Marketing, Media & Adtech

Skye Frontier of Incremental came on ADOTAT to tell me everything the marketing industry doesn't want you to know. He did not disappoint.We got into why ROAS is the high fructose corn syrup of marketing measurement, how 73% of organizations are still running their entire media programs on a metric that has no proven connection to actual sales, and why the platforms selling you attribution software have absolutely no incentive to fix any of this.Skye has spent his career in measurement and incrementality, which means he has spent his career watching smart people cling to broken metrics for completely rational organizational reasons. He explains exactly why that happens, what it costs, and what actually works instead.We also got into retail media, the $59 billion industry that is quietly charging brands to appear on shelves they already stocked, why closed-loop attribution claims from retail media networks deserve the same skepticism as everything else, and who is actually winning the retail media wars and who is pretending to.Then we talked about AI, agentic marketing, and why throwing artificial intelligence at a last-touch attribution problem does not solve the problem. It just automates the mistake at greater speed and scale.Plus: the color vomit presentation story. The desert island incrementality pitch. Whether Skye would trade his ad server for a fishing pole. And the one belief he holds about this industry that would get him escorted out of a corporate retreat.This is one of the most honest conversations about how marketing measurement actually works that we have put on tape. Watch it. last touch attribution, ROAS, return on ad spend, incrementality, incrementality testing, causal inference, marketing measurement, attribution modeling, multi touch attribution, retail media, retail media networks, Amazon advertising, Walmart Connect, Amazon Marketing Cloud, AMC, retail media attribution, closed loop attribution, programmatic advertising, digital advertising, ad tech, adtech, media buying, marketing analytics, marketing mix modeling, MMM, media measurement, brand measurement, brand equity, AI in marketing, agentic AI, marketing AI, automated media buying, algorithmic bidding, smart bidding, reward hacking, programmatic optimization, CTV measurement, connected TV advertising, digital media, performance marketing, marketing effectiveness, media planning, media strategy, marketing budget optimization, ad spend optimization, Google Ads attribution, Meta attribution, Facebook ads measurement, Amazon ads, sponsored products, retail media spend, first party data, clean rooms, data clean rooms, walled gardens, ad fraud, marketing ROI, incremental ROAS, iROAS, holdout testing, geo experiments, conversion lift, brand lift, marketing KPIs, CMO, marketing leadership, B2B marketing, ad tech podcast, m 🎵 Copyrighted music licensed from Lickd. https://lickd.co My Type by Saint Motel, https://t.lickd.co/l/QqwoDJ3gmvL

Justin Pearse, editor of New Digital Age and co-founder of BlueStrike Group, joins Pesach Lattin on the ADOTAT Show for a conversation spanning thirty years of digital advertising history, the rise and fall of attention metrics, the future of trade media, the BlueStrike model of owning both a PR agency and a trade publication simultaneously, and why the advertising industry has survived every near death experience thrown at it and will probably survive the next one too.Justin started as a journalist covering the dot com boom, watched programmatic advertising get built from scratch, covered every major wave of digital media from search to social to CTV to retail media, and co-founded BlueStrike Group and New Digital Age to cover the industry differently than anyone had before. He brings a thirty year perspective that very few people in advertising actually have and even fewer are willing to share this honestly.In this episode we cover:Why the advertising industry keeps surviving everything that should kill itThe AI panic in advertising: why it already peaked and what that tells us about how the industry processes fearThe resilience paradox: is the industry genuinely resilient or just world class at kicking the can down the roadAttention metrics: why they emerged, why they are already going off the boil, and what is replacing themWhy outcomes measurement is the next frontier and why most of the industry is still grading its own homeworkRetail media as the closest thing to honest attribution the industry has ever producedThe wave theory of innovation: why the best ideas fail not because they are wrong but because the timing is offThe BlueStrike model: owning a PR agency and a trade publication simultaneously and why radical transparency makes it workWhy people who have actually worked in the industry write better about it than journalists who have notThe decimation of trade press and the unexpected renaissance happening right nowBruce Daisley, love your work, and what building teams around people actually looks like in practiceWhy the dot com era was the greatest entrepreneurial moment in history and what it felt like to cover it from the press sideWhat thirty years of chronicling the industry actually teaches you about where it is going nextWhy the average CMO in 2026 is fundamentally different from the average CMO ten years agoThe black box era of programmatic: why it ended not because the industry fixed it but because clients got educated enough to demand betterWhat younger Justin should have done earlier and what he would tell anyone starting out in the industry todayThe legacy question: what does it mean to actually push an industry forwardWhether you work in programmatic advertising, digital media, ad tech, trade publishing, attention metrics, retail media, marketing technology, media buying, brand strategy, or content marketing, this conversation will give you a perspective on where the industry came from and where it is actually going that you will not find in a conference keynote or a vendor white paper.CHAPTERS: 00:00 Introduction 02:00 Why the industry never actually dies 06:00 The AI panic and what it tells us 10:00 The resilience paradox: survivor or can kicker 15:00 Attention metrics: rise, peak, and what comes next 21:00 Outcomes measurement and grading your own homework 27:00 Retail media and honest attribution 32:00 The BlueStrike model explained 38:00 Owning a PR agency and a publication simultaneously 43:00 The trade press decimation and renaissance 48:00 Bruce Daisley and building teams around people 53:00 Thirty years of dot com to now 58:00 What younger Justin should have done earlier 62:00 The legacy questionTAGS: ad tech podcast 2026, digital advertising trends, attention metrics advertising, programmatic advertising history, trade media advertising, retail media attribution, outcomes measurement advertising, Justin Pearse, New Digital Age, BlueStrike Group, ADOTAT Show, Pesach Lattin, advertising industry resilience, dot com era advertising, AI advertising 2026, CMO strategy 2026, advertising measurement, vanity metrics advertising, viewability advertising, brand safety, ad tech trade press, B2B media publishing, PR agency trade publication, advertising podcast, media buying strategy, programmatic buying, cookie deprecation, privacy advertising, contextual advertising, advertising attribution, marketing measurement, advertising ROI, media strategy, digital media trends, advertising industry history, advertising innovation, gaming advertising, CTV advertising, connected television, streaming advertising, walled gardens, first party data, identity resolution, advertising technology, martech 2026, advertising creative measurement, advertising outcomes, retail media networks, advertising industry future, advertising people, advertising culture, Bruce Daisley, joy of work, workplace culture advertising, London ad tech, UK advertising industry, European advertising, trade publishing model, m

