Partner Spotlight with Plex

In this spotlight, I sat down with Audrey Layman, Sr. Manager, Ad Partnerships at Plex.

Plex has a very innovative offering–it’s the first (and only) destination for free ad-supported movies, shows, and live TV, and it even lets users use the platform to house their own content. What would you say is most unique about your audience versus other platforms?

Plex is the largest, independent ad-supported streaming service with 25M monthly active users, 50K+ on-demand titles, and 600+ Live TV channels. Plex is the ultimate all-in-one entertainment platform, simplifying how fans discover and experience the movies, TV, and music they love from across the streaming universe. Featuring a user-friendly interface, Plex is the only app to seamlessly connect users to a vast library of free content, their favorite streaming services, their personal media, and now, their friends.

With its powerful Discover Together feature, Plex has personalized the “what to watch” experience, enabling its users to add friends from the broader Plex community, share comments and ratings, create universal watchlists, and more. Using Discover Together, users are able to explore what their friends are watching, as well as what’s trending and available across their selected services.

This unique merging of intuitive technology and human connection makes Plex the go-to platform for entertainment fans looking to search less and watch more, eliminating the streaming struggle once and for all.

How does programmatic play into your monetization strategy?

Since launching our ad-supported business in 2019, Plex has taken a programmatic-first approach. Through custom ad-serving capabilities, strategic partnerships with SSPs, and ongoing yield optimization, Plex has been able to monetize effectively without the need for direct sales. We want to deliver ads that are relevant to our viewers and programmatic gives us the tools to connect advertisers to our audience with automation and efficiency.

There are a lot of ad tech partners in the space to help monetize inventory, why has Nexxen been the partner you chose to work with?

Plex is available across 40+ devices in over 200 countries, so our most successful partners have global, cross-platform capabilities. We seek out partners such as Nexxen, who are committed to innovation and interoperability, with differentiated demand through strong agency partnerships and diverse DSP integrations.

I can’t believe it but we’re almost at the end of 2023–what exciting things can we expect from Plex in 2024?

Plex is moving closer to our vision of bringing viewers and the entertainment they want faster by launching our recommendation-based Discover Together feature set that allows users to interact with and discuss their favorite movies and shows with their friends on Plex. From an advertising perspective, we are launching on-platform sponsorship opportunities that allow advertisers to go beyond traditional in-stream video and break through the noise with high-impact units. We are also embracing Plex’s unique first-party assets and interoperable identity solutions to improve targeting and attribution for our advertisers.