Oath’s Mahlman Targets Mobile Video & Europe As Priorities

COLOGNE — What do you get when you combine the content heft of Yahoo and AOL with the ad platforms each, and their owner Verizon, has rolled up over the years?

The newly-formed company is called Oath, and it is targeting new mobile video ad formats as the top priority for its developer staff.

“Mobile video is where we’re really putting a lot of our engineering resources and energy against.,” Oath’s ad platforms president Tim Mahlman, who came in from AOL, tells Beet.TV in this video interview.

“Over 70% of our consumers are actually being found on mobile. Therefore, we want to put a bigger presence on how we can accelerate sight, sound and motion in that in-app experience.”

In the flurry of commentary about Oath’s formation, most has centered on synergies in the emerging TV and video space. But don’t overlook that owner Verizon is principally a mobile operator. And Mahlman is excited about the new-wave.

“We were set with so may types of standard units on the desktop display side,” he says. “Mobile video is a whole new arena. We have a creative unit working very closely with brands to create innovative video and mobile capabilities that allow them to go in a much more creative, ad-format way.

“All of those will be packaged in to our programmatic platform, so that, as you execute them across, lets say, the Oath owned-and-operated (channels), you’ll be able to also use that across other marketplaces as well.”

Mahlman was one of several Oath execs speaking on stage at DMEXCO, the online advertising gathering in Germany this week. And he says Europe will be the company’s other big growth opportunity.

This video is part a series that examines programmatic from both the seller and the buyer perspective. It is presented by PubMatic. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.