MarkApp is proud to announce that Pantheon, our real-time contextual decision engine for app and connected-TV inventory, has been shortlisted for Best New Product, as a platform reshaping programmatic CTV, at the 2026 European Video Awards, being recognised by VideoWeek
Organised by VideoWeek, the EVAs are among the most rigorously judged honours in European video and CTV advertising, and the ceremony will take place in London on 1 October 2026.
For a category defined by the platforms setting the direction of the market, the recognition is significant.
It places Pantheon alongside some of the most established names in the streaming and exchange landscape, and validates a thesis MarkApp has argued from day one: in a post-identity market, the environment is the signal.
The company we keep
The Best New Product shortlist reads as a snapshot of where premium video is heading.
Alongside Pantheon, this year’s finalists are Attekmi, recognised for AdEx Enterprise and its focus on scalable business expansion; FreeWheel, for its Context Engine bringing AI-driven contextual intelligence to premium streaming; Sabio, for the Household Graph unlocking the UK’s addressable TV potential; Index Exchange, for Index Cloud and its move to bring intelligence inside the exchange; and LightboxTV with Dentsu, for modernising TV planning workflows through frontsheet automation.
It is a field with a clear centre of gravity.
Four of the six finalists are, in one form or another, a bet on contextual and AI-led decisioning for television.
That convergence is not a coincidence — it is the market telling us that identity-first targeting has reached its ceiling, and that the next decade of value will be built on understanding content, not chasing cookies.
Why Pantheon
Pantheon was built for the hardest problem in modern video: making a high-quality, privacy-durable decision in the milliseconds before a CTV or in-app impression renders, without depending on a stable user identifier.
It reads the content environment — genre, mood, subject matter, brand-safety context and supply quality — and turns that understanding into a real-time monetisation decision on the sell side.
The result is an SSP that behaves less like a pipe and more like an intelligence layer.
Publishers gain yield without surrendering their audiences to third parties; buyers gain precision in environments where identity signals are thin or absent; and the whole transaction stays defensible under tightening privacy regimes.
That is the edge the EVA jury saw, and it is the edge we intend to extend.
What this means for our partners
For MarkApp’s publisher and advertiser partners, the shortlist is more than a trophy shelf.
It is external, independent confirmation that the contextual thesis is now mainstream — and that MarkApp is being measured against the largest platforms in the industry rather than in a category of its own.
Recognition of this kind shortens sales cycles, strengthens partnership conversations, and signals to the market that premium, contextual CTV supply has a credible, independent home.
We will share the outcome after the ceremony on 1 October.
Whatever the result, being named among this group is a milestone we owe to every publisher, advertiser and team member who backed the idea that content environments — not identities — are the most valuable asset in video advertising.
To our fellow finalists: congratulations, and see you in London.
