For publishers and advertisers, the opportunity now goes far beyond scale. Success depends on creating meaningful engagement across TV, streaming, mobile, and beyond. To explore how this opportunity is evolving, we spoke with leading media owners in Brazil – one of the world’s most passionate football markets – including LG Ad Solutions, Samsung Ads, Sky Brazil, and SBT.

Live sport remains one of the few true appointment-viewing experiences, and football’s biggest tournament amplifies that effect globally.

As José Melchert, Senior Director of Sales and Operations at Samsung Ads, explains: “During these ‘big moments’ like the World Cup, the audience is more relaxed, receptive, and exhibiting high levels of attention.” That attention is still anchored in the living room. Samsung Ads research found that football accounts for 91% of sports consumption time in Brazil, while Smart TVs remain the preferred screen for match viewing.

Leonardo de Pontes – Digital Products Manager at SBT – similarly describes the World Cup as “a cultural and social phenomenon that completely reshapes media consumption.” While live matches continue to drive mass reach, engagement is now continuous, multi-platform, and real-time, creating new opportunities for advertisers to connect with audiences before, during, and after the match itself.

Today’s sports journey extends far beyond the match. Audiences move fluidly between platforms – consuming commentary, highlights, and more. José Melchert notes that pre- and post-match audiences are increasingly active across platforms, while Sky Brazil’s Sr Ad Sales Specialist Leandro Blanco highlights how “today’s second screen relies heavily on near real-time content across various platforms.”

To meet changing viewer behavior, publishers are building more integrated ecosystems. For the 2026 cycle, SBT has expanded its footprint by combining free-to-air TV, streaming via +SBT, and complementary digital content into what Leonardo de Pontes describes as “a true omnichannel ecosystem for content and engagement.”

Connected TV continues to play a central role in that ecosystem. Renato Citelli, Commercial Director for Brazil at LG Ad Solutions, notes that replays and sports analysis programs remain highly relevant “both for consumers and for brands that can capitalize on these moments.”

The implication is clear: success in modern sports advertising will not come from dominating a single channel, but from seamlessly connecting them.

Rather than fragmenting attention, second-screen behavior is amplifying it. According to Renato Citelli, “95% of LG TV users engage with a second screen while consuming Connected TV and streaming content.” José Melchert echoes this sentiment, noting “mobile becomes a complementary space for interaction, real-time commentary, accessing statistics, and social media consumption,” thereby amplifying the viewer experience.

SBT’s Leonardo de Pontes sees second-screen engagement as “a native part of the sports experience,” with audiences simultaneously commenting on social media, consuming highlights, and following live statistics during matches.

Together, TV and mobile create a powerful dual-screen dynamic:

• TV delivers scale, immersion, and premium attention
• Mobile drives interaction, personalization, and immediacy

For advertisers, this creates opportunities for synchronized storytelling across screens and touchpoints.

As audiences fragment across platforms, data has become the foundation of effective omnichannel advertising. Media owners are increasingly leveraging first-party and deterministic data to improve targeting, packaging, measurement, and monetization.

According to José Melchert, Samsung Ads uses proprietary data from 25 million Smart TVs and over 2 billion hours of monthly content consumption to enable “a precise reading of audience behavior” and support audience segmentation into groups such as “football fans” or “heavy streamers.”

LG Ad Solutions is taking a similar approach, leveraging first-party data generated from webOS and LG TV hardware, enabling advertisers to connect with audiences across devices and environments through more innovative formats and experiences.

The result of leveraging such data is more intelligent campaign planning, improved inventory utilization, and stronger ROI for advertisers.

As sports viewing becomes increasingly fragmented across screens and platforms, programmatic technology is playing a critical role in unifying activation and monetization strategies. Sky Brazil’s Leandro Blanco puts it simply: “Programmatic buying is fundamental for us to complement our direct sales strategy.”

Across the ecosystem, publishers are increasingly leveraging private marketplaces (PMPs), programmatic guaranteed deals, and curated premium inventory to balance scale with quality and control. LG Ad Solutions describes its approach as a “360-degree programmatic media strategy,” built through partnerships with leading SSPs and DSPs – including Magnite and Google DV360 – while continuing to expand premium sports inventory through LG Channels.

SBT also sees programmatic as increasingly important for maximizing monetization opportunities across streaming and digital inventory. As Leonardo de Pontes explains, “solutions like Magnite play a key role in boosting CTV and streaming monetization, providing more efficient inventory management, enhanced programmatic activation, and commercial flexibility for omnichannel campaigns.”

Samsung Ads is similarly focused on premium, data-driven activation through formats spanning Smart TV home screens and Samsung TV Plus. As José Melchert explains, the market has shifted “from a logic based on impression volume to an approach centered on qualified audiences, premium formats, context, and performance.”

The 2026 football tournament will represent more than a global sporting spectacle; it will be a key moment for benchmarking how far omnichannel advertising has come. From attention anchored in streaming and amplified engagement via mobile to data-driven precision and programmatic-driven scale, efficiency, and control, the sports advertising playbook is evolving.

Broadcasters and streaming platforms are increasingly building integrated ecosystems that combine premium live content, deterministic data, and programmatic technology to deliver more unified advertising experiences. Or, as Samsung Ads’ José Melchert puts it: “The World Cup ceases to be just a media event and becomes a strategic opportunity to impact consumers at moments of high cultural relevance.”

The post Brazil’s Omnichannel Advertising Opportunity in Football and Beyond appeared first on Magnite.

Infrastructure underpins this ecosystem, enabling demand to be captured, evaluated, routed, and monetized in real time. It determines whether a platform can process massive volumes of data safely and efficiently; whether buyers can reach audiences across the environments that matter; and whether publishers can maximize revenue during the moments when demand is highest.

