Outside Interactive Posted Its First Profit—But It’s No longer Just a Media Company

Mark Stenberg: First off, why do brands need Tatari to buy a Super Bowl ad? What can’t they do themselves? 

Amit Sharan: Ad-buyers cannot buy Super Bowl ads programmatically—they have to negotiate with the networks directly, and that requires not only relationships, but expertise. At the simplest level, we know how to negotiate these things based on historical data like viewership, pod position, and even creative performance. We are also a one-stop shop for cross-publisher measurement, so even if a brand negotiates the buy on their own, if they want to get a clear picture of its impact, they would have trouble doing that as effectively as we can. 

Mark: Tatari placed two streaming-only ads this year—Life360 and Tecovas—and two last year with Ro and TickPick. How are those different from traditional ad-buys?

Amit: It’s a leveling ground. In the Super Bowl you might be expecting Unilever, but now you can get Manscaped. Streaming is also deterministic—we know exactly who is watching—whereas linear is probabilistic, meaning we have data points to triangulate traffic and conversions but there is less certainty. The entry point is also lower, which means less of a dent on an annual marketing budget. 

Mark: How does the match-spend work? Do brands get to pick where the other inventory they want to buy?

Amit: Networks give brands places where they would love to see the match land, like priority programs, but it’s a conversation. In the next few weeks alone, NBC has the Super Bowl, Winter Olympics, and NBA All-Star Weekend. This ‘Legendary February’ is attracting a huge swell of lookalike audiences, so a lot of brands are spending their match-spend on those events. But, for other brands, it might make sense to wait till later in the year, like Black Friday or the holidays.

Mark: Is there a learning curve for newer brands experimenting with Super Bowl advertising?

Amit: A lot of digital-native brands are used to more performance-based marketing, with clear calls-to-action and models meant to track clicks and conversions. With the Super Bowl, they understand that this is about storytelling and brand marketing. Tecovas, for instance, is running a cinematic campaign they call an “anthem,” which is a great fit for the moment.

Mark: How many years away are we from a streaming-only Super Bowl?

Amit: CTV is the shiny new object and absolutely the future, but 50% of the country still has a cable subscription. The broadcast networks still offer a massive audience. The NFL would have to get a huge guarantee to abandon that, but rumor is that it’s planning to negotiate its rights again soon. Still, the only way it could happen anytime soon is if a Netflix or Amazon swooped in.