Nexxen today made pause ads available for programmatic trading through Nexxen SSP, its supply-side platform, with inventory from streaming publishers including DIRECTV Advertising and Philo open to the company's own demand-side platform and to approved third-party buying platforms, of which only Simpli.fi is named.

In Short

When someone pauses a show on a streaming service, some services now fill the frozen screen with an advertisement, and Nexxen has made those spots from DIRECTV Advertising, Philo and other streamers buyable through its automated trading system. That matters to advertisers and agencies because they can now reach this inventory from the buying tools they already use, including Simpli.fi, instead of setting up a separate deal for each streaming service. What changes is the number of routes into the format, not the format itself, and Nexxen has not published prices, deal terms or the full list of publishers involved.

What changed on September 15

The New York-datelined release, dated September 15, 2026, describes the change in narrow terms. Pause ads can now be transacted programmatically through Nexxen SSP. Buyers can reach that supply from Nexxen DSP, the company's own demand-side platform, as well as from other buying platforms the company has approved. According to Nexxen, the publisher partnerships behind the inventory include DIRECTV Advertising and Philo, and the subheading of the release adds the words "and more" without naming anyone else.

Simpli.fi is the only third-party buying platform identified. The release uses two slightly different phrasings to describe that group: its opening paragraph refers to "other leading DSPs, such as Simpli.fi", while the second paragraph refers to "approved, third-party demand-side partners, including Simpli.fi". The second wording carries more information, since it implies a vetting step before an outside platform can bid. Nexxen does not say how many platforms have been approved, or what the approval involves.

According to Nexxen, the aim is to let buyers "access premium pause inventory within their existing platforms, reducing friction and expanding reach." The company frames the move as making high-impact CTV formats more actionable and scalable across the ecosystem.

How the format works

Pause ads sit outside the commercial break. They appear only when a viewer presses pause and disappear when playback resumes. Nexxen describes them as non-intrusive, high-attention placements and says they have emerged as one of the most effective native formats in CTV. The release attributes a supporting claim to eMarketer: that audiences across generations prefer pause ads to frozen screens. No figure accompanies that claim in the release.

Philo's own June launch material carried the numbers. Citing eMarketer, Philo said 81% of viewers pause content specifically to avoid missing what they are watching, and 54% of pause sessions last between one and five minutes. That dwell window is the core commercial argument for the format. A pre-roll or mid-roll spot runs for a fixed number of seconds; a pause unit stays on screen for as long as the viewer leaves the content frozen.

The technical plumbing has been standardising for most of the past year. IAB Tech Lab released the Ad Format Guidelines for Digital Video and CTV for public comment on December 11, 2025, covering six formats that sit outside traditional breaks: pause ads, menu ads, squeezebacks, overlays, in-scene insertions and screensaver ads. That work began in 2024 and drew more than 100 format submissions from more than 40 companies. The body then finalised signalling guidance for those six formats on July 22, 2026. The Trade Desk's published pause ad specification, which followed days later, sets three behavioural rules: the creative appears one to three seconds after the viewer pauses, stays visible until playback resumes, and may refresh after a set interval if the pause runs long. Creatives on that route are limited to static PNG or JPG files.

Nexxen's release does not state which creative specifications apply on Nexxen SSP, whether they follow the IAB Tech Lab signalling, or whether QR codes and remote-control interactions are supported. None of those points appear in either source document.

Three executives, three framings

Kara Puccinelli, Chief Commercial Officer at Nexxen, linked the format directly to the company's home screen business. "When a viewer pauses content, they're not tuning out, they're leaning in - creating an opportunity for brands to show up natively and meaningfully, just as they do with Nexxen TV Home Screen units," she said. "By making pause inventory available and accessible, we're enabling buyers to activate these premium formats within the workflows they already use, driving measurable impact in environments where audiences are fully engaged."

Aulden Kaye Yi, Head of Advertising Partnerships at Philo, spoke from the publisher side. "Pause ads have quickly become one of streaming's most impactful formats," Yi said. "We're proud to partner with Nexxen to make Philo's premium pause inventory programmatically accessible, giving advertisers a seamless path to activate at scale."