Meanwhile, as more viewing shifts to streaming and IP-delivered programming, live events are becoming one of the clearest tests of adtech infrastructure. When millions of viewers tune in to a live CTV event simultaneously, demand can surge instantly and unpredictably. Legacy stacks can stall under that pressure. The advantage belongs to platforms that can move data efficiently, scale capacity quickly, and route workloads intelligently in real time.

Magnite’s infrastructure is purpose-built for this ecosystem.

This gives Magnite the ability to support massive baseline demand while also scaling up for major moments, emerging use cases, and partner-specific needs.

What follows is a deep dive into the infrastructure models shaping adtech today, and why hybrid infrastructure has emerged as the strongest solution for our tomorrow’s growth era. We’ll also explore how Magnite’s approach is helping define the next phase of adtech for publishers, buyers, and partners.

Not all infrastructure models are designed to serve the same kinds of demand. Each approach can be effective, depending on the workload, scale requirements, and operating model. The critical question is whether a platform can match each workload to the environment where it performs best.

On-premise infrastructure, or “on-prem,” means data processing and compute workloads are handled through owned or directly managed physical data centers. For high-volume, predictable workloads, this model can be highly efficient, giving operators more control over hardware, performance, security, and resource planning.

As one of the largest SSPs, Magnite needs substantial dedicated capacity to process massive, steady auction volume at scale. Our more than $130 million investment in infrastructure CapEx over the past three years helps support that bandwidth, strengthening the foundation required for high-volume programmatic advertising.

But on-premise infrastructure is ultimately bounded by fixed capacity. A platform can only process as much demand as its physical footprint allows. If demand exceeds that footprint, the platform has limited choices: overbuild capacity in advance, leave hardware underutilized during normal periods, or reject demand during peak moments.

That tradeoff matters in streaming advertising, where demand does not always arrive smoothly. Major live events, tentpole sports, high-viewership premieres, and sudden surges in buyer activity can create sharp spikes in traffic. An all-on-premise model is always limited by its ability to provision for peak demand, even if that peak lasts only a few hours each day or occurs during a small number of major events each year.

Cloud infrastructure provides a high level of flexibility and accessibility. It allows platforms to access compute resources without tying every workload to owned hardware, making it easier to launch, test, and scale new capabilities without the operational burden of managing physical data centers. That makes cloud especially useful for bursty workloads, experimentation, AI and machine learning workflows, product innovation, and environments where partners are already operating in the cloud.

The tradeoff is cost discipline. Cloud resources can scale quickly, but that flexibility can become expensive if applied indiscriminately to every scenario. For always-on, high-volume auction processing, the cloud may not be the most efficient environment for every use case. Ultimately, the cloud is powerful. But in adtech, power must be matched to the economics of the processing workload.

Hybrid infrastructure combines the strengths of both models. Owned infrastructure supports core, sustained, high-volume workloads, while cloud infrastructure adds elasticity, intelligence, speed, and proximity where those capabilities create incremental value.

Making those environments work together requires more than access to both. It requires the operational discipline to run physical infrastructure, the cloud expertise to scale and optimize dynamically, and the innovation to route workloads intelligently between them.

This achieves the “just right” model for modern advertising. It allows a platform to build for baseline demand without overbuilding for every possible peak. It also creates the flexibility to burst into the cloud when demand spikes, when clients prefer cloud-native integrations, or when emerging use cases require additional compute. Finally, this also enables greater agility when using the latest and greatest hardware (such as faster processors and more powerful GPUs), software (such as cloud-native tools and advanced data warehouses), and models (such as ML models for real-time bidding and audience segmentation), as they are available in the cloud.

For Magnite, hybrid infrastructure is not a patchwork of separate systems. It is an integrated operating model, built on one of the largest owned infrastructure footprints in independent adtech. Our on-premise and cloud environments work together as a unified processing layer, allowing data and workloads to move through the environment that best suits their source, scale, and purpose.

That advantage is reinforced by Magnite’s in-house ad serving capabilities. Through SpringServe, Magnite brings ad serving, SSP functionality, and advanced mediation together for streaming media owners. The result is a more unified technology foundation for streaming monetization, designed to help every eligible ad request reach the right auction opportunity.

As advertising becomes more real-time, data-driven, and event-based, infrastructure performance becomes a strategic differentiator. Hybrid infrastructure gives Magnite advantages that cloud-only or on-premise-only models are not built to deliver.

Live sports, major cultural events, premieres, and high-demand inventory windows can create sudden surges in auction volume. Platforms need the ability to process that demand without forcing publishers to leave revenue on the table or degrading the viewer experience.

In an on-premise-only model, capacity must be built to meet the highest expected peak. That means hardware may sit underutilized for long periods, even though it still carries a cost. If capacity is not built to peak, the platform may be forced to make tradeoffs on which auctions it can process when ad requests exceed physical limits.

A hybrid model changes that equation. Magnite can sustain baseline demand through its owned infrastructure and scale to cloud resources when demand spikes. This allows capacity to expand when publishers and buyers need it most, without forcing the entire system to be permanently overbuilt. Technologies like Magnite’s Live Stream Accelerator (LSA) help smooth seller-side traffic bursts during live events, reducing timeouts, improving delivery reliability for buyers, and helping publishers maximize monetization during high-demand streaming moments.

This elasticity is especially important for live streaming, where high-value demand can arrive in concentrated windows. The ability to scale during those windows is not just a technical advantage. It is a revenue advantage.

Modern advertising workflows increasingly depend on where data lives. Publishers, buyers, retailers, data partners, and technology providers may operate in cloud-native environments, owned infrastructure environments, or a mix of both. The infrastructure advantage goes to platforms that can meet partners where they are.

