The could’ve beens are vast; all hypotheticals involve a fair amount of speculation; though AppNexus’ history is littered with a series of near misses and close calls that make the could’ve-been-list nearly endless.

Start with AppNexus’ most pivotal moment: AT&T.

Right business, wrong time

The telco’s decision to buy AppNexus was triggered by an ill-timed and expensive move for Time Warner — one that stemmed from an identity crisis at another heavily-indebted, high dividend telco that didn’t want to be viewed as a slow growth legacy dumb pump. So it decided to reinvent itself as the next Google. This didn’t happen, obviously.

The plunge into streaming wiped out cash flows from HBO, the road got bumpy for Turner, and the film and TV studios became captive production units supplying the streaming operation. Oh, and the Xandr addressable ad unit was nothing special, as it turned out. AT&T folded, of course. Being a dumb pipe isn’t sexy, but hey, it works.

But what if AT&T bosses weren’t so cocksure about advertising?

There are no easy answers to this question. Perhaps, AT&T puts more effort into managing data across its silos so it can be exploited effectively. And maybe this forms part of a much expansive strategy that leverages the expertise, participation and data of all the telco’s stakeholders from customers through to advertisers. Ultimately, it takes time to create these network effects — something AT&T bosses didn’t quite understand.

In fairness, few media execs had AppNexus figured out. The ad tech vendor was unlike any other ad tech vendor around. It had built customisable solutions for media buyers (it was the first ad tech vendor to support custom algorithms for digital ad targeting and programmatic bidding) and embedded itself with publishers through direct integrations. It was a platform, not just a programmatic marketplace.

Had AT&T’s senior team taken a more measured approach to unlocking AppNexus’ potential then chances are the ad tech vendor could still become Xandr in September 2018, but merge with WarnerMedia at the same time.

Execs figure the targeting and measurement aspects of Xandr’s data capabilities could sharpen the performance of ads appearing on WarnerMedia’s properties, and also bet the quality of that content is enough to temper the concerns of TV advertisers that the more targeted an ad, the more likely it ran against a random Peppa Pig video.

Cut to the 2019 upfront season and both WarnerMedia and Xandr are unified during presentations, discussions and negotiations. The decision to have both businesses pitch separately at the event is a non-starter in this reality. Buyers are a whole lot clearer about what AT&T’s vision looks like as a result.

“AT&T underestimated both the internal resistance to this …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron