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

Everyone in ad tech slapped AI-powered on their homepage and called it a product update. Matt Spiegel calls it what it is.Matt Spiegel — founder, Omnicom exec, programmatic pioneer, and EVP of True Audience Growth and Strategy at TransUnion — sits down with Pesach Lattin to deliver the most uncomfortable truth in digital advertising right now: AI doesn't solve broken data problems. It amplifies them.In this episode we cover:The real reason cookie deprecation was never the crisis everyone claimedHow the industry went from mass media to programmatic to identity — and what comes nextWhy marketers with 16 martech solutions have a junk drawer, not a strategyThe "easy button" evolution: TV, ad networks, walled gardens — same mistake, different decadeWhy 62% of marketers are confidently measuring the wrong thingsHow gen AI will eventually make precision marketing easier — but only if you fix the foundation firstMatt Spiegel has been riding every wave in digital advertising since the late 90s, from founding Resolution Media at 25 to running identity strategy at TransUnion. He's not here to sell you anything. He's here to tell you what's actually broken.Season 8. Episode 1. We're back.🎙️ Host: Pesach Lattin | ADOTAT 📍 Guest: Matt Spiegel | TransUnionSponsors: ⚖️ Troutman Amin LLP 📊 Incremental.comStay bold. Stay curious. Know more than you did yesterday.#AdTech #AI #DigitalMarketing #ProgrammaticAdvertising #MarTech #IdentityResolution #DataStrategy #Measurement #ADOTATShow #TransUnion #MattSpiegel #Season8 #PesachLattin

He Thinks Your CTV CPMs Are Too Low (And He Has Receipts) | Jordan Greene | ADOTAT Show Jordan Greene has spent 25 years collecting unpopular opinions about digital advertising and occasionally being proven right about all of them. As co-founder and Chief Media Officer of Alpha Precision Media -- the only NMSDC-certified minority-owned Amazon ecosystem partner in the country -- he has watched mobile advertising grow from carrier-based WAP pages into a $200 billion industry, and he is now making the same bet on connected television that most of the industry is still too nervous to make out loud. His position: CTV CPMs are too low. Not all of them. But enough of them that the entire upfront conversation is happening around the wrong number. He will explain exactly why, with the kind of specificity that makes media buyers deeply uncomfortable. We also get into: 🎮 The Twitch experiment that may have been the most expensive production ever put on the platform, what it proved about branded content, and why the chat told them everything they needed to know before the campaign data did 🏀 Undeniable -- the women's basketball show produced by Cynthia Cooper, Asia Wilson, and Cameron Brink, and why Jordan thinks female sports is the most undervalued media bet in advertising right now 📊 The Plural acquisition -- the data company built on Census Bureau methodology that Jordan claims delivers 30 to 60 percent stronger demographic targeting than standard segments 💰 The streaming wars endgame -- Amazon has $72 billion in cash. Paramount has $3 billion. Jordan has thoughts. 🎯 Why your CMO keeps asking for Disney Plus even after they told you they wanted audience-first buying, and what that says about the gap between what brands say and what their agencies actually do Plus: Pat Riley, George Carlin, Thomas Keller, the greatest Twitch chat in advertising history, a QSR client who ran back to NCAA basketball, and one man's completely unreasonable optimism about the future of connected television. Jordan Greene is either two years ahead of the industry or two years ahead of reality. Watch and decide for yourself. 🔔 Subscribe to ADOTAT for the full three-part written series, including the paywalled deep dives on Alpha's business model, the Plural acquisition, and the content-driven advertising bet: adotat.com 📧 Subscribe to the ADOTAT newsletter -- the most widely read trade publication in digital advertising that tells you what everyone else is afraid to say. Sponsored by: Troutman Amin LLP -- The TCPA attorneys you call before the class action, not after. troutmanamin.com Incremental.com -- Measure what's actually working. incremental.com

116 views Feb 26, 2026 #AI #audio #podcastingTim Armstrong went from a dairy farm in rural New Zealand to leading digital transformation at Mangrove Digital in Australia. Somewhere between herding 200 cows through lightning storms at 5 a.m. and optimizing programmatic supply paths, he picked up a take so hot it might melt your entire AI strategy: People still matter more than your algorithm. Yeah. We said it. In this episode of the ADOTAT Show, Pesach Lattin sits down with Tim to talk about why 53% of marketers think their AI is underwhelming (they're being generous), why companies are firing humans based on vibes and pitch decks, why soft skills are the actual hard part, why audio advertising is the dark horse nobody's betting on, and why the ad tech industry has an "artificial complexity" problem that Tim is absolutely done tolerating. Also: desert islands, Dave Grohl on driftwood guitar, Elon Musk building coconut blockchains, and why Tim's three-year-old thinks dad just "goes to work." If you've ever sat in a meeting where someone said "let's leverage AI to synergize our pipeline" and wanted to scream — this episode is for you. Stay Bold. Stay Curious. Know More Than You Did Yesterday. #adtech #AI #programmatic #digitaladvertising #podcasting #audio #adotat

Frazer Locke has 34 years of retail and ad tech scars. He spent a decade inside Amazon building the ads machine before anyone took it seriously, and now he's SVP of International Sales at TripleLift, the creative SSP trying to keep retail media from becoming an unwatchable Blade Runner hellscape of infinite ads.In this episode of the ADOTAT Show, Pesach Lattin sits down with Frazer to talk about what's actually broken in retail media (even though he's too British to use that word), why frequency capping is a sanity check the industry is failing, what he learned from Seth Dallaire in the early Amazon Ads trenches, why Aldi and Lidl might be the dark horses nobody's watching, and whether full funnel measurement is real or just a really convincing PowerPoint slide.We also strand him on a desert island with Superman, Tom Hanks, and a British comedian you've never heard of. It goes exactly how you'd expect.🔥 WHAT WE COVER: 0:00 - Intro 0:56 - Who is Frazer Locke 2:42 - Career journey from Sainsbury's to Amazon to TripleLift 3:51 - What's broken in brand-consumer relationships 5:29 - The refresh ad problem nobody asked for 7:08 - When ad tech rewrote the retail playbook 8:37 - Retail media internationally vs the US 9:54 - If 1991 Frazer walked into today's office 11:23 - What separates real integration from bolt-on media 13:12 - Creative tech: innovation or automated mediocrity 16:02 - Is TripleLift still just an SSP? 17:50 - Cultural vs technological barriers to creative innovation 19:02 - Does contextual advertising actually work? 19:56 - AI-generated dynamic supermarket shelves 20:26 - The Aldi and Lidl retail media dark horse theory 21:40 - Retail media gold rush or cable TV fragmentation? 22:06 - Does full funnel measurement actually exist? 25:47 - Is retail media brand building or a click casino? 26:43 - Sacred cows: what would Frazer burn down? 28:16 - Programmatic transparency or smarter ways to hide fees? 30:35 - Will most DSPs exist in 10 years? 31:36 - If publishers and advertisers swapped roles 32:30 - Leadership across continents and time zones 33:28 - LinkedIn leadership vs real leadership 34:42 - Are we over-romanticizing culture? 35:32 - Desert island companions 39:04 - AI takes over: first question to robot overlords 39:29 - What the island teaches about ad tech 40:02 - What drives Frazer when the decks close 41:23 - The Seth Dallaire mentor lesson 44:00 - Frequency capping as industry sanity check 44:44 - If not advertising, then what? 45:22 - Legacy: what Frazer wants to be remembered for📰 READ THE FULL BREAKDOWN on ADOTAT.com — including the ADOTAT+ deep dive on what Frazer was too diplomatic to say out loud, why he really left Amazon, and whether "creative SSP" is genius positioning or a holding pattern.👉 Subscribe to ADOTAT+ for the inside baseball: [link]🎙️ THE ADOTAT SHOW — where we cut through the buzzwords, the hype decks, and the endless talk of revolutionary solutions to talk about who's actually moving the needle in advertising. Hosted by Pesach Lattin.Be bold. Be curious. Know more than you did yesterday.💼 SPONSORS: Troutman Amin LLP — the ad tech lawyers who actually get it Incremental — measure what actually moves the needle#retailmedia #adtech #programmaticadvertising #amazonads #triplelift #retailmedianetwork #CTV #connectedTV #digitaladvertising #SSP #DSP #commercemedia #creativetechnology #marketingstrategy #brandbuilding #walmartconnect #ecommerce #advertisingtechnology #mediaplanning #digitalmarketing #marketingpodcast #adtechpodcast #retailmedia2025 #futureofadvertising #programmatic #supplypathooptimization #nativeadvertising #frequencycapping #adindustry #mediainnovation #retailmedianetworks #offsite #amazon #tesco #aldi #Lidl #marketplaceLoaded with the high-search-volume terms: retail media, programmatic advertising, Amazon Ads, connected TV, DSP, SSP, digital marketing, e-commerce, creative technology, and brand building.