Magnite’s hybrid architecture enables us to work directly within our partners’ preferred environments, eliminating the need to migrate data to a new environment. For clients already operating in the cloud, direct and cloud-native integrations can reduce unnecessary movement, avoid extraneous transfer costs, and improve data activation efficiency. For clients who prefer other deployment models, such as containerization, Magnite can support those needs as well.

This matters because programmatic advertising is increasingly shaped by interoperability. Platforms need to work across clouds, data clean rooms, publisher systems, buyer tools, curation workflows, and privacy-conscious data environments. The more flexible the infrastructure, the easier it is to connect safely, efficiently, and at scale.

Hybrid infrastructure strengthens Magnite’s partnership model and enables greater adaptability as market conditions change. Modern companies and startups are often cloud-native. A hybrid platform is better positioned to integrate cloud-native capabilities quickly because it already operates across both owned and cloud environments.

On the cloud side, our relationships with major cloud providers such as AWS are part of a broader technical advantage. They help us operate closer to where partners are building, testing, storing, and activating data.

That flexibility also matters for M&A. It allows new capabilities to be brought into the broader ecosystem without forcing every product, workflow, or team into a single legacy infrastructure model. Magnite’s acquisition of streamr.ai is a useful example: our hybrid infrastructure helped fast-track the integration of cloud-native capabilities into the broader Magnite platform. As modern advertising tools become more dynamic, they increasingly require infrastructure that supports faster integration, flexible deployment, and rapid product development.

For clients, that means more flexibility. Magnite can meet partners where they are, support the ways they want to pass and activate data, and create room for the market’s next wave of growth.

The next phase of adtech will require more than incremental capacity. AI-assisted tools, agentic workflows, automated campaign creation, retail media integrations, and new forms of curation will all create new compute patterns. These workloads can be bursty, experimental, and data-intensive. They may not behave like traditional steady-state auction traffic.

Hybrid infrastructure gives Magnite the flexibility to support both mature core systems and emerging use cases. Owned infrastructure can continue to efficiently process high-volume foundational workloads, while cloud environments can support experimentation, AI workloads, and faster product development.

Containerization is another important part of the future-facing story. As more partners look for flexible ways to deploy, move, and connect workloads, containerized environments can make it easier to operate across different infrastructure models. Hybrid infrastructure is well-suited to that future because it is not tied to a single deployment path.

This is why hybrid matters for what comes next. The future of advertising infrastructure will not be defined by a single environment. It will be defined by the ability to move intelligently across environments as demand, data, and partner needs evolve.

The future of advertising will be more real-time, more data-heavy, and more nuanced. CTV and live streaming will continue to create high-value traffic spikes. Retail media and curation will require more sophisticated data movement. AI will introduce new workloads that do not fit neatly into historical traffic patterns. Containerized deployments and cloud-native workflows will give partners more ways to build, integrate, and operate.

In that environment, the winning platforms will not be defined by whether they are cloud-only or on-premise-only. They will be defined by how intelligently they use infrastructure.

Hybrid infrastructure requires operational sophistication. It demands strong routing, observability, security, tooling, cost controls, and engineering discipline. But when executed well, it creates a platform that is more flexible, more resilient, and better aligned to how modern advertising actually works.

Magnite has invested significantly in this foundation and expects to continue investing where infrastructure can generate meaningful returns for our partners and our business. The goal is not simply to process more data. The goal is to process the right data, in the right environment, at the right moment, with the reliability and scale that streaming advertising requires.

More data alone is not enough. The winners will be the platforms that move, process, and activate data best to deliver against partner KPIs.

Build with us.

The post The Elastic Edge: Why Hybrid Infrastructure Powers Adtech’s Next Growth Era appeared first on Magnite.

Financial services is especially competitive during tax season. Traditional display still plays a role, but on its own it’s often not enough to truly break through. What drew us to tiles and pause formats was the ability to create more intentional engagement. CFP Board’s mission is rooted in trust and education, so we needed to create space for their message to land. Tiles and pause ads help deliver a considered and less interruptive, visually high-impact experience aligned with how consumers think about their finances in these moments.

Our relationship with Magnite gave us assurance in both the quality of supply and the execution of these formats across premium publishers. That environment was critical for CFP Board to show up alongside trusted, high-quality content, which reinforces credibility.

At the same time, we’re always looking to evolve beyond standard approaches. This was a strategic recommendation from our team, and CFP Board was open to testing something new. Innovation is key in this category – you have to be willing to test and learn in a controlled way.

The primary goal was to build trust and awareness of the value of working with a certified financial planner, particularly during tax season, when consumers are actively seeking guidance. The premium publisher mix ensures that the message appears in trusted, contextually relevant environments, thereby strengthening its reception, while the high-impact tiles and pause ad formats create deliberate moments of attention. Rather than being easily overlooked, the message had space to be absorbed.

Consistency was also key. Maintaining a strong presence over time ensures the CFP Board stays top of mind during these critical decision-making moments in a way that is both impactful and credible at every stage.

They’re absolutely critical – especially for a nonprofit like CFP Board, where every impression needs to work harder and align with a mission built on trust. Transparency gives us confidence in where and how the ads are running, control ensures the message is delivered in the right environments, and consistent delivery helps reinforce that message over time. Those fundamentals make it easier to innovate while protecting brand integrity.

Capturing attention during tax season is critical. It’s a moment when consumers are highly engaged with their finances, but also when the category is most saturated. High-impact formats help meet consumers in that mindset with messaging that’s more visible and memorable. They create more deliberate moments of attention, rather than blending into the background. Using formats like tiles and pause ads helps CFP Board break through the noise and deliver its message in a way that feels fresh, relevant, and aligned with the importance of the moment.

