---

This is a written summary for the interview with John Batter, CEO of Extreme Reach (XR), for a quick-read Q&A format, highlighting key insights on advertising, entertainment, and technology. The following is an 8-question summary of the transcript.

 

1. Vitrina: What is the core business of Extreme Reach (XR), and how does it relate to managing advertising and marketing operations?

John Batter: XR is the leading platform for managing advertising and marketing operations. This means we help brands predominantly manage all aspects of their ad creative, all the way from talent payments at the very front end onto rights, and then the delivery of the actual ads themselves so that every ad lands exactly how and where it should. One way to frame it is that “What Salesforce has done for chief revenue officers and for sales ops is sort of what we do for ad ops and marketing ops and CMOs“.

“What Salesforce has done for chief revenue officers and for sales ops is sort of what we do for ad ops and marketing ops and CMOs.”

---

2. Vitrina: Can you break down the two main parts of Extreme Reach’s business, XR Pay and XR Ads, and describe the services offered?

John Batter: Our business breaks down into kind of two pieces: a payments part, which we call XR Pay, and an advertising piece, XR Ads. The payment side traditionally focuses on paying the talent in front of the camera in TV commercials, where we are the largest player in that in the US. We are also moving into crew payments (talent behind the camera), paying vendors and influencers, providing kind of a one-stop shop for brands taking production in-house to handle all payments. XR Ads focuses on our global ad database for managing all advertising assets on behalf of big, global brands. We offer a number of services ranging from transcoding and closed captioning to management of rights, helping brands ensure their ads get to the right servers in pristine condition.

“The payment side of our business is, traditionally been focused on paying the talent… We’re also sort of been moving into crew payments. So the talent behind the camera. And we’ve been doing more of that and then paying vendors and influencers, et cetera.”

---

3. Vitrina: What is Extreme Reach’s client base and global reach, and what groups do you verticalize around in the ad business?

John Batter: We’re in about 140 markets today and have about 10,000 total customers. We handle around $100 billion a year of ad spending that flows through our system and process about $1.5 billion of payroll every year in our payments business. I would say off the top of my head, 75 or 80% of the Fortune 500 advertisers are clients of ours. In the ad business, we service brands, work with their agencies, and work with publishers. Our largest market is the US, followed by major European markets (UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Nordics), as well as some major Asian markets and a few of the big markets in Latin America, like Brazil.

“I would say off the top of my head, 75 or 80 % of the Fortune 500 advertisers are clients of ours.”

---

4. Vitrina: What trends are you observing in the film and TV sector regarding production and advertising, including the shift towards digital?

John Batter: Within the payments space, we’re seeing more globalization and production, with work getting done all over the world and then stitched together. Entertainment is both a big producer of content and a big consumer of advertising. Regarding digital advertising, we see the trailer is the master print which then gets cut down into 30-second, 15-second, and now increasingly targeted seven-second spots. We are seeing lots of that, and I think AI is just going to take that from… 500, 5,000, 50,000, I think, over time, which makes the marketer’s job more difficult to manage all of that creative—and that’s where we come in.

“the trailer is the master print and the trailer is available both in theaters and on YouTube… Then the trailers get cut down into 30 second spots and 15 second spots and now increasingly targeted seven second spots.”

---

5. Vitrina: How is Extreme Reach addressing the technological complexity in advertising, particularly in light of AI and the dynamic ad-supported solutions in the entertainment space?

John Batter: We think AI is generally a positive trend for our business, as it leads to more content and more complexity, and we get hired to manage complexity. We’re spending quite a bit of time modernizing our platform, adding new functionality, and preparing ourselves for AI. The new trend is Dynamic Ad Insertion Solutions, where you can buy the composition plus the moment in time—the right ad at the right time—and we are providing the infrastructure to make that happen. Our focus is on contextual advertising, putting the right ad with the right content at the right time for the right audience. We supply the ecosystem with enough data attached to our XR ID that we can map to content metadata to get the right match.

“Complexity continues to grow. Varieties and versioning on the ads isn’t going away. It’s just going to increase. And so, you know, I think those are the… big mega trends.”

---

6. Vitrina: Can you describe your career journey leading up to Extreme Reach and how it connects to the company’s current business?

John Batter: The first sort of two-thirds of my career I spent on the content side, really making video games and animated movies. I then moved into the digital distribution of content at a joint venture between DreamWorks and Technicolor called MGO, and then to the discovery of that content at Gracenote. For the last eight years or so, I then moved to kind of much more of the ad-supported side of the business, into testing ads and now distributing ads, and paying the actors. This business is very similar to that [Gracenote] except built around advertising: “whereas there’s a grace note ID that is unique for each piece of content, there’s an XR ID which is unique for each piece of content that we have at XR Extreme Reach”.

“I spent on the content side, both in, as you pointed out, video games and animated movies, really making games and movies and getting them into the theaters.”

---

7. Vitrina: What are Extreme Reach’s plans for expansion in the entertainment sector, particularly in payments, and what kind of partners are you looking to connect with?

John Batter: We’ve been in entertainment payments for a while. We are investing in UI and optimizing the workflows to get people kind of on payroll and onboarded quickly and efficiently. We handle union wages and work with production companies to interpret the union contracts. We are looking to continue to grow in this marketplace by bringing new things to entertainment businesses to help them. We’re always interested to hear from creative agencies that are looking to move their ad content into the right networks. Also for production companies, our payments business, not only for talent, but for crew payments. That whole area—talent, crew, vendor payments—is an area where we’ve been investing in and will continue to invest in. If people are using AI to generate metadata for advertising, they can call us.

“Also for production companies, our payments business, not only for talent, but for crew payments… Talent crew vendor payments that whole area is an area where we’ve been investing in and will continue to invest in.”

---

8. Vitrina: What is the outlook for Extreme Reach into 2026, considering the broader ad and CTV environment?

John Batter: We are extremely hopeful for 2026 and expect it to be a better ad environment year. Our big brand clients will be focused on growth, and through growth, advertising, our businesses grow. International is for sure one of our growth factors. We continue to believe that the big screen in the house is where a lot of the important advertising still happens. I continue to be a big believer in Connected Televisions (CTV), both here and globally. The living room will continue to be the ground on which a lot of these sorts of brands build awareness. We think our ability to help both the brands and the publishers connect that for the best experience in the living room is a big growth opportunity for us, connecting linear television, CTV, and addressable television.

“the big screen or the living room or the big screen in the house, not the big screen in the theaters, but the big screen, is where a lot of the important advertising still happens.”