Jeremy Hlavacek, former VP at The Weather Company, IBM Watson Advertising, and Experian Marketing Services, joins Pesach Lattin on the ADOTAT Show for one of the most honest conversations about the state of digital advertising, programmatic, identity resolution, and connected television that you will find anywhere in 2026.Jeremy built one of the first programmatic publisher operations in the industry at The Weather Company, ran revenue strategy at IBM Watson Advertising, and led identity and data strategy at Experian Marketing Services before launching his independent consulting practice. He has been inside every major wave of digital advertising at exactly the moment it mattered most.In this episode we cover:Why the open web advertising model is structurally degrading and what replaces itThe island paradigm: how TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and streaming platforms have replaced the open web and what that means for publishers and advertisersWhy the deterministic versus probabilistic identity debate is the wrong question entirelyWhat signal agnostic identity strategy actually means in plain EnglishWhy CTV targeting works completely differently than the conference stage version suggestsHow the death of the cable bundle accidentally broke identity in ways nobody anticipatedWhy the programmatic industry was too Wild West for too long and what it actually costThe cookie as accidental infrastructure: free, ubiquitous, never designed for identity, and somehow the thing everyone built onWhy context is the missing variable that identity alone cannot solveWhat thirty years across startups, Weather Company, IBM, and Experian actually teaches you about building a career in a volatile industryWhy the Wanamaker quote still applies in 2026 and what that means for everyone selling measurement solutionsThe open web idealism versus the reality of what an unregulated information ecosystem actually producesWhy his ten year old son thinks the internet is for old people and why Jeremy thinks the kid is rightWhether you work in programmatic advertising, digital media, ad tech, publisher monetization, connected television, identity resolution, data strategy, marketing technology, or media buying, this conversation will change how you think about where the industry is actually going versus where the conference keynotes say it is going.CHAPTERS: 00:00 Introduction 02:30 The open web is for old people 08:00 The island paradigm and what it means for publishers 14:00 Follow the money: why the chaos is completely rational 19:00 The programmatic dream versus the programmatic reality 26:00 Signal agnostic identity strategy explained 33:00 CTV targeting: promise versus reality 41:00 The missing variable: context 48:00 Thirty years of hard lessons 55:00 The LSE idealist meets the industry realityTAGS: programmatic advertising 2026, digital advertising trends, connected television advertising, CTV targeting, identity resolution, third party cookie deprecation, open web advertising, publisher monetization, ad tech podcast, digital media strategy, marketing technology, martech, data strategy, advertising measurement, Jeremy Hlavacek, ADOTAT Show, Pesach Lattin, Weather Company programmatic, IBM Watson Advertising, Experian Marketing Services, signal agnostic identity, deterministic vs probabilistic, first party data strategy, retail media, streaming advertising, walled gardens advertising, ad tech 2026, programmatic buying, trading desk, identity graph, hashed email, mobile advertising ID, cookie deprecation, privacy advertising, contextual advertising, brand safety, advertising podcast, media buying, CMO strategy, marketing measurement, advertising ROI, ad fraud, viewability, attention metricsABOUT THE ADOTAT SHOW: The ADOTAT Show with Pesach Lattin is the advertising and marketing technology industry's most irreverent and honest podcast. No PR speak. No vendor talking points. No polite nodding at things that do not make sense. Just the people who actually built this industry telling you what they actually think. New episodes every week. Subscribe so you do not miss what comes next.SUBSCRIBE TO ADOTAT+ for the full three part written series on Jeremy Hlavacek, plus every premium episode, analysis, and industry breakdown at ADOTAT.comThe ADOTAT Show is sponsored by Troutman Amin LLP and Incremental.com