This campaign reinforced our innovation-first, test-and-learn mindset, showing how thoughtful testing can drive stronger engagement and differentiation. We’re always looking at how we can continuously evolve, building on what works and refining as we go. It’s also opened the door to exploring additional areas, like live sports, where you have highly engaged audiences and unique opportunities to connect in the moment. Ultimately, it comes back to partnership. Working closely with partners like Magnite allows us to keep pushing into new areas while ensuring we’re doing it in a way that’s strategic, measurable, and aligned with our clients’ goals.

The post How BUNTIN and CFP Board are Elevating Financial Messaging With High-Impact Formats from Magnite appeared first on Magnite.

As retail media and CTV converge, the industry is shifting toward a more intentional, high-quality inventory model. Through this expanded partnership, Magnite’s technology is now deeply integrated into the Walmart DSP. This creates a direct, frictionless path to premium inventory, removing unnecessary intermediaries and ensuring every impression is brand-safe, transparent, and addressable.

By pairing Walmart’s proprietary first-party retail signals with Magnite’s omnichannel supply, advertisers can now reach highly relevant audiences across video with unprecedented precision.

A cornerstone of this partnership is VIZIO’s integration, with Magnite providing the end-to-end technology stack that powers it. This unique tie-in allows Walmart DSP buyers to close the loop and have access to:

• Deterministic Measurement: Move beyond broad “auto enthusiast” segments by reaching households based on real purchase signals. For example, those who have recently bought a car seat at Walmart.
• Lean-Back Discovery: Leverage the TV as a high-engagement environment where discovery and purchase can happen simultaneously.

Expanding Access to CTV for All Advertisers

By combining curated inventory with seamless activation in the Walmart DSP, Connect Select makes it easier for brands of all sizes to launch and scale CTV campaigns aligned to their specific objectives. Advertisers can quickly move from planning to execution, reaching high-value audiences in moments of discovery and inspiration.

Magnite’s partnership helps ensure that this access is both scalable and reliable, bringing global demand closer to premium supply and supporting a more accessible, performance-driven future for CTV advertising.

To activate a campaign with Walmart Connect inventory, please reach out to your Magnite account manager or contact@magnite.com.

The post Magnite Helps Power Walmart DSP Marketplace Connect Select appeared first on Magnite.

Our approach is deliberate. We are not incorporating AI for its own sake. We are making our existing platforms, trusted by many of the world’s leading media owners and buyers, more intuitive, more efficient, and more effective in practice.

This builds on Magnite’s long-standing investments in AI-driven automation, embedded across our platforms over time. This includes our work within Demand Manager, where we introduced end-to-end automation designed to deliver measurable improvements in performance and operational efficiency, and our early AdCP tests. That same principle applies here. These aren’t just incremental add-ons but features that produce durable, real-world gains. 

AI allows us to extend that foundation by reducing manual workflows, surfacing more actionable insights, and scaling what teams can accomplish without adding operational overhead. In this way, AI acts as an extension of human expertise. What once took hours of manual auditing can now be handled by AI in seconds, with automated alerts and suggested fixes.

One of the most significant areas of advancement is mediation. Historically, mediation focuses on yield optimization, essentially adjusting auction mechanics to improve revenue. But as the CTV ecosystem has grown more complex, publishers need more than optimization alone. They need a system that helps them understand what is driving performance and take action on it in real time.

Our latest mediation capabilities are designed to provide that clarity. Magnite’s SpringServe video platform plays a central role in how premium CTV and OTT media is bought and sold. Mediation through SpringServe acts as the control center for monetization decisioning, prioritizing the publisher’s interests by evaluating all demand sources without bias. This is a capability uniquely strengthened by Magnite’s position at the intersection of CTV supply and demand, providing the visibility needed to unify and optimize every transaction in one place.

With AI-enabled features, publishers can:

• Automatically optimize yield through adaptive pricing and demand prioritization
• Detect anomalies and identify the root causes of performance changes in seconds
• Gain visibility into demand paths across buyers and deal types
• Protect pricing integrity across all demand sources

Connecting Buyers and Sellers Through Agentic AI

Our work in agentic AI builds directly on the progress we’ve made enabling AI agents for the sell-side to better connect premium publishers with high-quality demand.

Through those efforts, and our close collaboration with leading agencies and buyers, we’ve had ongoing conversations about how similar capabilities could help streamline the buy side of the transaction.

Programmatic execution today requires constant monitoring and adjustment across multiple variables. Buyers are looking for ways to connect more efficiently with supply while maintaining control, transparency, and performance.

We are working with partners to develop agent-driven workflows. At the center of this effort is Magnite’s Buyer Agent that unifies strategic planning, GenAI creative generation, and direct-to-publisher execution within a single conversation. This allows us to:

• Automate routine tasks in campaign execution
• Respond to performance signals in near real time
• Improve how buyers discover and connect with premium supply
• Accelerate optimization cycles
• Allow teams to focus more on strategy and planning 

An important part of this work is ensuring flexibility. Ultimately, for the buy-side, this isn’t just about speed. It’s about drastically reducing media waste by ensuring budgets dynamically shift to the highest-performing supply in real-time.

We are developing our own buyer and seller agents, but we are also building an open framework that supports third-party solutions. This allows partners to bring their own agentic tools that connect into Magnite’s offerings and operate within a connected environment.

This approach is grounded in interoperability and optionality. Interoperability ensures that different agents, whether built by Magnite or by our partners, can work together seamlessly across the transaction. This includes aligning with emerging industry standards, such as AdCP, to support consistent communication and coordination between systems.

Optionality ensures that our clients are not locked into a single approach, but instead have the flexibility to choose, customize, and evolve the tools they use over time. We want our partners to be able to build with us on their terms.