Liz DeAngelis from Brainlabs joins Pesach Lattin on the ADOTAT Show to tear apart everything the ad tech industry pretends is working. From programmatic advertising's broken incentives to why attribution is theater, why video completion rate is an emotional support KPI, and why cheap never actually means efficient, this conversation pulls no punches. Liz has seen it all. Mobile app marketing. The Ad Council's COVID-19 vaccine campaign. Growth at Monks. And now leading programmatic strategy at Brainlabs where she's asking the questions nobody wants to answer: does any of this actually drive business impact or are we just funding a swamp? We get into the Pinterest CTV Scientific acquisition and what it means for intent-based TV buying, why "performance CTV" is a branded concept and not a real capability, why Google can't reconcile its own platforms, why display advertising destroyed itself through measurement, why agencies can't figure out which team owns new channels, and what actually breaks first when growth outpaces maturity. Plus: hustle culture is dead, founder intuition is bullshit, and the opinion Liz softens in public but holds privately is that advertising has ruined a lot of the internet.

Gaming is the single largest media channel on the planet. Bigger than streaming. Bigger than social media. Bigger than CTV. 3.5 billion people play at least one game every month — that's 90% of everyone connected to the internet. And yet the advertising industry has spent the last two decades pretending gaming doesn't exist. In this interview, I sit down with Itamar Benedy, the founder and CEO of Anzu, the company pioneering programmatic in-game advertising with native 3D ad placements inside video games. After eight years building Anzu, Itamar says they haven't even hit 1% of the journey — and explains why that's both the most honest and the most terrifying thing a founder can admit. We dig into why "the year of gaming advertising" has been promised every single January since the Blackberry era and never delivered. Why brands are finally moving budget into gaming — some because the performance arbitrage is undeniable, others because every other channel is collapsing under them. And some just because McKinsey told them to. We break down the infamous Netflix campaign disaster — when Netflix ran ads inside games telling players to stop playing and go watch Netflix — and why that's the perfect case study for everything brands get wrong about gaming audiences. The irony? Netflix is now a gaming company with an ad-supported tier as its fastest-growing revenue line. Itamar explains why lumping 3.5 billion people into one category called "gamers" is the laziest move in media buying, why in-game advertising is essentially digital out-of-home but with actual measurement and targeting, and why the gaming industry sabotaged its own advertising potential for years by going to war with the companies that make advertising work. This conversation is essential viewing for CMOs, media buyers, brand strategists, ad tech professionals, and anyone trying to understand where attention is actually going in 2025 and beyond. ABOUT ITAMAR BENEDY: Itamar Benedy is the founder and CEO of Anzu, a leading in-game advertising platform that delivers programmatic, brand-safe ad placements rendered natively in 3D within video game environments. Anzu works with major brands and game publishers to bridge the gap between where audiences spend their time and where advertising dollars actually go.

Sam Bloom, Head of Partnerships at PMG, returns to the ADOTAT Show for round two. Either that's heroic or deeply concerning. In this episode, Sam gets brutally honest about the AI hype cycle flooding ad tech, why most "agentic" tools are just the same old crap with a .ai domain, and how to tell the difference between real innovation and vendor theater. He breaks down his two-question filter that every pitch must pass, explains why 70% of agency time disappears into work nobody enjoys, and reveals why he fears two people in a garage more than the big holding companies. We also dive deep into CTV's graduation from high school (still figuring out laundry), why attention metrics are overrated, the coming tsunami of AI slop hitting connected TV, and how retail media is becoming identity infrastructure for a post-cookie world. Plus: the transparency paradox, why CMOs keep signing deals with agencies whose profits depend on opacity, and what happens when agencies disappear entirely. 🔥 IN THIS EPISODE: 00:00 - Intro 02:15 - The AI Hype Cycle: Sorting Wheat from Slop 08:30 - Sam's Two-Question Vendor Filter 12:45 - What "Agentic" Actually Means (And How It's Abused) 18:20 - The 70% Problem: Why Agency Work Sucks 24:00 - Mental Health in Advertising 28:15 - The Garage Threat: Why Small Teams Win 35:40 - What AI Cannot Replace 42:00 - CTV: Graduating High School 48:30 - Why Attention Metrics Are Overrated 54:15 - The AI Slop Tsunami Coming to CTV 59:00 - Retail Media as Identity Infrastructure 1:05:30 - The Measurement Reckoning: Killing Last-Click 1:12:00 - The Transparency Paradox 1:18:45 - What Clients Actually Need 1:24:00 - The Agency Extinction Scenario 📢 SPONSORS: Troutman Amin LLP - https://www.troutmanamin.com/ Incremental - https://www.incremental.com/ 🎙️ ABOUT THE ADOTAT SHOW: The ADOTAT Show with Pesach Lattin. Where ads get torched, truth gets told, and the industry pretends not to read us. Stay Bold. Stay Curious. Know More Than You Did Yesterday. 👉 SUBSCRIBE for weekly episodes with the sharpest minds in advertising, media, and ad tech. CONNECT WITH US: 🌐 Website: https://www.adotat.com 📧 Newsletter: https://new.adotat.com 🐦 Twitter: https://x.com/pesach_lattin?lang=en 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pesach-lattin/ #AdTech #DigitalMarketing #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #CTV #ConnectedTV #RetailMedia #ProgrammaticAdvertising #MediaBuying #MarketingStrategy #AgencyLife #PMG #SamBloom #ADOTATShow #PesachLattin #MarketingPodcast #AdvertisingPodcast #MediaPlanning #Attribution #Transparency #AdAgency #MarketingTech #MarTech Tags: sam bloom, pmg, adotat show, pesach lattin, ad tech, advertising technology, ai in advertising, agentic ai, connected tv, ctv advertising, retail media, retail media networks, programmatic advertising, media buying, digital marketing, marketing strategy, agency life, marketing podcast, advertising podcast, ai hype, attention metrics, last click attribution, incrementality, media mix modeling, transparency in advertising, principal media, holding companies, marketing technology, martech, cmo, media planning, ad agency, future of advertising, ai slop, streaming advertising

