The New TV
Twenty years across digital media, ad tech and now the new TV ecosystem. SVP Head of EMEA at Magnite, the world’s largest independent sell-side advertising company, on the convergence of linear and streaming, why hyper-local data targeting is reshaping TV, and the role of marketplaces, curation and trust in a programmatic world.
“Transactions are built on trust, and this is increasingly important as AI becomes more sophisticated."”
Julie Selman is SVP Head of EMEA at Magnite, the world’s largest independent sell-side advertising company. Twenty years across digital media starting at Vibrant Media in Italy, through Taboola, StickyAds/FreeWheel and Magnite. A film and TV graduate, who grew up with digital advertising and now works at the centre of the convergence between linear and streaming.
As SVP, Head of EMEA at Magnite, Julie oversees the commercial strategy, planning, product requirements and business development for the entire region.
She works closely with the regional leaders, teams and partners based in Berlin, London, Madrid, Milan and Paris to deliver the best independent technology solutions, service, expertise, and outcomes for Magnite’s publishers and buyers.
Julie has over 15 years of experience working across the digital advertising industry, specialising in connected TV (CTV), programmatic and digital media sales. Prior to Magnite, Julie held senior roles at FreeWheel and StickyADS.tv. Her extensive career and ability to speak multiple European languages have enhanced Julie’s expertise in strategising and delivering unprecedented results for her clients in the new TV ecosystem. Julie holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics, and an MBA from SDA Bocconi in Milan.
“Be curious and be comfortable with change. ”
Linear and streaming are complementary, not replacement. Both have a role.
Linear TV (even running on a smart TV) still owns the moments the whole nation watches together: live sport, the Traitors, Bake Off, the World Cup, the Olympics. That collective audience moment is not going anywhere. Streaming layers data, targeting and flexibility on top of that and turns big-budget upfront commitments into precise, A/B-testable buys with no minimum spend. The interesting thing is the funny inversion underway: broadcasters now releasing whole series at once, and streamers releasing one episode a week. Format is shaping behaviour, behaviour is shaping format, and the truth at the bottom is that content is what people choose.
Programmatic is not remnant inventory. Curation, data and transparency mean premium and automated coexist.
A persistent myth is that programmatic equals cheap and remnant. Julie’s argument is that this confused the display market a few years ago and has not been true in CTV since the start. Curation has reshaped the sell side: marketplaces let publishers package premium inventory by content type, audience, signal or geography, and let buyers understand what they are getting with more transparency than ever. Hyper-local activation (only advertise to delivery service customers when it is raining in Manchester) is the kind of precision linear could never deliver. Premium is now a function of curation as much as content.
Trust in media is low. Slop, fake content, AI-made imagery. Every transaction is built on trust.
Trust in media is at a low ebb, and AI is making it worse on the content side (slop, fake imagery, the question of what is real) and on the trading side (less human interaction, more automation eroding the perception of trust if not the substance). Julie’s view is that the human stays central to the system: traders moving from sending faxes to running sophisticated tools is the same arc the next generation will repeat with agentic AI, but transactions still rest on humans trusting humans, brands trusting publishers and buyers trusting platforms. Get trust wrong once and the relationship is over.
Stay close to the conversation.
New leaders and insights. No noise.