“On TV & Video“ is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.
Mike Richter, VP of global revenue operations for CTV and digital at Trusted Media Brands, will be speaking at Programmatic I/O, taking place in Las Vegas from May 23–25. You don’t want to miss it. Click here to register.
Publishers are finally pivoting to video, but this time, they’re doing it on their own terms.
For Trusted Media Brands (TMB), the publisher of Reader’s Digest, the acquisition of viral video publisher Jukin Media last August has been both a revenue driver and a stepping stone to connected TV. (Fun fact: Reader’s Digest celebrates its 100th birthday this year.)
“Jukin didn’t have a strong dotcom strategy – we barely focused on our dot coms whatsoever – and TMB didn’t have a very strong video and social strategy,” said Mike Richter, who joined Trusted Media Brands from Jukin after the deal. He now works across both CTV and digital as TMB’s VP of global revenue operations, marrying the brands’ efforts together.
Jukin’s portfolio includes free ad-supported TV (FAST) channels born out of social brands, including People Are Awesome, FailArmy and The Pet Collective, as well newly launched channels that pull content from TMB’s portfolio of lifestyle publications, such as Taste of Home and Family Handyman.
Last year, TMB, which uses Unruly as its SSP, grew its streaming viewership by 76% and its revenue by more than 110%.
Richter spoke with AdExchanger.
AdExchanger: What is an example of something that digital media companies can learn from the CTV space?
MIKE RICHTER: First, it’s that getting into CTV is not as scary as it sounds. It does require heavy investment, but there is also a lucrative return. CTV took what digital has done and made it simpler.
CTV was built on the same soil that digital was built on using the same underlying VAST specs mixed with the…