Bob Lord: The Quantum Computing Defector Who Escaped Advertising, Spent 8 Years Learning How Technology Actually Works at IBM, and Then Came Back to Burn Down the FTE ModelHere's a career arc that sounds like a fever dream: He ran Razorfish, sold it to Microsoft, sold it again to Publicis, became president of AOL during Verizon's $4.4 billion acquisition, then completely abandoned advertising to become a senior vice president at IBM where he got "steeped in large language models, neural networks, quantum computing" and learned to track a single product floating somewhere in the South China Sea. Now he's back as President of Horizon Media—one of the largest independent agencies in the country with $10 billion in billings—and he has some thoughts about why everything is broken.In this wide-ranging conversation, Bob Lord walks us through the career nobody plans, the lessons that shaped how he operates, and why he thinks the entire agency compensation model is a dying relic that's holding the industry hostage.We get into:The great escape and return: Why would anyone leave advertising at the top of their game, spend nearly a decade at IBM learning about quantum computing and supply chain software, and then voluntarily come back to an industry that had only gotten more chaotic in his absence?The damning comparison: At IBM, Lord could track a single product across global supply chains and tell you exactly when it would dock in San Francisco. Meanwhile, back in advertising? "I still couldn't tell a marketer how their campaign ran in the last week. Something went wrong."The Rube Goldberg problem: More ad tech vendors. More data companies. More martech platforms. More confusion. More complexity. Less clarity. The industry spent a decade building an elaborate machine and forgot what it was supposed to be making.The FTE model must die: Lord is pitching clients on performance-based compensation tied to actual business outcomes—not marketing qualified leads, not downloads, but actual transactions. Cars sold. Internet packages purchased. Widgets moved. "If I can swap out technology and cut the staff by a third—shouldn't that be the model?"The boots story: How a 19-year-old Bob Lord on a GM factory floor learned the hard way that not everyone operates from goodness—a lesson that's guided his trust-but-verify approach for four decades.Growth and comfort don't coexist: The mantra he picked up from IBM's Ginni Rometty that sounds like a LinkedIn platitude but that Lord means literally. He talks about being in the "muddy middle" at Horizon—knowing where he wants to go, not having all the answers, watching everyone's role change in real time.The first P&L: The exhausting, trial-by-fire experience of running a $20 million business in North Carolina with no idea how to hire, fire, or run a sales department—and why he keeps putting himself through these sink-or-swim moments decade after decade.

Jason White has spent 20+ years actually BUILDING technology at Viacom, OpenX, CBS, Fox MySpace, and multiple startups. Unlike the PowerPoint warriors flooding LinkedIn, he's coded real systems, invented RTB structures, and survived every hype cycle from the dot-com bubble to today's AI frenzy. In this brutally honest conversation, Jason exposes: ❌ Why 60-70% of "AI features" are just rule-based logic with an LLM wrapper ❌ The platform risk nobody talks about (spoiler: when ChatGPT builds your feature, you're done) ❌ Why ChatGPT is only right 50% of the time—and argues when it's wrong ❌ How ad blockers are inexplicably allowed in buying platforms ❌ Why programmatic "transparency" is the industry's biggest joke ❌ The real reason companies blow $100M on shiny objects (metaverse, anyone?) ✅ But also what ACTUALLY works: ✅ The three-circle test for real innovation (save money + bandwidth + revenue = unicorn) ✅ Why ad networks worked better than what replaced them ✅ How to build culture that doesn't turn teams into "office hostages" ✅ The future of AdCP and agents talking to each other ✅ Why democratizing information still matters 🔥 CONTROVERSIAL TAKES: "Programmatic guaranteed pricing makes no sense" - Google's $0.40 on $2 CPM vs $6 on $30 CPM "SSPs were taking 30-50% margins as intermediaries" "The Trade Desk hasn't integrated with a new SSP in 8 years" "Token costs are going to rise—this automation party won't last" "ChatGPT will lose a billion dollars a month... not for long" 📊 BY THE NUMBERS: 60-70% of AI features are just rule-based logic AI costs went from $50/month to $1,000/month in one year 30-50% margins taken by intermediary SSPs Only 10% of companies survive hype bubbles—but they change the world 🎯 WHO IS JASON WHITE? 20+ years building advertising technology across: Fox MySpace (invented client-side programmatic) CBS Interactive (built MyAds) OpenX (ad exchange infrastructure) TrueCar (growth) Arena Group (revenue turnaround) Jiffy AI (RPA-based ad operations) Mula (current: combining ML, RTB, header bidding, analytics) Survived: dot-com bubble, ad networks, programmatic, mobile, and now AI hype 🗣️ QUOTES THAT HIT DIFFERENT: "I've never seen an absolute. I immediately discount it when somebody says everything." "There's little people behind the green curtain running data back and forth." "Maybe if ad networks were just transparent with their margins..." "Culture is how people behave when things go wrong, not the posters you put up." "My religion is democratizing information." "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans." 📚 READ THE FULL SERIES: This interview is being turned into a 4-part article series: Part 1: The AI Hype Bubble (FREE) Part 2: Revenue Discipline in the Age of Shiny Objects (FREE) Part 3: The Programmatic Paradox (PAID) Part 4: The Future of Advertising Technology (PAID) 🔔 SUBSCRIBE for more unfiltered conversations with people who actually build technology instead of selling PowerPoint decks. 👍 LIKE if you're tired of AI theater and want to hear the truth. 💬 COMMENT: What's the biggest BS claim you've heard about "AI" in your industry? 🎙️ The ADOTAT Show Hosted by Pesach Lattin Where we separate real innovation from LinkedIn theater #AIinAdvertising #AdTech #Programmatic #ChatGPT #MarketingTechnology #DigitalAdvertising #AdOperations #SSP #DSP #AIHype #TechForGood #StartupLessons #JasonWhite #ProgrammaticAdvertising #AdExchange #RevenueGrowth

Local TV has been written off as plumbers, pizza shops, and leftover budgets for far too long. Jason Manningham is here to explain why that take is lazy, expensive, and wrong. In this episode of The ADOTAT Show, Pesach Lattin sits down with Blockgraph CEO Jason Manningham to unpack the part of the TV ecosystem everyone pretends to understand and absolutely does not. We dig into why local advertising is actually a $170B market, why zip codes are a blunt instrument, and why proximity and household identity outperform the buzzword soup most decks are built on. This conversation covers: Why local TV is bigger than national TV, and why brands keep missing it Household identity vs “targeting a person” on a shared screen Why IP targeting is mostly fiction and why geo still matters when done right Attribution dashboards as cosplay and the limits of last-click thinking Currency wars, outcomes measurement, and why Nielsen isn’t the whole story What AI gets wrong about TV and why the real world still matters Why most “performance TV” claims collapse under basic scrutiny No hype. No vendor theater. Just infrastructure, incentives, and the uncomfortable math underneath modern TV advertising. Sponsored by: Troutman Amin LLP – When ad tech deals get complicated, regulated, or quietly risky. Incremental.com – Because lift beats vibes, and proof beats promises. This is The ADOTAT Show. Stay Bold, Stay Curious, and Know More than You Did Yesterday.

