Guest · Connected TV and streaming
Julie Selman
SVP Head of EMEA, Magnite
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.
About
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.
Career21 years
- 2021 to now Magnite SVP Head of EMEA
- 2021 Magnite Managing Director UK and Nordics
- 2018 to 2021 FreeWheel (a Comcast Company) Senior Director, Head of Demand Strategy, UK and Northern Europe
- 2016 to 2018 FreeWheel (formerly StickyAds) Senior Regional Director, Demand EMEA
Show earlier roles: StickyADS.tv, Taboola, Qualifio, CHEP, SDA Bocconi, Vibrant Media
- 2015 to 2016 StickyADS.tv Sales Director EMEA
- 2013 to 2015 Taboola Media Sales
- 2012 to 2013 Qualifio Country Manager UK
- 2011 to 2012 CHEP Manager, Commercial Excellence and Customer Solutions
- 2009 to 2010 SDA Bocconi MBA (Finance)
- 2005 to 2008 Vibrant Media Head of Sales Italy / Business Development Manager Italy
How Julie thinks3 convictions
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The new TV ecosystem is convergence, not replacement.
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.
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Premium and programmatic are not opposites.
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.
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Trust is fundamental. Every transaction is built on it.
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.
