Inside the Magnite C-Suite with Chief Strategy Officer Erik Hovanec

In this Q+A, we sit down with Chief Strategy Officer Erik Hovanec to discuss how he steers Magnite’s long-term vision, aligns cross-functional teams, and ensures our strategy stays ahead in a rapidly evolving ad tech landscape.

Magnite’s C-Suite series provides a unique opportunity to gain firsthand perspectives on critical industry trends and strategic initiatives shaping Magnite’s core values and future. 

You work across every department at Magnite. What part of that scope excites you the most? What keeps you energized in your role as Chief Strategy Officer?

What energizes me most is that I’m one of the few people here whose primary responsibility is looking out for our long-term interests. While most of the company is (rightfully) focused on quarterly goals, campaigns, or immediate priorities, I’m thinking 12, 24, even 36 months out, asking, “Where’s the world going, and how do we get there at the right time?” That timing piece is crucial. You don’t want to be late, but being too early can be just as risky.

A big part of my role is thinking strategically both offensively and defensively. Offensively, it’s about identifying new markets or capabilities we should move into, like we did with CTV when we acquired SpotX and SpringServe and merged with Telaria to create Magnite. Defensively, it’s about protecting against disintermediation and other threats to fortify our position.

You’re tasked with aligning programs across product, operations, and corporate development to support Magnite’s vision. How do you ensure that alignment sticks as teams move from strategic planning into day-to-day execution?

Alignment sticks when it’s built on strong, collaborative relationships and a shared sense of ownership. My job is to partner with other teams, ask how I can help, and make sure what we’re doing long-term is reflected in how they operate short-term.

I think the best thing someone in that situation can do is ask, “How can I help you?”  It’s a very empowering thing in a leadership role to take a genuine interest in other people’s success and then work diligently with them to make it happen. Over the long term, it provides incredible scale.  

There’s no substitute for genuine collaboration. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with such talented leaders across all parts of Magnite. As the company has matured, so have those partnerships, and that collective growth has been a real point of pride.

As we evolve, performance management of ourselves and our teams becomes even more important. That’s the next phase of our journey. We’ve gelled as a community. Now, it’s about excelling together and expecting consistent, high-level performance from ourselves and one another.

How do you ensure that Magnite’s strategy is differentiated in a crowded ad tech market?

One way we’ve differentiated is by betting early on the omnichannel nature of ad tech. For years, we’ve been building toward a one-stop shop model, where we can support everything from CTV and open web to mobile, audio, and more. The aim is to serve the buy side with a full suite of services that are efficient, effective, and scalable.

This all ladders back to a core belief I have about ad tech: at its heart, it’s a transaction between two principal parties, the advertiser and the publisher. Everyone else is an intermediary meant to make that transaction smoother, faster, and better. Magnite aims to make the transaction as efficient and valuable as possible for both sides. If we do that well, we win with scale and trust.

How do you define and measure strategic success at Magnite? What signals do you look for that indicate the strategy is working, beyond just revenue growth?

We get rated and reviewed by Wall Street every 90 days. There is a famous saying, “In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.” So, long-term our success is absolutely measured by the shareholder value that we create, even if there are ups and downs along the way from forces completely out of our control (such as interest rates or tariffs, etc).

When our multiple expands and our stock rises, it’s because investors can see and measure our progress in the form of our earnings, and they can anticipate our future performance and discount that back to the present. In other words, we get rewarded when we consistently perform, AND investors believe our future is bright.

Of course, strategy means nothing without execution. You can’t have one without the other. So when we see that alignment reflected in investor confidence, that’s when we know we’re on the right track.

If you weren’t working in strategy or ad tech, what’s a completely different career path you could see yourself in?

I’d probably be a chef. I love the creativity involved in cooking. There’s something satisfying about creating something, getting immediate feedback, and working with whatever ingredients you’ve got. It’s not something I’m planning to pursue, but in another life, I think there’s something really rewarding in that line of work too.