Nick Stark didn’t come on The ADOTAT Show to talk about “the future of CTV” in soft-focus buzzwords. He came to talk about why connected TV advertising quietly bleeds money every day and why most of the industry pretends it’s normal. Nick is the CEO of GoGoCTV, a company that exists for one uncomfortable reason: streaming ads are often built on bad metadata, missing signals, broken ad plumbing, and contracts nobody audits after signing. If you’ve ever seen premium CTV inventory monetize like clearance-bin display, this episode explains exactly how that happens and why it keeps happening. We unpack how a single missing metadata field can slash revenue by up to 90%, why “data-driven marketing” often means “staring at dashboards you don’t fully understand,” and how optimization culture turned creativity into a hostage negotiation with math. Nick breaks down dirty vs missing metadata, IVT detection gone sideways, why new devices get punished for not being on whitelist spreadsheets, and how “fixed pricing” quietly sabotages performance in a dynamic market. There’s also a blunt conversation about: CTV ad tech infrastructure and ad serving Metadata hygiene, data quality, and monetization leakage Programmatic advertising myths and supply chain confusion IVT, SIVT, fraud detection, and false positives Attention economics vs impressions vs results Dynamic pricing, floor management, and latency realities Why audits matter more than optimism Why half the industry is confident their stack works and wrong Plus desert-island adtech hypotheticals, a reality check on AI in advertising, why consultants behave exactly like mosquitoes, and an honest look at leadership when everything runs in milliseconds and ego runs in seconds. If you work in CTV, streaming advertising, programmatic media, ad operations, ad tech infrastructure, media buying, data engineering, or revenue optimization, this episode is required listening. If you don’t, it’s still a great tour of how complex systems fail politely while everyone nods. Huge thanks to our sponsors: Troutman Amin LLP, because when ad tech deals get strange, you want lawyers who actually understand how this industry breaks. Incremental.com, because outcomes beat vibes, lift beats dashboards, and proof beats promises. This is The ADOTAT Show. Stay Bold, Stay Curious, and Know More than You Did Yesterday.

Founders love telling you they’re “building the future.” Most of them are really just building new ways to charge you for the same old chaos. On this episode of The ADOTAT Show, Pesach Lattin runs a rare double-header: Amol Waishampayan (the product philosopher behind Full Throttle AI) and David Regn (the guy who helped build Stream into a 27-year force of nature without lighting the building on fire). Together, they walk straight into adtech’s identity problem and do the unthinkable: talk like adults. Topics include: First-party identity: why the industry treated it like optional kale until the cookies started entering hospice care “95%+ confidence” household identity: less magic, more math, way more uncomfortable truths Third-party data: useful, sure… if you enjoy navigating by fog Mid-market miniaturization: why measurement is finally getting shrink-wrapped instead of locked behind enterprise gates Automation: the kind that replaces five humans and three spreadsheets, not the kind that needs constant supervision and snacks Leadership delusion: why “tools” won for so long and “outcomes” got avoided like an audit Desert island adtech: no dashboards, no WiFi, just coconuts and the terrifying realization you might need common sense Also: Flash nostalgia, Newgrounds deep cuts, and Pesach attempting to strand two executives on an island for content. Because this is what passes for “media” now. Stay Bold, Stay Curious, and Know More than You Did Yesterday.

If you’ve ever wondered why half the industry still behaves like cookies are a personality trait, welcome to the episode that’s about to ruin a lot of vendor slide decks. Rabbi Pesach Lattin breaks down how Keith Gooberman, founder of Pontiac Intelligence, quietly engineered one of the only CTV-first DSPs that isn’t dragging a decade of open-web baggage behind it like a wounded pack mule.This isn’t your standard adtech kumbaya chat.This is the part where we look under the hood, point at the wires, and ask why everyone else keeps pretending their bidders “support CTV” while behaving like they’re still loading banners on a recipe blog in 2013.Here’s what we cover (and why CTV vendors should start sweating):• The Pontiac DSP’s stateless, cookieless-by-design architectureKeith Gooberman didn’t “go cookieless.”He built a bidder that never needed identity maps, lookup tables, sync storms, or any of the legacy machinery that makes other DSPs choke during high-volume TV moments.• Why legacy optimization fails on CTV every single timeCPM-chasing, remnant-sniping, bid-density “AI” that was fine for the open web but collapses the moment it touches premium pods.If your CTV campaigns feel like chaos, this is why.• How CTV really operatesPods, rotations, pacing windows, dayparts, MVPD pipes, app-level supply differences, publisher metadata games, curated PMPs, and the real economics behind premium impressions.The stuff no one says out loud on stage.• The new DSP model Pontiac proved is the futureSmall. Lean. Stateless. Infrastructure-like. Built for curated CTV, not welded onto a display bidder with duct tape and optimism.And yes, it’s packed with keyword fuel for the YouTube gods:Keith Gooberman, Pontiac Intelligence, Pontiac DSP, CTV advertising, CTV-first DSP, programmatic CTV, connected TV strategy, premium video advertising, identity-free bidding, stateless bidder, SSP CTV integrations, curated PMP strategy, Roku ads, Amazon Fire TV advertising, MVPD CTV supply, predictive allocation, pod-level pacing, programmatic optimization, DSP engineering, adtech architecture, supply path optimization, premium video supply, cross-screen strategy, streaming adtech trends, advanced TV advertising, privacy-safe programmatic, cookieless DSP design, 2025 CTV buying.Why this episode matters more than your fifth “What’s Next in CTV?” webinar of the monthBecause this isn’t hype.It’s the forensic breakdown of how one DSP actually solved the physics of television while everyone else tried to rebrand their failures as “AI-driven.”Because Keith Gooberman didn’t follow the industry map — he burned it and built something that actually respects CTV’s structure, rules, and supply constraints.Because if you’re buying CTV, planning budgets, leading a media team, building a platform, or just trying not to embarrass yourself in the next meeting about streaming strategy, this is the stuff you can’t afford to misunderstand anymore.And if you want the version with the spicy parts I can’t say on YouTube without getting emergency calls from PR teams, that’s waiting inside ADOTAT+.Stay Bold, Stay Curious, and Know More than You Did Yesterday.

Dave Madden is the rare executive who doesn’t just have stories. He has receipts. In this episode of The ADOTAT Show, we walk straight into the eye of modern gaming, advertising, cloud chaos, and one of the wildest brand partnerships ever attempted. It’s a full tour of an industry desperately trying to innovate while tripping over its own jargon.Dave takes us all the way back to his WildTangent years, where rewarded ads were born long before today’s pitch decks pretended to invent them. He breaks down how he and Alex St. John reunited after decades apart, why a “barn full of PhDs” might actually be the future of cloud gaming, and how Playcast.io could rewrite discovery, access, and game economics in a way hyperscalers probably don’t want you thinking about.We also get the uncensored version of the Titanfall-Mt. Dew-Doritos incident: a global promo with hundreds of millions of packages already printed, sitting on shelves, while the game itself flirted with a delay. Dave describes the moment he realized the entire operation could implode. And what he did next. Survival mode, not spin.From there, we dive into Dave’s unfiltered assessment of adtech’s chronic delusion problem. He talks about “vaporware,” Cannes cosplay, and the industry’s obsession with pretending innovation is whatever shiny buzzword someone stapled to a slide last week. His quote about adtech being “an industry of lampreys sitting on the back of a whale” is the kind of line that should probably be printed on a plaque and sent to every CMO.We talk brand soul, too. Dave walks us through the Lululemon campaign that almost got Duke Stump fired but ended up saving the brand. He breaks down why some brands should be excommunicated from the Church of Authenticity entirely, and why gamers don’t hate ads—they hate being treated like idiots. There’s a difference.We wrap with the desert-island picks, the identity that actually matters when everything collapses, and the “achievement unlocked” Dave wants on the final screen of his life. Spoiler: it’s not about titles. It’s about people.If you want the real story of where gaming and adtech are heading—not the sanitized conference version—this is the episode. Pour a drink, cancel your next meeting, and watch a master dismantle the mythology.Stay Bold, Stay Curious, and Know More than You Did Yesterday.