Michael Schoen, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Simpli.fi, put the emphasis on local advertising. "Pause ads have evolved into a vital CTV strategy for brands seeking high-impact, locally relevant messaging. By bringing Nexxen's pause inventory into the Simpli.fi platform, we're enabling our clients to access premium inventory at scale while providing the experience they need to drive campaign performance," Schoen said. He added: "It's another way Simpli.fi connects digital intent to real-world action, not only empowering brands to reach consumers in the moment, but allowing them to drive real business outcomes."

The phrase "locally relevant" is the most telling detail in the three statements. Simpli.fi's client base has historically leaned towards regional and localised campaigns, and its interest in the format suggests pause inventory is being positioned for buyers well below national upfront scale. DIRECTV Advertising was not quoted in the release.

Not the first route into this inventory

For both named publishers, Nexxen is adding a path rather than opening a closed door. That distinction is easy to miss in the release, which does not reference earlier arrangements.

DIRECTV pause inventory has been available programmatically for more than a year. Magnite rolled out pause ads across DIRECTV, DISH Media and Fubo on August 26, 2025, with KERV.ai, MNTN and Yahoo DSP among the buyers and buying platforms using the format at the time. DIRECTV Advertising has also been widening its automated sales channels on other fronts this year. It opened its DIRECTV Remote out-of-home network to programmatic buying at CES on January 7, 2026, and on April 16, 2026 it became the first MVPD to connect to LiveRamp's Conversions API Hub.

Philo is an even clearer case. When the live TV streaming service made pause ads available across all of its ad-supported channels in June 2026, its announcement, dated June 18, listed Magnite, Index Exchange, Kargo and Nexxen among the supply-side partners carrying the format, alongside direct insertion orders. Nexxen was therefore already one of Philo's sell-side routes three months ago. What today's release adds for Philo inventory is the explicit opening to approved outside buying platforms, with Simpli.fi as the named example. Nexxen had also worked with Philo before the pause launch: PPC Land's June coverage noted the company contributed inventory and audience insights to an H/L campaign on Philo that reported up to 14x conversion lift in February 2026, a vendor-supplied figure.

For buyers, the practical question is less about access than about the supply path. When the same pause impression can arrive through Magnite, Index Exchange, Kargo or Nexxen, each route carries its own fees, latency and signals. The release offers no comparison of those routes, and no pricing.

A crowded year for the format

Pause advertising has moved from pilots to standard buying workflows over roughly two years. YouTube widened pause ads to all advertisers on September 18, 2024, about 18 months after its first pilot. WunderKIND Ads began selling programmatic pause ads through private marketplaces in July 2025, citing a 79% lower cost per store visit for an Ulta Beauty campaign compared with other streaming units - again a vendor-reported result.

The pace picked up in 2026. Hearst News named Magnite its preferred deal partner for high-impact formats including CTV pause ads on April 21. The Trade Desk put pause ads into open beta on its Kokai platform on May 12, restricting them to private marketplace and programmatic guaranteed transactions rather than the open auction. A day later, Netflix presented programmatic pause ads at its 2026 upfront, with The Trade Desk, Amazon DSP and Google Display & Video 360 named as access points. By July, Netflix was describing DSP access to pause ads and live inventory as a summer change for categories that had previously required direct negotiation.

Measurement followed supply. WunderKIND Ads published cross-vertical attention benchmarks on June 17, 2026, using TVision's second-by-second panel data across 15 verticals. Its headline finding was roughly twice the attention of a standard 60-second CTV spot, with automotive pause creative recording 34.2 seconds of attention time against 12.2 seconds for the comparable video placement. Those numbers come from a company that sells the format, and they measure attention rather than sales.

Against that backdrop, Nexxen's announcement is one of several similar moves, not a first. Its distinguishing feature is structural: Nexxen operates both a supply-side and a demand-side platform, and it has chosen to route this inventory to competing buying platforms as well as its own.

Deal structure left unstated

Several operational details that buyers would need are absent from both source documents. The release does not say whether pause inventory on Nexxen SSP trades in the open auction, through private marketplaces, or through programmatic guaranteed deals. The Trade Desk's decision to keep pause ads out of the open auction on Kokai suggests sellers want to control price and buyer identity for this format, and a deal ID structure would be the conventional way to do that. Nexxen does not confirm it.

The release also omits:

  • the number of publishers beyond DIRECTV Advertising and Philo, and their names;
  • the markets covered, although the New York dateline and the named partners point to the United States;
  • price floors, minimum spends or volume commitments;
  • the number of approved third-party buying platforms and the criteria for approval;
  • measurement partners or verification arrangements for the format.

