisher can't. So it goes at a lower CPM, but when you decorate ACR on media that might sell in the low teens, it jumps to $22/$24, that's starting to be premium. So it -- I think that we tend to not look at -- as plainly as this is premium, this is in premium. I think data is going to really help turn the tide on what you value as a marketer in targeting.
Omar Dessouky
analystIndeed. Okay. Well, thanks for that explanation. So let's then maybe use a baseball analogy and talk about adoption a little bit. What inning are we in, in this transition for, again, valuable content, whether it's extremely valuable, custom produced by the big publishers or not, is 2024 a tipping point?
Michael Barrett
executiveWell, I think that when you look back on it, any kind of e-market or 5-year estimate and you look in the middle of the 5 years, you look back and say, wow, we've already hit that number. So I think that we'll look back on 2024, we'll look back -- particularly on 2025, I feel, because of live. So all the major sports rates all have renewed, and they all include streaming as a core aspect of it, right? And that will be the story of 2025. When you look back in 2025, we're going to be like, "Oh, God, more inventory for streaming because right now, we do have a bit of surplus of inventory, but it's going to be the stuff that buyers have to have. And so they will shift over with it, as opposed to entertainment, where they're like, ah, kind of work share. They're still a core audience in broadcast. When the NHL can only be advertised through in streaming, I think it changes the advertiser behavior and it disrupts everything. So I would say as you exit 2025, because of the tip of the spear live, you'll look at that as the turning point.
Omar Dessouky
analystIndeed, indeed. Good point. Could you explain the significance of the Netflix partnership? You talked about it a little bit, but maybe go into more detail, explain the significance of the Netflix partnership as an indicator of the industry stage of adoption?
Michael Barrett
executiveYes. Well, 2 years ago, maybe 2.5 years ago, Netflix was a gold model for a streaming service. It still is today. Don't get me wrong. But no ads ever, high price to the consumer so they can avoid ads and growing up into the rate. And if you recall, that's how Disney launched. That's how -- that's how Peacock initially launched, trying to emulate the Netflix model. Quickly, they realized that -- and even Netflix realized that in order to really make it work and grow globally, you're going to have to have an alternative to $17, $19, $20 a month, no ads. And so, in a very fast period of time, the ad tier became the workhorse. And so I think that, that, to me, represents the biggest change, period, that if we were still debating the efficacy of ads versus no ads, I think we'd be in a pretty tough spot. But now it's across the board that everyone agrees that the biggest ARPU that you're going to get is the lowest possible price for the subscriber with as much ads as possible. HULU has proven that, and they've been at it since 2007. And so I think that Netflix picking a Magnite in a very thoughtful, deliberate kind of RFP process, kind of validates what we've said all along and that is we were quite differentiated that because of owning an ad server because of owning a streaming platform and because we have a very strong demand facilitation team that calls on agencies, DSPs, et cetera, and global. We're in every big major market that if someone like a Netflix wanted to go from 0 to 60, globally, 13 markets we're launching in. There aren't a lot of choices out there, and we found that it kind of validated our premise. And it also helped our other customers who reset to us and said, how do you win the business. We walked them through that Netflix is taking a little bit of this, a little bit of that -- a little bit of this. We're approaching it very modular because we know that each company wants slightly different. I think it opened up a lot of eyeballs that they're like, wait a second, I just don't have to use your full ad server; I can use components of it. And so I think that, that modularity approach is going to be the story for us in the years to come that people can work with us, all size and shapes, because they don't have to take all of it. Where some of our competitors are take it or leave it. It can't be broken up. We're kind of built to available to service different tiers of clients.
Omar Dessouky
analystGot it. And of course, we saw all this coming in 2020 when you bought all those companies.
Michael Barrett
executiveYes. [indiscernible] the pandemic. No. Yes. No, the idea was -- the SpotX was the interesting one because we thought we had enough with Telaria to be able to make a go of it, but when SpotX came on the market, we're like, wow, that would be game changing as well.
Omar Dessouky
analystCool. Well, so just, again, telling the audience where we at BofA are with our forecast, we really have Netflix ad spending ramping in the second half of 2025. Again, that's BofA estimates. The company has made its own statements about that. Just quickly, like what are the implications for other premium publishers use of programmatics -- programmatic given Netflix's announcements, like how have you seen their actions filter down to the rest of the market now?