Strap in. Anne Coghlan — co-founder of Scope3 and one of the few adults supervising the industry’s AI experimentation — joins The ADOTAT Show to explain why the ad-tech ecosystem is teetering on the edge of a long-overdue reckoning.If you’ve ever tried to understand programmatic and ended up feeling like you were reading a ransom note assembled from mismatched acronyms, Anne is here to decode the mess. She walks through why AI agents shouldn’t be treated like futuristic prophets, but rather like “smart interns” who need guardrails, human supervision, and — most importantly — a protocol that prevents them from burning the house down.We dive deep into the logic, engineering, governance, and sheer absurdity of a marketplace where one publisher can somehow have 24,000 resellers, entire layers profit from “data mud,” and MFA sites thrive by gaming the gaps that no one wants to talk about publicly.Anne doesn’t do euphemisms.She talks plainly about waste, fraud, obfuscation, sustainability, outcomes, and why the industry is held together by habit more than design. She explains how AdCP rewrites those rules, how agentic negotiation actually works, and why it’s time for the ecosystem to evolve on purpose — rather than stumbling forward on top of a decade’s worth of duct tape.This episode is far more than another AI-ad-tech fireside chat. It’s a blueprint for the next era of digital marketing, created by someone who actually understands the pipes, the politics, and the incentives.If you want to know where the ecosystem is heading — and who’s sweating behind the scenes — this is the episode you don’t skip.💬 Deep-Dive Topics We Hit(yes, we hit all of this)• How AdCP actually functions (beyond slide-deck mythology)• Why AI agents need guardrails, supervision, and human veto power• Multi-hop supply chains & why 24,000 resellers is not a rounding error• Ad fraud, MFA patterns, and the “crap and waste” Anne wants gone• The carbon footprint of bad media and why sustainability correlates with outcomes• What “agentic negotiation” looks like — and why it's nothing like RTB• Creative + context reasoning: the missing puzzle piece• Why publishers finally regain leverage in an agentic marketplace• How brands shift from “spend allocation” to genuine outcome architecture• The coming political battle: AdCP vs ARTF vs UCP vs “the old guard”• Who gets left behind when transparency stops being optional• Human-in-the-loop: what automation still absolutely cannot do• What goes extinct, and what replaces the ad-tech fossils🔎 SEO-Friendly Keywords (integrated into description)adcp, “ad context protocol”, “agentic ai”, ai agents, scope3, “anne coghlan”, programmatic advertising, ad-tech interview, adtech podcast, supply chain transparency, ssp, dsp, retail media, mfa, ad fraud, inventory quality, attention metrics, ctv advertising, sustainability advertising, carbon measurement, media buying automation, artf, ucp, iab tech lab, bidstream, openrtb, ad auctions, privacy, identity, ad marketplace, media innovation, future of digital ads, “pesach lattin”, adotat, incremental.com, troutman amin, adtech news

What do frozen pizza pilots, Febreze rituals, and Liquid Death have in common? According to brand strategist Ulli Appelbaum, they all prove one thing: your brand isn’t a logo—it’s a neural network firing in your consumer’s brain.In this episode, Pesach Lattin sits down with Ulli, founder of First the Trousers Then the Shoes, to strip branding down to its underwear and rebuild it with science, scent, and a splash of sarcasm.💡 Highlights:The Red Baroness: How turning a WWI pilot into a mom’s wingwoman made frozen pizza cool again.Brand as a neural network: Why your consumer’s brain is basically your brand’s hard drive.Febreze & ritual marketing: The psychology behind that final “clean” spray.The Liquid Death illusion: When cool branding hides an empty can.Purpose vs. pretense: Why Ulli calls corporate virtue signaling “lazy strategy in yoga pants.”Science over slogans: The 26 “association levers” that make memory your most valuable media channel.McDonald’s redemption arc: How emotional recall beats rational defense every time.This is branding without the buzzwords—a masterclass in meaning, memory, and merciless honesty about what actually moves market share.📚 From First the Trousers Then the Shoes to The Science of Brand Association, Ulli’s work merges cognitive science and marketing craft to prove that good strategy is just organized curiosity.🧠 Watch it. Think differently. And maybe stop pretending your purpose campaign is saving the planet.👉 Subscribe to The ADOTAT Show — where the industry’s brightest minds get grilled, lovingly, in HD.#ADOTATShow #BrandStrategy #MarketingScience #NeuralBranding #UlliAppelbaum #PesachLattin #Advertising #BrandLove #MarketingPsychology #LiquidDeath #Febreze #RedBaroness #FirstTheTrousersThenTheShoes

Jeff Greenfield doesn’t just work in adtech — he’s lived long enough to watch it become a tragicomedy of dashboards and delusion. He’s been a magician, a chiropractor, a pilot, and a data scientist — which makes him uniquely qualified to explain how this entire industry pulled a coin out of your ear, called it “attribution,” and invoiced you twice for it.In this episode of The ADOTAT Show, Pesach Lattin sits down with Jeff to unravel the most absurd, revealing, and occasionally magical truths about advertising’s obsession with proof. Together, they dissect the “data is the new oil” myth that turned measurement into a religion, analyze how last-click attribution became the Church of Denial, and explore why “optimization” now sounds suspiciously like “creative bankruptcy.”Greenfield explains what happens when you treat marketing like math — you get precision without persuasion, certainty without soul. He walks us through his now-famous “hose story,” where one brand cut awareness spend and accidentally proved that faith-based measurement isn’t just for religion anymore. And he dives into the Garden State Parkway analogy: a system clogged with SSPs, DSPs, exchanges, and verification vendors, all extracting tolls on the way from advertiser to audience.There’s talk of magic and measurement, of Jungian archetypes and the “collective unconscious” of advertising — that deep, emotional undercurrent brands used to tap before the spreadsheet became the creative brief. “People don’t actually want the truth,” Jeff says. “They want the story that feels true.”And that’s the point. AI can mimic creativity, but it can’t feel wonder. Data can measure engagement, but not belief. Great advertising isn’t a product of optimization — it’s a human act of imagination.Pesach and Jeff pull no punches as they expose how adtech’s “innovation layers” became little more than rent extraction, why Supply Path Optimization turned into “spiritual theater,” and how ad fraud remains the highest-reward, lowest-risk crime in the world. They end with the one metric that matters: the Return on Meaning.This episode closes the series “The Illusion of Precision,” where ADOTAT explores the gap between what the industry claims to know and what it actually understands. It’s a rare mix of humor, insight, and uncomfortable honesty — proof that data might tell you what happened, but only imagination can tell you why.🧠 Topics Covered:The Gospel of “Less Wrong” MeasurementThe Death of the Upper Funnel and the Rise of Left-Brain MarketingHow Over-Targeting Destroys Reach and ProfitThe Toll-Booth Economy of Adtech: Fraud, Fees, and Fake EfficiencyJungian Archetypes and the Lost Art of StorytellingAI’s Limits: Why Machines Can’t Channel InspirationThe Island Test: Can Your Marketing Survive Without Dashboards?Proof Without Magic Is Just Math💬 Best Quote:“All models are wrong,” Greenfield says, “but some are useful.”Sponsored by Troutman Amin and Incremental.com, who keep the lights on, the servers running, and the hosts just depressed enough to stay interesting. Without them, this show would be powered entirely by irony, caffeine, and broken attribution reports.🎩 Watch if you’ve ever wondered:Why your brand feels smaller even as your data gets bigger.#TheADOTATShow #JeffGreenfield #Adtech #MarketingPodcast #Advertising #AI #Creativity #Data #MediaBuying #Programmatic #Measurement #Attribution #LessWrong #adtechgod #adtechlearnbd

