Xaxis boss Brian Lesser on the future of digital video and WPP’s role in a brave new media world

One thing we will be hearing a lot more about in 2015 is ‘programmatic’ TV and video and WPP is determined to be a major player in this through its Xaxis operation.

It’s quite hard to work out what Xaxis is, in part because it seems to have changed quite fundamentally since its formation in 2011.

The original idea, one might surmise, was to be a programmatic marketplace where Xaxis would buy large quantities of digital ‘inventory’ from publishers and sell it on to its clients. This appears to have been dumped as some big clients refused to play.

Now it’s – a bit more complicated than that.

Here’s Xaxis CEO Brian Lesser explaining, pretty candidly, how the company and the marketplace have both changed and what Xaxis – which he says is a media rather than technology company – is up to. In part it’s a counter-offer to clients who may be tempted to deal direct with the likes of Facebook and Google – what he calls ‘walled gardens.’

It’s interesting stuff and, no doubt, we’ll be hearing more from Mr Lesser.