That pattern is familiar. When Nexxen standardised its home screen ad specifications, PPC Land's coverage noted the absence of pricing and packaging detail and observed that earlier Nexxen product releases had followed the same approach.

The home screen parallel

Puccinelli's comparison to Nexxen TV Home Screen is not incidental. The home screen product has been the company's most visible CTV initiative of 2026, and pause inventory shares its basic premise: an ad surface that exists outside the programme break, on a screen the viewer is looking at without content playing.

The home screen line has moved quickly. H/L became the first organisation to buy that inventory programmaticallythrough Nexxen DSP on April 22, 2026, using private marketplace deals. On May 13, Nexxen added TCL FFALCON and TiVo Ads as supply sources, extending the product beyond its original V footprint. On August 20, the company standardised home screen specifications across V, TCL and TiVo, a single request structure covering three OEM partners.

There is a difference in how the two products reach buyers. The home screen standardisation was framed around Nexxen DSP and its listed demand partners, including The Trade Desk and Google Display & Video 360. Today's pause release puts the emphasis on the SSP side and on outside buying platforms. That places Nexxen, for this format, closer to the role Magnite and Index Exchange play for Philo: a seller of other companies' inventory into a wide set of buyers.

Financial context

Nexxen trades on Nasdaq under the ticker NEXN and is headquartered in Israel, with offices across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The company reported record first-quarter 2026 results on May 13, with programmatic revenue of $81.9 million and CTV revenue of $29.4 million, and credited part of that performance to its home screen and automatic content recognition strategy.

The company has spent the past year adding partners on both sides of its stack. It licensed its ACR audience segments to Yahoo DSP across the United States, United Kingdom and Germany on October 16, 2025. It joined The Trade Desk's Ventura Ecosystem as a first collaborator alongside V on February 24, 2026. Six days ago, on September 9, Chicago agency Scale Marketing widened its use of Nexxen DSP, shifting more client budget to working media through the platform.

The release's forward-looking statements section refers readers to the risk factors in Nexxen's Annual Report on Form 20-F, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 4, 2026. The listed risks include tariff impacts and policy shifts affecting advertising demand, and geopolitical conflicts including the war involving the United States, Israel and Iran, the hostilities involving Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah and Yemen, and the Ukraine-Russia war. The statements explicitly cover the company's programmatic access to pause ads.

Why it matters to buyers and sellers

For publishers, each additional sell-side route widens the pool of potential bidders but also multiplies the number of paths through which the same impression can be offered. For agencies, the benefit Nexxen describes is operational: pause units become reachable from a buying platform already in use, without a separate insertion order or a new seat. For smaller advertisers working through platforms such as Simpli.fi, the change could put a format once sold mainly through direct deals within reach.

What remains unclear is whether more routes will translate into more competitive pricing for a format whose supply is, by design, limited to the moments when viewers choose to stop watching. Nexxen has provided no data on available volume, clearing prices or early campaign results. Until those numbers appear, the announcement is best read as a distribution change for existing inventory rather than new supply entering the market.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Nexxen (Nasdaq: NEXN), the Israel-headquartered ad tech company operating Nexxen SSP and Nexxen DSP, with streaming publishers DIRECTV Advertising and Philo on the supply side and Simpli.fi as the named third-party buying platform. Kara Puccinelli of Nexxen, Aulden Kaye Yi of Philo and Michael Schoen of Simpli.fi are quoted.

What: Pause ads, which appear when a viewer pauses streaming content, can now be transacted programmatically through Nexxen SSP and bought through Nexxen DSP and approved third-party demand-side platforms. Pricing, deal types, markets and the full publisher list were not disclosed.

When: The change was announced today, September 15, 2026, three months after Philo's June 18 pause ad launch and more than a year after Magnite opened DIRECTV pause inventory to programmatic buyers.

Where: The release is datelined New York, and the named publishers are US streaming services; the source documents do not specify geographic coverage.

Why: Nexxen says the move lets buyers reach pause inventory inside the platforms they already use, reducing friction and extending reach, as pause ads spread across Netflix, The Trade Desk, Magnite and other streaming and ad tech platforms and as IAB Tech Lab standards for the format settle.