Just as importantly, our goal is not only to create solutions that work well within our platform, but to contribute to a more interoperable, efficient ecosystem overall. By aligning with industry standards and supporting open frameworks, we can move the broader advertising landscape forward in lock step. We believe this is critical to ensuring that AI-driven innovation remains practical, adaptable, and aligned with the needs of the broader ecosystem.

A More Intuitive Platform for the Future

Ultimately, this is about making the platforms our clients rely on more intuitive and more powerful. By combining AI-enabled assistance with agent-driven execution, we are helping publishers and buyers operate more effectively in a complex and rapidly evolving market. And as these capabilities continue to develop, our focus will remain the same: applying AI in ways that deliver clear, practical value.

The post From Mediation to Agentic AI: Building a More Intelligent, Intuitive Advertising Ecosystem appeared first on Magnite.

Neni at Untapped Growth:

Live sports campaigns remain one of the few truly exclusive inventory environments, and have traditionally been treated as a premium awareness play, but that’s rapidly changing. As we look to continue tying media investments directly to business outcomes in a shifting media environment, new digital channels and formats offer significant opportunities. The challenge is that traditional sports media – particularly linear TV – can have rigid budget requirements, with less precise targeting, and subpar measurement. With live streaming offering more precise targeting and accountability in how campaigns are planned and executed, live sports can become a true omnichannel growth driver.

Agatha at Grain Group:

That’s exactly what we set out to prove recently, within a live campaign for sports nutrition brand Honey Stinger – that live sports can be part of an omnichannel campaign. We turned a premium game-day presence into something measurable and performance-oriented.

Agatha at Grain Group:

At Grain Group, we’ve moved away from the ‘spray and pray’ model of high-cost linear TV. For Honey Stinger, we engineered a real-time placement model. By leveraging Magnite’s premium inventory, specifically within high-stakes Big 10 and SEC matchups, we decoupled ‘Big Game’ impact from ‘Big Waste.’ We utilized programmatic workflows to maintain advanced precision, ensuring the brand didn’t just show up, but dominated specific, high-affinity and retail-specific shopping households. We’re treating live sports like a high-frequency trading floor by executing with speed and accuracy.

Neni at Untapped Growth:

I think the efficiency comes from a combination of precision and consistency. With Magnite, we can continuously and consistently place the advertiser into the most relevant live game environments throughout the season and amplify reach with relevant OLV, display, and linear inventory.

Agatha at Grain Group:

Our edge lies in our outcome-driven planning approach. While others are satisfied with a broad demographic hit, especially with sports, Grain Group always seeks to connect media investment directly to business outcomes by aligning audience targeting, media environments, and geographic coverage with where the brand can actually convert demand.

For instance, with Honey Stinger, we focused on their core media target clusters in priority retail corridors to maximize the likelihood that every impression would hit a specific business KPI. By keeping 85% of our impressions in live-game environments and synchronizing that live exposure with a sophisticated omnichannel surround-sound strategy, we were able to reinforce frequency across digital channels between game windows, owning the consumer journey. That’s how we delivered 3x the targeted reach compared to the legacy approach.

Neni at Untapped Growth:

We do. Brands demand more accountability and performance from their media investments, and agencies want to manage investments from a unified platform to enhance pacing and measurement. Programmatic live sports offers a streamlined path forward. It combines the cultural impact and premium attention of live sports with the precision, flexibility, and measurement brands and agencies need today.

Agatha at Grain Group:

The traditional approach of buying a broad audience and hoping for the best is an outdated strategy. We’ve proven you can have both. We don’t think you should have to choose between the cultural gravity of a live game and the accountability of a performance campaign. Live + programmatic is setting a new standard for any tentpole campaign that demands measurable ROI.

Neni at Untapped Growth:

The biggest opportunity is turning live sports into a true, full-funnel growth engine. We’re just starting to unlock what’s possible when you combine premium live environments with data-driven activation and cross-channel orchestration. Being able to connect live game exposure with targeting, social amplification, and measurable outcomes such as search and retail performance is going to be incredibly powerful.

Agatha at Grain Group:

I’m excited about how Grain Group is pushing the boundaries of curated live inventory by connecting the emotional high of a touchdown or basket directly to measurable retail performance and search intent.

“What’s especially exciting about this moment is how buyers like Untapped Growth and Grain Group are redefining what’s possible in live sports. Together, we’re seeing a shift from buying isolated, high-profile moments to building always-on, strategic presence across the season – with the ability to align messaging to the moments that matter most.

At Magnite, we’re enabling that by bringing greater precision and speed to live activation, giving brands access to premium inventory in a way that is both scalable and accountable. As programmatic continues to evolve, live sports is becoming not just a cultural touchpoint, but a true performance channel – one that drives measurable outcomes and connects brands more directly to the pulse of the game.” Carolyn Sheflin, Regional Vice President, Independent Demand Facilitation

The post From Big Game to Big Impact: How Untapped Growth and Grain Group are Navigating Live Sports Campaigns with Magnite appeared first on Magnite.

But demand is only half the story. Supply has grown even faster. FAST channels, emerging streaming apps, and a wave of mid-tier publishers have flooded the market with new inventory. When supply outpaces demand, CPMs fall: more inventory is competing for the same budgets. And because most streaming monetization happens programmatically, buyers can easily compare vast volumes of supply and optimize for efficiency. Combined with persistent transparency gaps, this creates sustained downward pressure on CPMs.

This is where mediation has become essential. With clearer metadata, unified decisioning, and more sophisticated segmentation, publishers now have the visibility and control to let supply dictate price, not the other way around.

Magnite sees this shift across its publisher partners: the industry is moving from defensive yield management to a more deliberate, proactive, supply-first strategy. Here’s what that evolution looks like.

