Burning questions regarding the Netflix/Microsoft ad partnership shocker

When does Microsoft start thinking about taking out Roku and Amazon?

Those AT&T engineers must be good.

When the telecom giant made it’s huge ill-fated advertising play a few years back, one of the many questions hovering over that quest was - did then CEO Randall Stephenson talk to anyone in ad tech before building Xandr?

Because all you heard at the time -when AT&T spend a $1.6 billion on AppNexus - was how that ad tech platform was built for the display era, loaded with fraud, and way behind on video.

And AT&T’s plan was to use it as the foundation of the what was intended to become a centralized hub for all of TV advertising, one where buyers and sellers would plug in and trade uber-targeted video and TV ads - much like a high end version of Google’s ad exchange.

We all know how that turned out.

Well, except something must have worked (?) because when AT&T unloaded Xandr to Microsoft late last year in what seemed like a major head scratcher - well that deal seems to have been integral in helping the software giant land perhaps the most coveted third party ad assignment in the history of advertising.

Yes, Xandr/Microsoft is going to power Netflix’s much anticipated/speculated foray into ad supported video- a domain it had long sweared it would never enter.

Somewhere Brian O’Kelley is smiling. Maybe so is Brian McAndrews, and even Steve Ballmer.

I wont fully go into all the deep ironies here regarding Microsoft’s misadventures in ad tech, failed Google challenges, blown TV opportunities and full shutdowns. I’ll just say this - wow, is Satya Nadella building something incredibly intriguing.

It’s all still theoretical, and will take lots of integration and executions, but soon Microsoft will be able to offer:

• Ads on Netflix (a platform that reaches 220 million subscribers across the world, most of whom have been off limits to brands for a decade)

• Ads on the Xbox platform

• Ads on its owned video games

• Ads on other CTV apps on Xbox?

• Ads in major titles from ActivisionBlizzard

• Ads on LinkedIn - which doesn’t have nearly any of the problems other social networks have, and boasts of seemingly oodles of valuable data

• Data from Bing searches, and search ads

• Probably some other stuff

This raises so many interesting questions, such as:

1. Wait, so is the Xandr tech actually good?

2. What exactly is Microsoft/Xandr going to do for Netflix? Is this simply going to be like a Netflix SSP? Are they going to handle the actual serving of ads within Netflix shows, i.e. making sure they show up at the right time, Coke doesn’t end up next to Pepsi, stuff like that? Can they do that- or do they still need to hire a FreeWheel or Google for serving tech?

3. Wait, how pissed is Google? Yes, they have YouTube, but the company was finally going to crack TV again with a massive player!

4. Did Linda Yaccarino throw a chair at someone when she heard this news?

5. What data will Microsoft get to see and use as part of this deal? Will they be able to target Netflix households - by region, size, income?

6. Will Microsoft suddenly know which shows are popular on Netflix, stuff that Hollywood is dying to know?

7. I’ve asked this before, but how big of a streaming player can Xbox become? Gaming devices were early ways to stream video, but have been surpassed by the likes of Roku, Amazon Fire, and smart TVs themselves. But that doesn’t meant Microsoft can’t go bigger here, and look to become more of a CTV ad player? Maybe they should buy Hulu? Now we’re getting crazy.

8. Maybe Microsoft will just buy Netflix?

9. In-game advertising is back, but it’s always been marked by fits and starts. NBCU is making a push by partnering with Anzu. Could Microsoft suddenly elevate the medium (again) through ad packages that include Netflix, and lets say a free ad-supported version of World of Warcraft or some new Fortnite clone or something?

10. What exactly did Rob Wilk say to Ted Sarandos at Cannes? Was this deal inked at the Gutter Bar?

11. What else?