It need not match the ticket name but in such circumstance it may be better to match the ESTA with what is in the passport if wanting a minimum of hassles.

Johan for given/first name and Smith for middle name and Anderson for family/last name. Regardless of multiple first names, a secondary first name being made more prominent or having a secondary family name/mellanamn, do the ESTA as mentioned in the first sentence of this paragraph of mine. [A Scandinavian "mellannamn" may literally translate into middle name in English but functionally it is but another family name for most people born in say Sweden today. In the US a middle name is most frequently not a family name. And in Sweden, for example, many people have more than one given first name -- most of the Swedes in my family have at least two given first names before even hitting the mellanamn and last/surname fields.]

Once the ESTA is approved you shouldn't have a problem with the airline over the ticket and/or boarding pass showing as you noted above.

You could leave the middle name out, but the way things are processed by or for the US Government's blacklisting/targeting mechanisms, something inserted in the middle name field has a history of being more useful than not.