Jon Moffie And Adam Soroca On Why Magnite Is Betting Big On SMBs
“Analysts project CTV at $100 billion by 2030—but that’s not going to happen unless millions of SMB advertisers move over from search and social,” says Jonathan Moffie, Magnite’s new Head of Agentic Product, following their acquisition of his start-up, streamr.ai. “That’s why we built streamr with broadcasters, platforms, and agencies in mind. It’s not about chasing mom-and-pop shops one by one—it’s about enabling partners who can bring whole categories of SMBs into connected TV.”
We sat down with Moffie and Adam Soroca, Magnite’s Chief Product Officer to learn more about their vision.
ALAN WOLK (AW): Let’s start with the big question. Why streamr? What was the strategic rationale behind the acquisition?
ADAM SOROCA (AS): We see the next wave of growth for connected TV coming from several areas, and one of the most exciting is the SMB space. We’d been watching that category, working with partners, and tracking the streamr team for about a year and a half. We really liked the team, the product, and the opportunity to bring them into Magnite. This was a deliberate move to give our partners—agencies, broadcasters, and other CTV sellers—the technology streamr built. We’re not going direct to SMBs ourselves.
AW: Was there one aspect of the product that stood out, or was it more the overall package?
AS: The overall package was compelling, but three things jumped out: how the team applied the latest AI models to this use case, how they packaged the workflow around those models, and the strength of the team itself. That combination made it the right fit for us.
AW: Companies like Meta and Google dominate SMB ad spend with self-serve tools. How do you see CTV taking market share from them?
AS: Historically, the bar to advertise on television was high. Creating something that looks right on the big screen in the living room was a different level of sophistication than putting an ad on digital or social. With streamr’s technology, that bar has been lowered. Any SMB can now create a professional, engaging ad that belongs on the big screen—while agencies and broadcasters maintain the quality standards their programming demands.
AW: And on a bigger-picture level, do you see CTV becoming the primary channel for SMBs?
AS: It depends on the category and the campaign objective. An awareness campaign for an auto dealer is very different from trying to drive immediate sales. Marketers will need a mix—CTV, online video, display, mobile. That’s core to Magnite’s omnichannel approach. We also know from studies that running TV campaigns raises the performance of the rest of the digital mix.
AW: Walk me through the user experience. How does streamr make video creation seamless?
JONATHAN MOFFIE (JM): We’ve always tried to make it the easiest way to advertise on streaming TV. You enter your business name or website, and our base model generates a prospecting ad in about 15 seconds. With our latest model—first to integrate Google’s VO3—it takes three to five minutes, but the same process. Then you can edit, make changes, and launch. We’ve also built agency tools like Storyboard, which give creatives more control to refine ads before launch.
AW: Who are you working with—mostly business owners directly, or agencies?
JM: Our market is broadcasters, ad tech platforms, agencies, and now some retail media networks. They already have direct access to millions of SMBs. We’re seeing strong agency adoption at scale—law firms, HVAC companies, pest control. Agencies aggregate the spend. From the start, our thesis was to white-label our tech to these larger partners to accelerate democratization of CTV ad buying. That’s what’s happening now.
AW: People often bring up the issue of fragmentation: there’s no single CTV “walled garden” like Google or Facebook. How do you solve for that?
AS: Agencies already use Magnite to run across virtually all U.S. CTV supply we manage. Where streamr helps is making it seamless to create assets that can run across that footprint. And again, it’s our partners—the agencies, broadcasters, tech providers—placing the ads. We’re not working directly with mom-and-pop shops.
AW: Where are we with AI-generated video quality?
JM: Google’s Veo 3 really set a new bar. With our 4.0 models we can now put people front and center. Six months ago we had safeguards—don’t show hands, keep people in the background—because the models would do weird things. Now we can show natural smiles and movement. That’s allowed agencies to bring bigger spenders, like e-commerce brands, into CTV.
AW: Are agencies starting to build teams around this?
JM: Yes. We’re hearing from agencies that they want more sophisticated tools, and they’ve got creatives who are becoming specialists in prompting. Their role is figuring out how to get the best commercial out of these models, and that’s becoming part of their career path.
AW: Can the commercials you create be reused outside of CTV?
JM: Definitely. Agencies asked to run CTV spots on YouTube, so we built that in. We also have a template where you can take a successful Instagram Reel and repurpose it into a cinematic-quality CTV commercial. We’re focused on CTV, but we’ll adapt assets from other platforms when it makes sense.
AW: Let’s talk about the size of the opportunity. What numbers do you use to think about the SMB market?
JM: Analysts project CTV at $100 billion by 2030. But it’s literally not going to happen unless millions of SMB advertisers move from search and social into CTV. Historically it’s been about 500 advertisers driving most of the spend, and that won’t get us there. What Magnite and streamr are doing is enabling net new advertisers to come in through broadcasters, platforms, and agencies.
