Magnite joins Databricks CustomerLake to automate streaming audience activation

This partnership signals a shift toward warehouse-native advertising, where activation happens where the data lives rather than through external transfers. For the streaming industry, this reduces the latency and technical complexity of matching first-party subscriber data with ad inventory. By embedding Magnite’s sell-side capabilities directly within the Databricks ecosystem, publishers can monetize audiences faster while maintaining stricter data governance. As privacy regulations tighten, the reliance on these 'zero-copy' frameworks will likely become the standard for large-scale CTV players. Watch for whether other major SSPs follow into the agentic CDP space to maintain parity in data interoperability.

The launch of CustomerLake marks Databricks' formal entry into the martech sector, positioning its 'Data Intelligence Platform' as a direct competitor to traditional CDPs. Per MarTech.org (June 2026), the ecosystem includes a broad set of initial partners such as The Trade Desk, Adobe, Meta, and LiveRamp. Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi stated that the platform is designed for 'infinity campaigns,' using AI agents to continuously analyze and act on customer data in real time. This move builds on the company’s February 2025 general availability of Databricks Clean Rooms, which enabled privacy-safe data matching on AWS and Azure without raw data exposure.

Magnite’s involvement comes amid significant momentum in its streaming business. Per the company’s Q1 2026 earnings report (May 2026), CTV contribution ex-TAC grew 30% year-over-year to $82.3 million, accounting for more than 50% of its total revenue for the first time. During the earnings call, CEO Michael Barrett highlighted broad-based growth across partners including Netflix, Disney+, and Warner Bros. Discovery. The Databricks partnership aligns with Magnite's strategy to capture the migration of advertisers toward automated, net-basis programmatic transactions, which now represent the vast majority of its volume.

Other industry leaders are similarly moving toward decentralized data activation. For example, Adstra and Stagwell recently announced integrations with Databricks Clean Rooms to resolve and enrich first-party data in place. This broader trend toward 'zero-copy' advertising aims to solve the 'engineering tax' of manual data syncs, which has historically slowed campaign execution in the fragmented streaming landscape.