Michael Barrett
executiveYes. And I would kind of lump Amazon into that bucket, too, right? So overnight in January, Amazon became ad supported, and it was the default. So if you were a prime subscriber, you had access to Amazon Prime TV instantly ads appeared, which is quite different from the way Netflix is doing, quite different from the way Disney did it. And so, instantly, 170 million U.S. households, bang, had adds. So you talked about a surge of inventory. And the way Amazon is handling it, it's very tech forward. It's very automated for it. It's very programmatic for it. It's not talking out of turn because Netflix has talked about, they want to be more tech forward. They don't want to try to emulate what the broadcast guys do, only upfronts, that kind of stuff. And so I think the writing on the wall is that you got to be tech forward, you got to be programmatic first. And you have to be open to the idea that your bread is not going to be buttered by the same 500 leading national advertisers that has been for the last 25 years. That 500 advertisers are going to have to look like 15,000 advertisers. And how are you going to do that? You can't hire salespeople to call on that. So you better be tech forward. So I think we're very early stages at that evolution where programmatic is going to really be defined by this streaming opportunity.
Omar Dessouky
analystIt sounds exciting. Okay. So let's talk about maybe whatever obstacles to adoption kind of remain out there. Why hasn't this happened already for the highest value inventory? And you kind of alluded to the definition of what high-value inventory is, is changing, depending on whether you can find the right audience for you because different audiences value different content differently, some high, some low, right? So that's an interesting insight in and of itself. You talked a little bit about the inertia, right? How about technology? Is there a lack of performant technology that has kept the sea change from happening, more integrators for the publishers? Like what are some of the obstacles, just general questions?
Michael Barrett
executiveYes. I mean, look, at early stages if anything, you're going to have some confusion. For instance, there was a way -- broadcast, for good or for bad, it worked, right? There were years and years and years of folks using markers like gross rating points to determine the efficacy of their campaign and that they knew they were going to sell that many more boxes of detergent if they hit that number. You can't apply that to streaming. And so right there, there's some breakage between the playbook of yesterday and the playbook of today. And of course, there was a general distrust of kind of a household panel to project audiences and now you can do this in real time and how do you take someone like an iSpot and make it in Nielsen and make it the equivalent of that when you're running your broadcast campaign and your streaming campaign, you don't have two completely different set of numbers. So there is definitely a process by which the whole industry has to go to when something revolutionary like this happens. It's identical to when magazines went digital. Newspapers went digital. There was a way to do it there, new way to do it here, it takes a while for it to settle. But ultimately, consumers have voted, right? Consumers have voted that they like the idea of not being encumbered by a cable package. That they like to get their media entertainment news in a streaming fashion because of the convenience, the price points, whatever the case might be, and advertisers need to reach those eyeballs. And so it's just a process by which the whole industry has to go through. And some of it's on the tech side, some of it is on the seller side and some of them on the buyer side.
Omar Dessouky
analystSo let's -- for my last question, before I turn it over to Arthur, let's think about Jeffrey Moore's technology adoption curve, right? It's the bell curve where you have early adopters and then the early mainstream, the late mainstream in the holdouts. So there -- are some customers where the status quo is simply going to be superior indefinitely? And who are they?
Michael Barrett
executiveWell, listen, if you've been selling your own inventory, you have a relationship with the buyer and that's worked really well for you. You're not blowing that up tomorrow. That said, they're going to be going up against new entrants that don't have that world view that have a more flexible model and that will be more appealing to buyers because they're able to do the targeting. And so I think absent of new entrants like in Amazon, Netflix, you might be able to see status quo because it's such a concentrated group of media companies that could possibly say, no, this is the way we're going to sell. But when you have global players come in like that, and these are all global -- and that's the other thing. That was a very North American phenomenon, the whole upfront, right? Now you're talking about all these services in EMEA and APAC, and it's different there. And so now you're going to have to adapt your strategy to a global strategy. So I think that you're going to see that curve as they become global, as new entrants come in. And the new entrants aren't just the household names that we know, Netflix and Amazon, it's again, the glass guys, Samsung, LG, VIZIO. Their strategies on how they go to market, the inventory -- the massive inventory that they hold changes the market completely too.
