Magnite brings programmatic ads to 4,000 aircraft via Viasat

The partnership opens a genuinely new premium inventory surface — in-flight screens and Wi-Fi portals — to automated, data-driven buying at a scale of 4,000-plus aircraft and 250 million annual passengers. For Magnite, this extends its sell-side infrastructure beyond CTV and open-web video into a high-attention, captive-audience environment that has historically relied on manual sponsorship deals. The deal also feeds into Magnite Orchestration, launched just six days earlier, which is designed to let AI buyer agents discover and activate omnichannel inventory — including new environments like in-flight media. Watch whether advertisers treat this inventory as an extension of CTV and digital video budgets or as a niche DOOH channel, and track Viasat's fill rates and CPMs in early campaigns.

Magnite's Viasat deal is part of a rapid sequence of product and partnership moves. Six days earlier, on June 11, 2026, Magnite launched Magnite Orchestration, a coordination layer enabling buyer-side AI agents to connect to its sell-side infrastructure, with dentsu and DIRECTV Advertising as named beta partners (per GlobeNewswire, June 2026). Before that, on April 27, 2026, Magnite expanded AI capabilities across SpringServe with a buyer agent tested by Disney Advertising, Kepler, MiQ, and Spectrum Reach (per Magnite press release, April 2026). On June 4, Magnite announced an expanded partnership with JioHotstar for programmatic monetization across live sports and entertainment in India.

Magnite's Q1 2026 results, reported in May, showed CTV crossing 51% of contribution ex-TAC for the first time at $82.3 million, up 30% year-over-year, with total revenue of $164.4 million, up 6% (per Magnite earnings, May 2026). The company's SpringServe platform serves 99% of US streaming supply according to Jounce Media's March 2025 benchmarking data. Despite this scale, analysts expect earnings to decline an average of 2.1% per year over the next three years, with rising AI and infrastructure costs cited as margin pressures (per Yahoo Finance/Simply Wall St, June 2026).

The broader in-flight advertising market is undergoing an infrastructure shift. Per Platform 195's 2026 analysis, improved satellite connectivity — including Starlink rollouts — is turning aircraft from sealed environments into live, connected ones, though much of what's labeled programmatic in-flight today remains basic in automation and measurement. Viasat's own product page reports 250 million passengers annually, 10,000-plus daily flights, and 650-plus global destinations. Panasonic has partnered with OneMedia to add structured media layers to IFE platforms, and Viasat has rolled out AirMall in partnership with InterLnkd to embed commerce into in-flight Wi-Fi environments.