Transparency has always been part of CTV’s promise, but it has become a performance necessity. Buyers now expect greater visibility into where their ads run, what surrounds them, and which signals accompany each impression. They want content metadata (genre, rating, network, etc.) as well as interoperable IDs such as UID2, RampID, and Iris ID.

With stronger ad serving and reporting tools, publishers can watch this shift unfold in real time. Richer signals reveal which inventory clears fastest, which segments underperform, and which buyers value which signals. Publishers are using this intelligence to price segments accordingly. For example, they can increase rates for high-value signals and decrease rates when metadata is missing, or the user has opted out of tracking. 

That transparency, however, doesn’t always mean exposing every signal directly in the bidstream. Due to privacy considerations or sales strategies designed to protect the value of proprietary data, publishers may choose alternative approaches. Technologies like clean rooms allow publishers to share high-value insights with buyers in a privacy-safe way, without commoditizing their data. Regardless of how signals are delivered, mediation can be effectively deployed across these scenarios, enabling publishers to drive higher CPMs by increasing visibility into their most valuable, signal-rich supply.

The impact of metadata is especially stark in premium environments: a Nielsen Gracenote analysis showed that only 14.3% of CTV sports inventory included league information, and just 17.9% included team data, even though sports is one of the most context-sensitive genres. 

As buyers demand increased transparency, publishers, too, can benefit by better monetizing their most valuable supply. This is why transparency isn’t just a buyer request—it’s a pricing lever.

Mediation in Action: Driving Smarter Pricing & Yield

Mediation has given publishers something that simply didn’t exist at scale a few years ago: a real-time, end-to-end understanding of how every bid competes for each impression—and, critically, why performance changes over time. With that visibility, supply strategy is becoming more sophisticated.

This evolution shows up in several key ways:

• Inventory segmentation & pricing: Publishers are now using performance insights to differentiate inventory by metadata richness, pod position, content quality, EIDs, and more, ensuring valuable supply carries appropriately high value.
  
• Balancing transparency with control: Sellers can decide when to expose content signals and when to hold back, protecting premium inventory while offering buyers various levels of transparency and a wider range of rates.
  
• Real-time, dynamic optimization: Taking the data a step further, publishers can use our AI tools to automatically monitor performance and surface meaningful changes in bidding behavior, reducing the need for manual analysis. These nuances can be addressed with real-time price adjustments.
  

These capabilities mark a turning point: publishers can now design a supply strategy that is just as sophisticated—and just as data-driven—as the demand strategies that shape the other side of the marketplace.

As publishers deepen segmentation and anchor it in mediation, benefits compound over time and reshape how supply performs.

High-quality inventory with rich metadata can command premium pricing. Mid-tier inventory finds the right buyers rather than being undervalued. Even lower-signal impressions contribute revenue when priced accordingly instead of dragging down averages. 

Visibility into granular buyer behavior puts publishers back in control. Rather than responding to demand-side pressure by dropping rates across the board, they’re designing smart pricing frameworks and transparency rules based on performance data. 

It’s a shift Tubi’s partnerships team has seen firsthand. As Madeline Debold, senior director of partner sales at Tubi, noted: “When publishers understand which signals drive performance for buyers, they can design supply pathways that reflect varying objectives.” 

Segmentation and equitable mediation keep high-quality inventory from being diluted and ensure lighter-signal opportunities still find appropriate demand. Instead of a fragmented or lopsided auction, publishers build a stable and predictable revenue engine that meets the differing needs of buyers. This approach is essential for all types of CTV publishers, from OEMs like VIZIO to Free AVOD platforms like Tubi, and vMVPDs like Philo.

This matters even more as the ecosystem scales. Programmatic CTV will reach $27 billion this year, representing over 84% of all CTV ad spend, and is projected to reach $46.9 billion by 2028, surpassing traditional TV, according to eMarketer via Nielsen.

More programmatic volume means more competition, and more opportunity for publishers with a strong supply strategy.

The next chapter of CTV won’t be defined simply by more transparency or more impressions. On the buy side, we’ll see improved strategy for achieving advertisers’ goals, whether that be unique reach, specific identity solutions, or efficient pricing. On the supply side, publishers who embrace segmentation and mediation will reclaim pricing power, strengthen buyer relationships, and position themselves for future growth as budgets continue shifting from linear to streaming.

As Aulden Kaye Yi, head of advertising partnerships at Philo, put it: “We know smarter supply is the bridge between advertiser goals and publisher growth. By embracing both segmentation and mediation, Philo is moving past basic transparency to deliver high-impact, efficient reach. We aren’t just selling space; we’re providing the strategic inventory that defines the next chapter of CTV.”

The post Why CTV Needs a Supply-First Strategy: How Mediation and Segmentation Are Rewriting the Rules appeared first on Magnite.

The opportunity is obvious. The sticking point has been execution.

Sports buys are often splintered, spanning FAST channels, broadcaster apps, virtual MVPDs, connected TV platforms, and local and national distribution points. That is great for reach, but harder on seamless ad delivery. When premium live inventory is spread across platforms and formats, brands want more than access. They want to know where their ads are running, what event they are attached to, and how those moments can be planned and measured with more precision.

That is where Magnite is moving the chains.

As the largest independent sell-side advertising company, Magnite launched Live Scheduler last fall within SpringServe, a first-to-market capability that helps media owners plan, activate, and measure advertising around live events through a more standardized workflow. 

By surfacing details such as event name, date, time, sport, league, broadcaster, and expected concurrency, Live Scheduler gives buyers and DSPs a clearer view into upcoming opportunities and a smarter way to transact on them. Put simply, it helps make live sports less of a black box and more of a scalable marketplace.

