The Trade Desk’s Lukas Fassbender on simplifying measurement for advertisers

Programmatic advertising adoption has been growing across Europe. But there are still some misunderstandings about the market.

Notably, cracks are showing in the broadcasting “duopoly” thanks to the emergence of streaming giants.

“You have new players that are fully digitalized, fully coming in pushing the automation theme,” said Lukas Fassbender, senior vice president of revenue for EMEA at The Trade Desk. “They allow you to quickly change an ecosystem that feels the pressure, which is good, and drives innovation for more classical broadcasters to consider what the future look like.”

Fassbender also talked to The Current Editor-in-Chief Stephanie Paterik in London about programmatic growth and the future of measurement, including if there will be a single “winner takes all.”

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

So many people we’ve interviewed have called the year ahead “the year of measurement.” Do you agree, and how does everyone win at measurement? Or will there be a single champion?
This is twofold. One, I don’t think there will be a single winner that takes it all. I think measurement is at the core of what we do. We need to prove the value that we deliver to advertisers and agencies. If we don’t do that well, there’s no need for them to use us. If the decisioning we provide doesn’t help them elevate their brand and their outcomes, it’s not worth it.

So measurement is at the core of that. So far, measurement is very fragmented and very complex. There’s the easy path, right? You go to one of the walled gardens, and they have one measurement solution that tells you exactly what the outcome is … not really independent, but it tells you what your measurement outcome is. And then you come into a world like ours where there are a multitude of options that you can go for, whether you go for incremental lift, brand lift, clicks, conversions, views. There’s so many things you can measure against.

In the end, I think we as an industry need to understand we need to tie this back to business outcomes. That’s what a brand is in it for. They want to understand what the value is back to them.

I think a challenge that everyone in the programmatic space faces is how complex it is and how difficult it can be to understand and to come on to that learning curve. What do you find is the is the simplest way to show that value?
There’s always other sides to the world of how to make it simpler. We’re in a world where it’s not about a single controlled source of inventory, for example. If it’s all your own inventory, it’s all the same. If you control the big user-generated content network, well guess what? You control everything. It’s all the same.

In our world, we’re dealing with a Spotify request being audio. We’re dealing with a Netflix request being CTV. We have display. We have video-native ads. That’s very complex, very fragmented in terms of inventory differences. It’s on to us, again, as a platform to make that seamless for an advertiser to run their omnichannel campaign and not be confused by what is the setting I need to take for audio versus CTV versus display.

What do you see as the path to continued growth for programmatic advertising in the EMEA region?
We’ve been on a on a very good trajectory in EMEA. And I think the market is accelerating very much so. But we’re looking at markets that are fairly traditional in many senses. You have EMEA, a region with many countries where we have offices, but very different maturity stages [for] each of them. You have markets like Italy or Spain that are further behind than, for example, the U.K. or Germany.

Italy is a great example. Very heavy linear TV-watching population. So those are opportunities for us, but they sometimes take longer than in other markets.

What do you think is the biggest misconception that people have about the EMEA market?
There are many misconceptions, probably too many for us to get into. EMEA is often considered very fragmented. And yes, there are many cultures, many languages, [so] we are fragmented. It’s not one country. However, when you come into the biggest markets — let’s say the EU five markets, for example: Italy, Spain, France, Germany, the U.K. — you’re quickly looking at a market that is not that fragmented.

We’re talking about often a duopoly of one or two broadcasters, basically owning 70%-plus of the market. Those dynamics make it sometimes harder for a market to progress. In our world, decisioning and fragmentation leads to the automation and opportunity for us to decide upon what is the right placement for an advertiser. That is sometimes happening much slower than if you have a much more fragmented market.

Now, over the last [several] years — where players like Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney entered the market — suddenly there is a complete shift happening because we’re talking about significant advertising-funded reach, which wasn't there before. Before you needed to go to two broadcasters. You were able to get 80%-plus reach. Now they’re losing reach. You have new players that are fully digitalized, fully coming in pushing the automation theme, and they allow you to quickly change an ecosystem that feels the pressure, which is good, and drives innovation for more classical broadcasters to consider what the future look like.

The Current is owned and operated by The Trade Desk Inc.