Welcome to The ADOTAT Show, where integrity meets insanity — and the only thing more dangerous than ad fraud is honesty.This week, Pesach Lattin sits down with Mattia Fosci, the lawyer-turned-activist-turned-ad-tech-CEO who’s been kicked out of Congress, nearly killed in a jungle, and somehow decided to take on the wildest beast of them all: programmatic advertising.Now leading Anonymized, Fosci is on a mission to prove that advertising doesn’t need to spy on you to work. He calls out the industry’s biggest myth — that IDs and endless data syncing make ads more effective — and explains why the obsession with attention metrics, click-through rates, and PowerPoint transparency reports is nothing but performance art.He doesn’t stop there. Fosci breaks down how AI should supervise machine learning, not replace it, why large language models are too slow to keep up with real-time bidding, and how his custom algorithms have already outperformed human planners two-thirds of the time. And yes, he actually says:“We’ve got access to all the world’s knowledge in our pockets, and we use it for cat videos.”Between jokes and truth bombs, Fosci talks about leadership, rebellion, and the art of staying human in a system designed to turn people into data. He explains why he’ll never sell out to Big Tech — even when offered millions — and why his grandfather’s old-fashioned lesson still guides him today: “There’s right and there’s wrong, and you always want to be in the right.”And then, with the dry grin of a man who’s survived both politics and ad tech, Fosci sums up his own legacy:“Smart guy with a bold vision — and two balls the size of coconuts.”It’s not just a punchline. It’s a business plan.Featuring:– Brutal honesty about ad tech’s supply chain rot– A masterclass in how AI actually works in programmatic– Leadership that’s part rebellion, part rationality– A reminder that decency still scales — if you let itSponsored by:Incremental – Helping marketers measure what really matters.Troutman Amin LLP – The legal sharp minds who keep innovation on the right side of the chaos.The ADOTAT Show:Where candor still counts, jargon dies young, and every guest leaves slightly more self-aware than they arrived.Stay bold. Stay curious. And know more than you did yesterday.

In this episode of The ADOTAT Show, Pesach Lattin sits down with Graeme Blake, founder of BluTui, a platform built to save agencies from themselves.From indie agency trenches to building infrastructure for the idea-sellers, Graeme breaks down why most agencies are sitting on gold but too distracted by Slack chaos and “circle back” culture to notice. He calls out the industry’s addiction to hours-for-dollars billing, the myth of digital projects with “no margin,” and the creative maverick mentality that’s holding real progress hostage.💡 What You’ll Learn:Why agencies are leaving money on the table (and how to fix it)How to survive the chaos of digital builds without losing your mindWhy “10x” should be banned from every deck and LinkedIn postHow value-based pricing could save the creative industryPlus: Graeme’s desert island picks featuring Larry David, Chelsea Handler, and Banksy🎙️ Hosted by Pesach Lattin, The Rabbi of ROAS🎧 Presented by ADOTAT, powered by Troutman Amin LLP and IncrementalStay bold, stay curious, and know more than you did yesterday.#AdTech #AgencyLife #ADOTATShow #Marketing #CreativeIndustry #BlueTui #PesachLattin #DigitalTransformation

Simon Poulton joins The ADOTAT Show for one of the smartest, funniest, and most brutally honest conversations about where marketing is headed — and why so many of us are in denial about it.In this episode, Simon takes us deep into the AI-driven search revolution, where users don’t really “search” anymore — they just ask questions and hope their algorithmic butler doesn’t hallucinate an answer. We talk about how Google’s shiny new interfaces are rewriting discovery itself, what “agentic ecosystems” actually mean, and why the real war isn’t over keywords — it’s over who teaches the machines what truth looks like.Simon also tackles the cult of measurement with the precision of a surgeon and the wit of a man who’s seen one too many PowerPoints. He argues that marketers don’t really want precision; they want validation. That we’ve turned data into a deity, and dashboards into confession booths. And that most of what passes for “optimization” is just highly organized anxiety wrapped in acronyms.Along the way, he drops truth bombs about:How removing levers from ad platforms doesn’t make marketers smarter — it just exposes who never knew what those levers did in the first place.Why creative teams are trapped in an A/B testing purgatory where innovation dies in decimal points.Why failing fast isn’t just a startup mantra — it’s survival advice for CMOs who’d rather risk big than die beige.And yes — there’s a dance-off. Because when you’re done fighting attribution models, sometimes you just need to prove your point with bad rhythm and good lighting.Brought to you by Troutman Amin LLP, the legal lions who keep adtech’s wildest players out of the headlines, and Incremental, the measurement masterminds reminding the industry that causation still matters.🎙️ The ADOTAT Show — Stay bold, stay curious, and know more than you did yesterday.

Welcome to the Season 6 Premiere of The ADOTAT Show, where host Pesach Lattin kicks things off with a powerhouse guest — David Cohen, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) — for one of the most important conversations in adtech right now.Cohen sits down with Lattin to unpack how the IAB is navigating the AI revolution, the collapse of legacy ad models, and the rebuilding of the open web in real time. From the death of the click-through rate to the emergence of attention, incrementality, and new creative standards, this episode cuts through the noise with brutal honesty and sharp analysis.If you want to understand where the digital economy is actually heading — beyond the buzzwords and PR decks — this is your roadmap.In this episode:How AI is upending 30 years of digital ad architecture, and how the IAB is rewriting the playbook.Why federal privacy reform is dead, and what Cohen’s “three-state model” really means for brands.The comeback of Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) and incrementality in the post-cookie world.The IAB’s battle to standardize CTV, commerce media, and AI creative labeling.Cohen’s unfiltered take on leadership: “Progress over perfection — just get sh*t done.”It’s the conversation that defines the moment — candid, data-driven, and just irreverent enough to feel like adtech therapy.💡 Keywords: IAB, David Cohen, AdTech, AI, Digital Advertising, Programmatic, Privacy, Measurement, Incrementality, Attention Metrics, CTV, Commerce Media, Retail Media, Open Web, Marketing Mix Modeling, Publishers, Data Ethics, ADOTAT, Pesach Lattin🎧 Watch now — the Season 6 Premiere of The ADOTAT Show — and hear how the IAB plans to keep the ad world from eating itself alive.🔥 Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsors:Troutman Amin, LLP — the powerhouse law firm guiding advertisers, platforms, and agencies through the minefield of privacy, compliance, and adtech regulation.Incremental.com — redefining measurement with causal data science that proves what truly drives performance and growth.👉 Subscribe to the ADOTAT Newsletter for exclusive interviews, data-driven deep dives, and bold commentary from inside the adtech industry.Go here: https://new.adotat.com/subscribeStay bold. Stay curious. And know more than you did yesterday.

🚨 Season Five Finale of The ADOTAT Show 🚨We’re closing out Season Five with one of the most provocative conversations yet. Naama Manova-Twito returns to The ADOTAT Show—and this time, she’s not just talking about AI as a productivity hack. She’s showing us what happens when AI becomes a colleague.Yes, a colleague. With résumés, cover letters, LinkedIn profiles, and job interviews. Naama’s AI agents aren’t “copilots” or “assistants”—they’re coworkers that run campaigns, crunch analytics, optimize budgets, and even file their own performance reviews.In this episode we dive into:🔹 How SMBs are leapfrogging big enterprises by hiring AI “employees.”🔹 Why vanity metrics like CTR, CPA, and ROAS are charming liars that don’t reflect business reality.🔹 The HR identity crisis: what happens when the candidate isn’t human—but is still qualified.🔹 Naama’s philosophy on startups: forget balance, conviction is the only currency that matters.🔹 How Israel’s startup resilience under pressure shaped MarkeTeam.ai’s approach.🔹 Why AI might actually bring the fun back to marketing by freeing humans from the grind.This episode isn’t just about technology—it’s about values, resilience, and redefining creativity in the age of agents.✨ Season Six Teaser: After a short break for the Jewish holidays, The ADOTAT Show will return in October, kicking off with David Cohen, CEO of the IAB, headlining our new season.🙏 Special thanks to our sponsors:Troutman Amin LLP – the legal lions of adtech.Incremental – proving that ROI isn’t a feeling, it’s math.🔔 Don’t forget to subscribe, hit the bell icon, and stay tuned for the next season.📢 Stay Bold, Stay Curious, and Know More Than You Did Yesterday.