Omar Dessouky
analystGot it. All right. Well, I'm going to turn it over to Arthur True. Introduce yourself. And I guess, Arthur is going to talk about competitive positioning in the tech a little bit.
Arthur True
analystSure. Thanks Omar. Hey, everybody, my name is Arthur True and the associate working with Omar. I'm responsible for BofA's video game and tech coverage. So Michael, maybe you could just dive into sort of Magnite's competitive position a little bit. In OpenLab advertising, we think there are probably 7 or 8 scaled sort of independent SSPs just outside of Walled Garden, probably tens, if not hundreds of smaller ones. But in CTV, it appears that the market is much more concentrated around just a few top players, like with Magnite being one of the largest ones. Maybe just for like investors who might not be as familiar with Magnite or just the CTV/SSP ecosystem in general. How would you categorize Magnite's competitive position in CTV mono competition?
Michael Barrett
executiveYes, it's a great question, Arthur. I would say that -- so we think -- we talk of our business in 2 buckets, right? One of them is DV-plus, which is the open web that you just described, it's a acronym, not for Double Verify, which Mark didn't like when we came out with DV-plus, but display video plus some audio, digital out of home, everything that's not streaming. And when we say streaming, it's what appears on that big screen. It's not what appears here. And so -- and then they're streaming, right? And on the DV-plus side, I -- that's often thought of this kind of lumbering legacy business that's probably flattish, probably spins off a lot of cash and helps fund your streaming business. And it could -- it's anything but that. It's still in a kind of deflated ad environment is still growing in the high single digits. Last year, it grew in the double digits, and there's areas of huge growth, whether it's mobile, as we talked about, whether it's audio. And then you have the mother of all mother of opportunities, which is happening this September, and that's the antitrust trial for Google and their monopoly as it relates to that whole business. Owning the ad server, owning the DSP on an exchange. I don't know what's going to come of it, but something is going to come a bit. And if you look at how monstrous their share is, that even if it gets rattled and 10% of that share is up for grabs, given our strength in that marketplace, this could be an insanely growing business for the next couple of years. So very pleased with where we stand. And to your point, yes, because of the nature of how they like to sell publishers in that world, open heading bidding, it used to be a world of 100. It's now, recently, Amazon's DSP, which is a fast-growing DSP. They said we're sick and tired of buying from a ton of exchanges. We're only going to buy from three, and we were one of them. And most agencies are doing that now. And so little by little, that seven strong players is now down to three. And we love our position there because we're almost twice the size of our closest competitor. On the CTV side, we've always felt that that's winner-take-most. That you're never going to see that open, wild west, open header bidding. I don't care who advertises in The Handmaid's Tale, who cares, it's money. So the inventory is going to be more precious. The evals are going to be more scarce. And you're going to -- and a lot of the deals are going to be deal based. And so in that respect, you just need one programmatic partner that will probably do 80% of your business and the other 20%, you kind of keep the guy honest and you keep another guy hanging around the hoop. So we're that player that's at 80%. So it is a winner take most. And I think we're showing how you can be that player.
Arthur True
analystUnderstood. So -- yes, so it sounds like your strategy is basically to secure your position as the dominant SSP algo, there might be like other SSPs competing for some supplies here and there. Let's talk about maybe the Netflix partnership. Obviously, that's the big news past couple of months, I think you've touched on it in your early conversation, which is you're seeing a lot of these new conversations with publishers after the Netflix of now people want to know like what Magnite could potentially do for them. How would you sort of categorize these publishers on these like sort of new publishers, new programmatic? Are they using an existing solution? Or is it just like existing customers of yours looking to expand or later on additional services? Where do you see the biggest opportunity?
Michael Barrett
executiveI think it's two buckets. One would be the latter, which you just described because we have relationships with all the top players and because we're their preferred programmatic partner. Same-store sale growth is going to be very important to us. So more of more. More deals that they may have done over there that they're going to do with us, more programmatic leaning forward, more use of our ad server, even if they have an ad server like a free well, utilizing our ad server on top of it to do more sophisticated programmatic. So there's no question that, that's going to be a big driver. But if you think about where we are globally, and we just announced a win in France, we're the top broadcaster in France chose spring service or programmatic ad server. In Australia, every one of the major -- Channel 5, Channel 9, all the major broadcasters use us right now. But they've always been quite advanced, Contrast that to the U.K., which is very slow to adopt programmatic for a lot of the reasons we were talking about, the legacy reasons. They have 3 TV stations that dominate the landscape. Why are we going to do anything to screw that up. Well, they can't control it anymore because Disney+ is now launched in the U.K. Paramount's launched in the U.K., Netflix has launched in the U.K. So it's rattling the international, which used to be a very collegial [indiscernible]. So that's going to happen in Germany. That's going to happen in France. That's going to happen in the U.K. and all of those publishers are going to need a programmatic partner. So we think that the Netflix win not only provides that halo effect for same-store, globally, it's going to have a big impact.
