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If you’re buying TV through a DSP and calling it a strategy, Tatari CRO Andy Schonfeld has some notes. On this episode of AdExchanger’s Inside the Stack podcast, Schonfeld, who has spent seven years building Tatari’s revenue operation across 350 brands and 100-plus agencies, argues that programmatic is simply a tool, and not a TV media-buying strategy. |
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To make that point, Tatari put a billboard on the Palais at Cannes calling out DSPs at the industry’s biggest gathering of the year. He says, “If you’re only accessing programmatic TV, CTV specifically, through a DSP, then you’re missing a big portion of the TV marketplace.”
The problem? A lot of what people think of as streaming inventory isn’t actually accessible through a DSP. When consumers cut the cord and watch live sports through Hulu Live, roughly 90% of that inventory is still sold as linear passthrough, direct to the networks.
“You need to be connected directly to the network — whether it’s CBS, Fox, Disney — to be able to reach my household when I’m watching those live sports,” he says.
That’s the gap Tatari’s Upstream technology is designed to close — automating direct IO buying with major networks, improving measurement and allocation using $8 billion in historical spend data, and cutting out the fees that holding-company audits are now surfacing.
Also in this episode, we discuss where programmatic actually makes sense (spoiler: right after the NBA Finals buzzer) and how AI is compressing a 40-minute media-planning process into one minute.
Plus, Schonfeld explains why the future of TV comes down to three words: direct, automation, and convergence.