What happens when you walk away from adtech chaos for the so-called serenity of the yoga industry—only to discover the “founder as guru” cult is just as messy as programmatic? You come back stronger, sharper, and funnier. That’s exactly what Kurt Donnell, CEO of Freestar, did. In this episode of The ADOTAT Show, Pesach Lattin digs into Donnell’s journey from Om shante to OpenRTB, and why he’s leading a quiet rebellion against the industry’s addiction to “more.”This isn’t your usual buttoned-up PR fluff. Kurt lays it out:Why publishers need to stop hoarding partners and ad slots—and how cutting down can actually raise CPMs and RPMs.The OpenPath effect: 3× win rates, 20% CPM lifts, and why direct pipes don’t always cannibalize SSP spend.How buyers are now sniper-rifle hunting, not shotgunning impressions, and what that means for publishers stuck in the “more is better” trap.The hard truth on identity providers, SSP sprawl, and M&A roll-ups—why half the logos in Lumascape could disappear without anyone shedding a tear.Freestar’s remote culture playbook: cameras on, uncomfortable transparency, radical trust, and llama yoga jokes that actually matter.The eternal culture debate: is a hot dog a sandwich? Kurt’s team still hasn’t solved it.And yes—we talk AI. Kurt’s take? “AI has to be the frosting on the cupcake, not the sprinkles.” In other words: stop slapping AI labels on useless chatbots that make customers want to throw their laptops. Use AI to exceed human potential, not replace it.If you’re in programmatic advertising, digital media, CTV, yield optimization, supply path efficiency, or even identity solutions, this episode is your cheat sheet to what’s next. From snipers vs. shotguns to remote leadership hacks, Donnell’s lessons are both tactical and big-picture—and you’ll leave either smarter, more paranoid, or both.👉 Don’t just read the headlines—watch the full interview and hear why sometimes subtraction is the real growth hack.🙏 Thank You to Our SponsorsThis episode of The Dōdge Show is made possible by:Troutman Amin LLP — the legal heavyweights keeping adtech honest.Incremental.com — the measurement pros helping brands prove what really works.Without their support, we wouldn’t get to ask the kind of questions that make PR teams sweat.Keywords: Freestar, Kurt Donnell, Pesach Lattin, The Dōdge Show, programmatic advertising, adtech podcast, adtech interview, header bidding, OpenRTB, SSP, DSP, identity solutions, supply path optimization, CTV advertising, digital media, AI in adtech, advertising technology, marketing technology, yield optimization, RPM, CPM, advertising consolidation, mergers and acquisitions, remote culture, ad management, OpenPath, future of programmatic.

Welcome back to another episode of The ADOTAT Show, the most-watched podcast in adtech, marketing, and media. This week we’re joined by Rio Longacre, a voice in the industry who isn’t afraid to call out the fraud, the fear, and the fantasy dashboards that have defined digital advertising for far too long.We’re talking Agentic AI—not the buzzwordy “AI tools” you use to rewrite an email subject line, but real autonomous agents that plan, bid, create, reconcile, and audit ad spend in real time. This is the leap from dashboards to decisions, from button-pushers to bots, from agencies as “labor shops” to agencies as governance layers. If you’ve been following the hype around AI in advertising, this is the conversation that separates signal from noise.💡 What We Cover in This Episode:How Agentic AI platforms will reshape media planning, buying, and creative workflowsWhy junior media staffers trafficking campaigns are standing on the tracks while the AI hype train barrels forwardThe truth about ad fraud, MFA sites, and FOFO economics (Fear of Finding Out)Why many brands don’t really want outcomes—they want coverThe coming collapse of SaaS moats built on dashboards, reporting, and verification layersHow agencies will survive—ugly but resilient—by evolving into arbiters of strategy, governance, and publisher trustThe future of in-housing 2.0, where brands use lean AI teams instead of armies of button-pushersThe end of curation taxes and verification duopolies when AI can pre-check fraud in real timeHow engineers are using AI like a Ferrari at 200 mph while marketers are still doing laps in the Costco parking lot📊 Keywords for the Curious (aka the future of adtech):Adtech, advertising technology, programmatic advertising, CTV, connected TV, AI in advertising, Agentic AI, autonomous agents, ad fraud, MFA (Made-for-Advertising), SPO (Supply Path Optimization), curation, verification, DoubleVerify, IAS, Scope3, identity vendors, retail media, SaaS moats, dashboards, procurement, incrementality, attention metrics, in-housing, media planning, media buying, creative production, audience curation, automation, marketing technology, Rio Longacre, Freestar, Kurt Donnell, Troutman Amin LLP, Incremental.com.🎙️ Why This Matters:The adtech ecosystem is at an inflection point. Fraud persists not because people don’t see it, but because the incentives are aligned to ignore it. Agentic AI is the first real chance to flip those incentives—from “spend and smile” to “budget-before-benefit.” That means contracts with teeth, AI audit loops that reconcile spend automatically, and governance structures that make fraud unprofitable.👉 Next Week: Don’t miss our conversation with Kurt Donnell, CEO and founder of Freestar. We’ll dive into how he built one of the most successful independent adtech companies and what’s next for publishers and platforms in 2025.🙏 Special Thanks to Our Sponsors:Troutman Amin LLP — The lions of legal in advertising and mediaIncremental.com — Proof-driven measurement for brands who want more than vanity metrics⚡ Subscribe to The ADOTAT Show for weekly deep dives into adtech, AI, marketing, and media. Turn on notifications so you don’t miss an episode—because if you’re not paying attention, someone else’s AI is already outbidding you.Stay Bold, Stay Curious, and Know More than You Did Yesterday.

Advertising has always loved its own lies—clicks that pretend to be insight, dashboards that look like truth, and “engagement” that usually just means someone fat-fingered a banner while trying to close Candy Crush. In this episode of The ADOTAT Show, I sit down with Anders Lithner, CEO of Brand Metrics, to dismantle the entire circus.Anders is Swedish, armed with data, and just dangerous enough to say the quiet part out loud: most marketers don’t actually want the truth—because the truth might get them fired.We cover everything the industry doesn’t want you to think too hard about:🔹 Why clicks are cheap dopamine and optimizing for CTR is “optimizing for stupidity.”🔹 Why you can’t buy behavior—you can only influence minds and hearts.🔹 How Whirlpool and Heinz prove that perception always precedes behavior.🔹 Why publishers like the Guardian and Financial Times leaned into Brand Metrics to survive the CPM race to the bottom.🔹 How millions of survey responses are now training predictive engines that may replace panels entirely by 2030.🔹 Why attention ≠ viewability, and why frequency is misunderstood (hint: too little frequency kills campaigns faster than too much).🔹 The brutal truth about CTV measurement: your TV being on doesn’t mean anyone’s paying attention.Anders doesn’t pull punches. He tells us directly: “You can’t skip the step. You can’t buy behavior. You can only influence people.”This isn’t about dashboards or vanity metrics. It’s about the future of brand measurement: predictive models, attention as currency, and brand lift as the new ROI. If you think your quarterly report is safe behind CTR and impressions, Anders has some news for you.👀 Watch if you want the truth about advertising’s future.💬 Comment if you think clicks still matter (spoiler: they don’t).📌 Subscribe for more conversations where we ruin PR spin for sport.https://new.adotat.com/subscribe#Adtech #BrandMetrics #AdvertisingTruth #AttentionEconomy #CTV #MarketingMeasurement

