WunderKIND Ads’ Adam Gendelman On Why The Best Ads Are The Ones That Don’t Interrupt
In this latest Innovator Spotlight from our new report The TV OS Wars: The Battle For The Living Room, WunderKIND Ads’ Adam Gendelman explains why advertisers and audiences love home screen ads and what the future of TV OS advertising looks like. You can download the report for free thanks to WunderKIND Ads and our other sponsors, Ventura TV OS and V.
“Pause ads and home screen ads are becoming a bigger deal because advertisers are looking to expand their investment beyond in-stream placements,” says Adam Gendelman, GM at Wunderkind Ads. “They want a more effective, more prominent way to deliver their message, and these formats give them that high-impact placement without interrupting the viewer’s content experience.”
ALAN WOLK (AW): What was the original idea behind the company’s ad business?
ADAM GENDELMAN (AG): The basic idea was that we wanted to serve what we call “kind ads” to users.
What that means is that we are not hitting users with an ad the second they get to a page. We let the user get what they want out of the page. They can scroll the content, they can move around, they can actually engage with what they came there to see.
Then, when we know they are done or disengaged with the content, we look for specific behavioral triggers that indicate they are likely to leave the page. That is the inflection point where we serve the ad.
So we are not interrupting the content consumption experience. We are reaching users when they are more receptive to seeing a message.
AW: What made that approach feel necessary?
AG: When we looked at the ad tech ecosystem, a lot of companies were serving ads on arrival or, even worse, during someone’s content consumption experience.
Our data indicated then, and still indicates now, that users do not want to be interrupted while they are consuming content. If you serve them an ad on arrival, or while they are in the middle of reading or watching something, they are usually just going to click out of it.
But when you reach them at that inflection point, when they are done with the actual content on the page, they are more receptive. They are also more likely to engage with the ad. So the model is really about leaning into the user experience and then using that to drive performance for advertisers.
AW: How did that thinking lead you into CTV?
AG: With CTV, we were looking for a product that matched the ethos of what we were already doing on desktop and mobile. We did not want to interrupt the user while they were streaming content.
That is what led us to pause ads.
What we brought to market was the ability to transact on pause ads programmatically, so that programmatic buyers could access the format through one uniform deal ID and one uniform creative across apps and OEMs, rather than having to traffic creative directly to each app or platform one by one.
AW: Why is that important in the TV OS world?
AG: The TV OS landscape is complicated, especially because there is not much standardization around pause ads or interactive formats.
Right now, if you want to run these formats holistically, it is very difficult because every app and OEM has its own specifications. Roku, LG, VIZIO and others all have different specs for their interactive formats.
So if you are trying to run across all of them, you often have to traffic on a one-to-one direct basis. Our approach is to take the creative and match it to the form and specs of each app or OEM so that buyers can run these formats more easily and more consistently.
AW: Are pause ads the main focus right now, or are you also looking at other CTV ad formats?
AG: Right now, we are very focused on pause ads because they match our ethos from the display business so well.
But we are also interested in home screen ads as the next frontier.
When you turn on your TV, the first screen you reach is the home screen. That is incredibly valuable real estate. But OEMs are understandably protective of it because it is such a prominent placement, so they have not necessarily opened it up fully to third-party demand.
The hypothesis is that there is going to be a lot more supply for home screen units than there is for pause ads. If you think about someone hitting the pause button, that is a little more scarce. But someone turning on their TV and landing on the home screen happens all the time.
So I think what will happen is that there will be more available inventory that apps and OEMs need to fill, and that creates an opportunity for partners like us to help generate demand in the marketplace.
AW: Why are pause ads and home screen ads becoming such a bigger deal right now?
AG: Pause ads and home screen ads are becoming a bigger deal because advertisers are looking to expand their investment beyond in-stream placements.
They want more effective, more prominent, higher-impact ways to deliver their message. Pause ads and home screen units can do that.
A pause ad can take up the full screen and remain visible for as long as the viewer has the content paused. A home screen ad is also a very prominent placement. It is almost like a homepage takeover on the TV.
So from both the advertiser perspective and the publisher perspective, these interactive formats are becoming much more attractive.
AW: How do home screen ads fit with Wunderkind’s idea of “kind advertising”?
AG: They fit really well because we are not obstructing the user from getting to their content.
When someone turns on their TV and lands on the home screen, whether that is on VIZIO, Samsung, LG, TiVo, V or another OEM, the ad is there in the environment. But it is not interrupting content they are already watching.
So it plays into the same ethos. We are creating an ad experience that is prominent and valuable for the advertiser, but we are not blocking or interrupting the content experience for the viewer.
AW: And pause ads work the same way?
AG: Exactly. Pause ads work because the user is the one taking the action.
The viewer has decided to pause the content. They may be getting a drink of water, answering the front door, walking the dog or doing something else. During that moment, the real estate is available, and the ad is visible for as long as the content remains paused.
That is very different from an in-stream ad break, where you are interrupting someone while they are watching. With a pause ad, the viewer has already stepped away from the content experience, which makes the placement feel much more natural.
AW: Why do you think pause ads performed so well?
AG: A pause ad can take up the full screen and live on the screen for at least 60 seconds when someone takes the pause action. So intuitively, people in the industry understand that it can be a very effective experience.