That value proposition is already playing out through Scripps Sports Network, a new, premium 24/7 ad-supported sports streaming channel. Scripps Sports Network blends live competition with sports storytelling and original programming, with a particularly strong emphasis on women’s sports, including a lineup of live games from the Professional Women’s Hockey League, National Women’s Soccer League, Major League Volleyball, Athlos track and field, Pro Cheer League, and women’s college basketball. The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) will play a prominent role on the new network with more than 100 hours of WNBA encore telecasts of games originally aired live on Scripps’ ION.

Programming originating from other Scripps Sports partnerships – including the National Hockey League’s (NHL) Florida Panthers and Vegas Golden Knights, the NCAA’s Big Sky Conference, and more – will also be part of the Scripps Sports Network lineup. 

Scripps is backing that lineup with broad distribution across national streaming services and platforms.

By allowing Scripps to organize and signal upcoming live inventory with details such as event name, timing, sport, league, broadcaster, and concurrency, Live Scheduler gave the Scripps team a clearer understanding of what they are selling and where their ads were likely to run. 

That precision is especially useful in a sports environment that includes both live and non-live programming. It lets marketers think more strategically about the full mix: live sports for immediacy and cultural relevance, and adjacent sports content for continuity and frequency across a broader 24/7 offering.

For Scripps, that approach fits neatly with its broader sports strategy and leadership in the streaming space. On the connected TV side, Seth Walters, Scripps’ head of CTV sales, has been focused on making that live inventory more accessible to programmatic buyers.

“Live sports is the most powerful environment across the free streaming landscape,” said Walters. “It’s one of the last places where audiences are fully present, engaged, and watching in real time. What we’re building with Scripps Sports Network is a premium platform where brands can authentically own a piece of the sports momentum and engage with the leagues and athletes that are defining the next era of sports culture. These are passionate, loyal fanbases that are underserved and undermonetized, and we’re changing that. 

“We’ve built market-leading distribution across our portfolio,” he added.  “We’ve secured rights that deepen connection for leagues and their fans, and now we’re creating the infrastructure to make it easy for advertisers to move fast and be part of these moments as they happen.” 

The bigger point is that live sports are no longer just a rights story. It’s an infrastructure story. As the market expands across more platforms, the winners will need better tools to handle both planning and execution.

That is where Magnite’s broader live stack comes into play. Live Scheduler helps media owners package upcoming opportunities with greater structure, while Live Stream Acceleration (LSA) helps manage the performance and optimization challenges associated with high-concurrency ad breaks. 

As Adam Soroca, chief product officer at Magnite, said, “While we introduced LSA to address delivery and optimization challenges, Live Scheduler advances this effort by removing operational barriers. The result is a purpose-built system that empowers media owners and advertisers to make the most of the live programmatic opportunity.”

Together, they address a core market need as live sports become more central to ad-supported video. Meanwhile, case studies show what better execution can look like in practice: when Sling TV used LSA for live sports, it saw a 47% lift in ad conversions over five weeks.

The streaming sports market is moving beyond the rights-grab era and into something more durable: an infrastructure era.

Sports audiences are moving quickly across digital environments: streaming’s share of total viewing continues to rise, with digital live sports viewers projected to grow by almost 20%, from 114.5 million in 2025 to 137.1 million in 2029. 

That kind of footprint creates real upside for advertisers, but it also underscores why better infrastructure matters. 

The winners in this next phase will not just be the marketers who want live inventory. They will be the ones with better tools to access it more precisely, enabling stronger planning, smarter pacing, tighter audience alignment, and clearer post-campaign insight.

For brands, that means better access to the moments that move audiences. For media owners, it means a clearer path to capturing the full value of live.

The post How Magnite’s Live Scheduler Powers and Simplifies Scripps’ New Sports Channel appeared first on Magnite.

But live events require a different playbook than always-on streaming – from deal structure and pacing to planning for unpredictable audience spikes. Success depends on setting up campaigns correctly before kickoff.

To make an impact during live moments, campaigns need to show up on the platforms and devices where fans are tuned in. Viewers no longer watch from a single screen in a single location. Major global sporting events span countries, time zones, and streaming services. The upcoming soccer tournament is a clear example: 104 matches played across the US but streamed worldwide, with fans watching live not only on traditional TV but increasingly on connected TVs and mobile devices.

For brands, this highlights the opportunity to reach live audiences through new ways across publishers, broadcasters, and FAST channels while maintaining visibility and control. Programmatic Guaranteed (PG) and Private Marketplace (PMP) deals offer secure placements in these environments, with greater transparency into where ads run and how they perform. Through its global footprint in ad-supported live streaming, Magnite works with media owners to help advertisers connect with audiences during these high-attention moments, wherever and however they’re watching.

While buyers can target specific live events and reach viewers in contextually relevant moments, targeting specific audiences within live events can be challenging. However, there are ways to bring precision and scale to audience targeting in live environments. For example, by layering curated, first-party data segments (like Magnite Audiences) via Programmatic Guaranteed (PG) deals. With this approach, a pre-identified “sports fan” is matched to an ad slot instantly, maximizing full delivery during those fleeting, high-value moments of peak engagement.

For advertisers, success during live events depends on more than simply securing access; it depends on the ability to compete and deliver when demand peaks. With more matches, localized streams, and millions of viewers watching simultaneously, even small delays can affect win rates, pacing, and overall campaign performance. In the knockout stages, extra time and penalties don’t just heighten attention; they trigger sudden spikes in impression volume and bidding activity. When infrastructure struggles under that pressure, advertisers risk missed bids and lost reach during the most valuable moments of the tournament.

To help protect campaign performance in these high-demand environments, Magnite built infrastructure specifically for live streaming at scale. Live Stream Acceleration (LSA) helps manage surges in ad requests during audience spikes, reducing timeouts and improving the consistency of bid opportunities. By initiating ad requests slightly ahead of scheduled breaks and distributing them more evenly, LSA supports smoother auction dynamics – helping advertisers compete effectively and maintain delivery during critical live moments.

