Technology Spotlight
A conversation with Richard Ottoy, VP of Sales at Picnic brought to you by Ultimate Asset.
“Budgets are under pressure and media buyers are expected to do more with less.“
What is Picnic’s elevator pitch?
Picnic is building the new standard for Inventory Intelligence. Our proprietary data platform, PIQ, gives media planners the data they need to evaluate programmatic inventory quality before they buy. Using Synthetic User technology, PIQ surfaces signal insights related to a domain’s Ad Experience and Publisher Profile, modelling them into one single PIQ score. This helps advertisers to make smarter, faster decisions on digital ad placement quality across the open web, leading to more impactful brand outcomes.
What business problem is Picnic solving?
Programmatic advertising has a quality problem. Most programmatic spend goes through platforms that treat all impressions as equal, regardless of what the user experience is actually like. That creates waste, undermines trust and makes campaign performance unpredictable. We’re solving that by giving buyers the data they need to buy intentionally, and optimise campaigns based on their own definition of quality.
What sets Picnic apart from competitors? What is your unique selling proposition?
While others rely on domain-level signals, PIQ gives you transparent, placement level insight into inventory quality, and a single PIQ Score which factors in over 100 signals that actually affect campaign performance. The PIQ Score considers Ad Experience metrics like ad density and average ad distance, to Publisher Profile signals like domain authority and content quality. All so you can cut through the noise, optimise with confidence and scale what works by leveraging high-quality inventory.
Who is your primary target audience? What are their needs and pain points?
We primarily work with agencies and AdTech partners. Many are under pressure to improve digital advertising efficiency without sacrificing scale. They’re frustrated with low-quality inventory, false premiums and a lack of control over ad placements. They want transparency, efficiency and smarter tools that naturally integrate into workflows.
How does Picnic solve these need states of the audience and fill the gap in the market? What is the value you bring to them?
We help buyers take control of inventory quality and integrate PIQ into their campaign planning process. PIQ makes it easy to vet sitelists or curate custom campaign sitelists depending on campaign requirements.
Describe Picnic’s company culture.
We’re a small but ambitious startup with a curious and bold team! We hire people who care deeply about their craft and we give them the space to build things that matter. We’re small but focused. Everyone’s trusted to own problems, take smart risks and shape how we build.
What are the most common misconceptions about Picnic or sector within technology?
That ‘quality’ is binary! What might be a ‘high-quality’ site for one brand may completely differ for another. Quality is subjective, which is why we built PIQ, to enable brands and agencies to apply their own thresholds, based on their campaign objectives and brand safety requirements.
What are some of the key consumer and industry macro and micro economic trends impacting your business?
Budgets are under pressure and media buyers are expected to do more with less. That’s driving renewed focus on efficiency, not just in CPMs, but in actual brand outcomes. At the same time, supply is exploding, with a flood of MFA pages diluting performance, meaning buyers need sharper tools to stay in control.
What are your predictions for the remainder of this year?
The perception of “quality inventory” will shift. Buyers will start to move beyond brand safety sitelists and look deeper at experience-based signals like load speed, ad density and content relevancy. DSPs might start to surface more inventory-level transparency too, but it’ll take independent tools like PIQ to make that insight usable and unbiased.
One statement, piece of advice that the industry should be thinking about this year?
Stop optimising campaigns retrospectively. If you want better brand outcomes, optimise your inputs – and that starts with high quality inventory.
A conversation with Richard Ottoy, VP of Sales at Picnic
Technology spotlight is a series brought you by the team at Ultimate Asset. Our aim is to highlight brilliant technology across the advertising & marketing industries. From their elevator pitch, to the problem they are trying to solve, we hope you can take something new away from each interview. With over 50,000 new technology businesses incorporated in the UK each year, there will be something for everybody.
Ultimate Asset are a boutique global digital recruitment consultancy, specialising in hires in adtech, martech, media owners, brands and media agencies. With over 20 years of recruitment heritage in media, we support businesses across the UK, Europe, Asia & North America.
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