Arthur True
analystGot it. Got it. And I think you mentioned FreeWheel, I guess one of your competitors. I think Google is sort of playing in the CTV/SSP space as well. I think one of the differentiations that you guys have always talked about that distinguishes Magnite from the competition is this idea of having a CTV first tech stack. Would you mind just explaining to the audience like what does it mean to have a CTV first tech stack? How is it different from some of the other solutions out there?
Michael Barrett
executiveYes. I think a lot of it is just kind of timing and vision of the companies that we acquired. But FreeWheel is a heck of a NAND server and all the broadcasters use it because it was born in 2008-2009, when all the broadcasters had abc.com, right? And now they're doing programming on their website and they needed an ad server that wasn't like double-click that was specialized in video ad serving. But ad serving on the Internet on a website is quite different than ad serving on a streaming channel on a flat screen. And we are just fortunate enough to start building technology when streaming came of age or was nascent and acquired those companies that built that technology. So it's really purpose-built. It's built for streaming. If you wanted us to handle website traffic and video on a website, we'd suck at it. But likewise, they're having a really difficult time taking this huge enterprise software and dumbing it down and making it smarter for programmatic for a TV manufacturer. And so I think we found this incredible green space, greenfield, where we've been able to take our products that are purpose-built, late touch, quick integration, easily self-served, that contrast quite greatly to GAM or to free wells product.
Arthur True
analystGot it. So I think what I'm hearing from you is that streaming is very specialized, sort of requires specialized infrastructure. Maybe just for my last question because we're right on time. Is the competition that you have is Comcast and Google that we're talking about. These are like 500 pounds per [indiscernible], they have a massive amount of resources. What prevents them from like replicating technology? Is it technical challenges? Is it the market opportunity that they have a lot of different marketing opportunities might want to prioritize resources, like how do you think about that?
Michael Barrett
executiveYes. And keep in mind, too, that they're both owned by big media companies, and there's this reluctance necessarily to work with them largely because any money you're giving them, you're feeding your competitor and making them stronger by taking their tech. I would say nothing is impossible, but I would say, I think what we have built is quite defensible. It's created the moat, and it wouldn't be just easy for them to roll out of bed and build the same software and the switching costs are immense once you get a client up and going. And keep in mind, it's not either/or.
Arthur True
analystParticularly if you...
Michael Barrett
executiveEveryone else uses -- all the broadcasters still use FreeWheel. Does things extraordinarily well. The one thing it doesn't do extraordinarily well is programmatic for streaming. And so we become that modular that snap science of free wheel and does the programmatic streaming. So we don't have to rip and replace. You're never going to read a press release that says, Magnite is on the NBCU business and ripped out free wheel. We are more than happy to work alongside them. They do what they do well. We do programmatic extremely exceptionally well. And I think it's very complementary and it works for the publisher.
Arthur True
analystI understand, so, here's low-cost onboarding.
Michael Barrett
executiveYes.
Arthur True
analystCool. I think we are right about time, do you want to open for other.
Omar Dessouky
analystYes. We have 70 seconds. Any questions? TJ? Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, Mike, thanks so much. . .
Michael Barrett
executiveThank you.
Omar Dessouky
analyst. . .For speaking with us. We look forward to working with you and quite an exciting structural opportunity ahead of Magnite, which we're closely following.
Michael Barrett
executiveOutstanding. Thank you.
Omar Dessouky
analystThank you. Appreciate it.
For developers and AI pipelines
Programmatic access to Magnite, Inc. earnings transcripts and 32,000+ others is available through the
EarningsCalls.dev REST API. Plans from $24.99/month — full transcripts, speaker segments,
full-text search, and the recently-added /api/v1/transcripts/recent polling endpoint for ETL pipelines.