Live events demand flexibility and the agility to react to opportunities as they ebb and flow. To take advantage of those moments, advertisers need visibility into the audiences and inventory available that align with their goals. Having clearer visibility ahead of time into when and where matches are streaming, as well as forecasting audience levels, helps advertisers plan with greater confidence and make informed adjustments.

Tools like Magnite’s Live Scheduler are designed to support this more coordinated approach. By organizing live event details – such as match information and expected audience levels – into a consistent format, it becomes easier for buyers and sellers to activate campaigns around specific games and measure performance at the event level. This reduces reliance on manual processes and allows teams to respond more quickly when viewership surges.

As live streaming continues to grow, the ability to move quickly – while maintaining transparency across devices – can make the difference between simply participating and fully capturing the opportunity live sports present.

It will be the first time the world’s largest soccer tournament has been held in the US since 1994, and interest in the sport continues to grow domestically and globally. With millions tuning in across time zones and devices, competition for attention will be intense. For advertisers, readiness isn’t optional; it’s foundational to reaching their audiences when it matters, where they are.

Global tournaments of this scale highlight what live advertising now demands: resilient infrastructure, flexible deal structures, and event-level transparency. Platforms built to support live streaming at scale – including Magnite’s – are designed to help advertisers and media owners navigate these dynamics, ensuring campaigns can keep pace with high-demand moments wherever live sports are streaming.

Learn more about best practices for live event campaigns, or check out what unmissable sporting events are still to come in 2026. Or if you’re ready to get started, reach out to your respective Magnite account manager or email USDF@Magnite.com.

The post Playing to Win: How Programmatic Tech Can Shape Live Soccer Streaming Success in 2026 and Beyond appeared first on Magnite.

At Magnite, our commitment to diversity fuels global innovation. In JAPAC, gender representation consistently outperforms industry benchmarks, even in markets where women remain underrepresented in tech. We believe diverse perspectives lead to better decision-making and a stronger ability to serve our partners and communities worldwide.

With six Magnite Australia team members recently honored in the B&T Women Leading Tech Power List Long List, we’ve gathered their unique perspectives on the future of the field. Below, they share their vision for how the industry can dismantle barriers and build sustainable pathways for the next generation of women in tech.

What needs to evolve so that more women can thrive and build lasting careers in the tech industry?

Christina Ham – Account Director, Enterprise Sales

We need to move beyond the outdated expectation that the ideal worker has no caregiving responsibilities. Flexibility shouldn’t be treated as a perk – it should be standard practice. Careers don’t exist in isolation from our personal lives, and for many women, professional ambition and caregiving roles are constantly being balanced.

Companies, teams, and managers need to create and maintain a culture of trust where people are empowered to work in ways that align with the many roles they play, while still delivering on their targets.

It can often feel like growth depends on longer hours, constant availability, and saying “yes” to everything just to stay visible. Ambition starts to look like being “always on,” as if overloading your plate is proof of performance. But meaningful impact doesn’t come from working overtime – it comes from the quality of what we deliver in the time we’re there to work.

If we want sustainable success, we have to challenge the idea that burnout is a badge of honour. We need a culture that values flexibility and work–life balance, where ambition and well-being can coexist.

That’s why I encourage my team to protect their time and why I’m intentional about modelling those boundaries myself. We can be ambitious without being available 24/7.

A key challenge in tech isn’t entry – it’s progression. Women are entering the industry, but many aren’t reaching senior roles. Often, they navigate career decisions quietly rather than openly asking for support.

We need to normalise open conversations about growth – not just through formal mentorship programs, and not just between women. Support should move in every direction: across seniority levels, across teams, and across genders. When openness and shared accountability are part of workplace culture, women are more likely to stay, advance, and build lasting careers.

Thriving in our careers does not start at the job offer – it’s shaped across the entire journey as we own our ambition. As women, we are workers, managers, leaders, mothers, sisters, and daughters. Given the many and complex roles we play, workplace narratives must shift to recognise and value women who take on stretch roles.

Lasting careers must be sustainable. We need career pathways that offer both longevity and growth to support women’s advancement.

Our industry doesn’t exist in a bubble. Women haven’t been heard, seen, or respected equally to men throughout history and across society, and it’s almost impossible to be unaffected by that. For society – and the industry – to genuinely make progress, men in positions of power have to do better and change their thinking, rather than putting all the onus on women to force change. 

I have pushed myself into situations that have felt naturally uncomfortable because I reject the idea that women don’t belong there. Standing for something bigger than myself has given me courage on stages, in boardrooms, and in difficult conversations. If I want to see more women in positions of power, I have to be seen myself. Even if it terrifies me. That has been rewarding, and at times, exhausting.

If the industry is genuinely making progress, and if opportunities come your way, go for it! Don’t hold back. Representation matters, and you have every right to be there.

Maddy Mewing – Director, Platforms

The biggest shift still needed is moving from intent to action. Building lasting careers for women in tech requires more than hiring; it demands consistent investment in development, sponsorship, and clear pathways to leadership.

As a team leader with six of eight members being women, I see it as my responsibility to actively create those opportunities. That means advocating for them, ensuring access to stretch roles and leadership exposure, and helping build the confidence to take the next step.

When flexibility, visibility, and opportunity are embedded in culture, progression becomes the norm rather than the exception

—
At Magnite, our people shape our culture. The perspectives shared here reflect the leadership we see across our offices every day and reinforce the importance of continually evolving how we hire, develop, and support talent — so progression is accessible to all.

The post Moving the Needle From Intent to Action for Women in Tech appeared first on Magnite.