From Comic-Con to CPMs: How Fandom Turned Pop Culture into the Ultimate Marketing EngineMost brands trying to “connect with Gen Z” are basically fumbling around in the dark with a 1998 marketing playbook. They’re chasing trends after they’ve cooled, leaning on outdated audience buckets, and confusing “moviegoers” or “gamers” with actual insight.This episode blows that approach to pieces.I sit down with Jeremy Steinberg, CRO of Fandom, to talk about how the world’s largest fan platform—350 million monthly users across 300,000+ communities and 60 million pages—has become the gold standard for cultural targeting. Forget generic categories—Fandom’s FanDNA Helix uses AI and probabilistic modeling to uncover the why behind fandoms, predicting cultural overlaps and next-big-thing trends before anyone else sees them.You’ll hear:Why lazy audience targeting is the “Blockbuster Video” of marketing strategiesHow Helix spots wild but valuable overlaps (think Fantastic Four fans also obsessed with Lilo & Stitch and Baldur’s Gate)Why AI will blow up the “open web” as we know it and trigger the coming “algorithm wars”Special Thanks to Our SponsorsThis episode is made possible by the folks who keep the lights on and the caffeine flowing:Troutman Amin, LLP – The legal lions of adtech. If there’s a fine print, they’ve read it, rewritten it, and made it purr.Incremental – The masters of measurement who make sure your marketing dollars aren’t out there wandering the internet without adult supervision.Without them, this show would just be me shouting into the void about CPMs.The real reason gaming remains wildly under-monetized—and how to win there without getting roasted by the communityHow to activate inside fan culture so it feels authentic, not like you barged in with a press releaseWe also dig into the massive Gen Z reach Fandom commands, the “halo effect” of showing up where passions run hottest, and the future of brand positioning inside closed AI ecosystems.If you care about marketing in 2025—whether you’re in adtech, brand strategy, gaming, or just want to stop wasting media dollars on people who don’t care—this is a conversation you can’t miss.NEWSLETTER: https://new.adotat.com/subscribe

What happens when you try to market to Orthodox Jews with the same recycled LinkedIn playbook? You fail faster than a pop-up on Erev Shabbos.In this episode of The ADOTAT Show, Rabbi of ROAS Pesach Lattin sits down with Avromi Prengler, a sales pro who’s mastered trust-based marketing inside one of the most unique — and underserved — communities in America. We talk WhatsApp status ads, frum media ecosystems, ethical selling, and why shoving pork rinds into the Jewish Press might not be the move.✅ Learn how to build real relationships that actually drive results✅ Why CRM reminders won’t replace real menschkeit✅ And yes, diapers — lots and lots of diapersThank you to our sponsors:🔹 Troutman Amin LLP — For when your compliance needs a halachic backbone🔹 Incremental — Because measuring true lift shouldn’t require divine interventionSubscribe for more brutally honest, deeply curious takes on adtech, media, and marketing.📍 Stay bold. Stay curious. And know more than you did yesterday.#ADOTATShow #OrthodoxMarketing #PesachLattin #AvromiPrengler #JewishMarketing #Adtech #MediaBuying #WhatsAppAds #RelationshipSales #TroutmanAmin #Incremental

🎙️ This week on The ADOTAT Show: Jean-Marc Papin — The Calm Frenchman Who’s Quietly Rebuilding Ad Tech (and Maybe Saving the Planet While He’s At It)What do you get when you cross a nuclear engineer with a media tech executive? No, this isn’t the setup to a bad industry joke—it’s Jean-Marc Papin, Horizon Media’s SVP of Media Technologies and Sustainability, and the guest of this episode.In this deep, wildly entertaining, and unexpectedly philosophical conversation, we unpack how Jean-Marc went from regulated industries with literal life-or-death stakes to the glorious chaos of ad tech. He didn’t just survive the mess—he thrived in it, turning Horizon’s data spaghetti into the Blu. platform, a privacy-first, identity-resilient engine built not from buzzwords but from pure, unfiltered utility.🛠️ We dive into:How "creative disarray" beats clean roadmaps every timeWhy compliance is not a burden—it’s the birthplace of innovationWhat ad tech can learn from nuclear safety protocols (yes, seriously)The “desert island test” for who really belongs on your teamAnd how leadership isn't about control—it's about letting go at the right timePlus: baguettes, rogue AI named Barry, Cannes jury metaphors, and why Jean-Marc will absolutely not suffer a pitch consultant on his stranded island.🚨 If you’ve ever questioned what real innovation looks like behind the scenes—beyond the press releases and Cannes decks—this is the episode you’ve been waiting for.🔔 Subscribe, share, and leave a comment—then head over to ADOTAT+ for the full interview and more stories from the people actually building the future of media.Big thanks to our sponsors:Troutman Amin, LLP — For when you need legal with a backbone.Incremental — Bringing sanity to measurement, one outcome at a time.

Welcome to another brutally honest episode of The ADOTAT Show, where we rip the curtain off the adtech industry and drag the truth into the spotlight—whether it wants to be there or not.In this episode, Pesach Lattin, editor-in-chief of ADOTAT, sits down with Jules Minvielle, the co-founder and CEO of Olyzon, to dissect, dismember, and ultimately bury the outdated beast that is programmatic advertising as we know it.Let’s be blunt:If you think programmatic advertising is “fine,” you’re either not paying attention—or your job depends on keeping it broken.This isn’t another polite panel or recycled press release. This is a full-frontal autopsy of the programmatic media supply chain, DSP inefficiency, and the epidemic of AI-washing plaguing the ad industry in 2025.👨‍🔬 Topics we cover in excruciating, hilarious, and informative detail include:Why the legacy DSP model is fundamentally broken and exists mostly to feed intermediaries and inflate CPMsHow Agenic Media from Olyzon isn’t just another AI buzzword—it’s a complete rebuild of media buying infrastructureWhat it really means to deploy AI-native adtech, not just slap a prompt UI on a crusty platformHow CTV advertising is evolving—and how real-time contextual analysis at the program and scene level changes everythingThe difference between fake automation and true autonomous agentic systems that operate without human babysittingWhy “platforms” are dead, and modular, embeddable, always-on agents are the futureHow transcript parsing, scene-level metadata, and semantic understanding are outperforming cookies, cohorts, and conventional targetingThe dark secret: most advertisers and publishers are complicit in keeping the adtech status quo inefficientWhy programmatic “scale” is meaningless if the signal is trash—and how Olyzon’s AI agents filter for relevance, not just reachThe hilarious tragedy of 50% viewability as a success metric (yes, we go there)Why ad fraud thrives under complexity, and how clarity is the most dangerous tool of all💡 Jules Minvielle’s thesis is simple but radical:You don’t need another platform.You need a scalpel.And that scalpel is built from AI agents that read content like analysts, plan like strategists, and optimize like machines that don’t need PTO.⚖️ Thank you to our sponsors who make this unfiltered chaos possible:🔹 Troutman Amin – The legal commandos of adtech, privacy, TCPA, and digital regulation. Whether you're fighting off a class-action lawsuit or launching a data-rich startup in the landmine field of compliance, this is the law firm that doesn’t blink. They don’t do "general counsel," they do "survival strategy."🔹 Incremental – The measurement company for brands that are done playing make-believe with attribution. They deliver true causal lift, incrementality analysis, and marketing science you can actually take to the boardroom. No more last-click worship. No more modeled delusions. Just real, testable impact.👀 Coming up next week:We go from insurgent to insider as we sit down with Jean-Marc Papin, SVP of Advanced Video and Agency Partnerships at Horizon Media. We’ll talk about why attention metrics are broken, what it actually means to reach a human being in 2025, and why agencies need to stop fetishizing scale and start worshiping context.If you’ve ever wondered why your media budget feels like it was thrown into a black hole—or if you’ve quietly suspected your DSP is gaslighting you—this episode is for you.🔔 Subscribe to the channel, hit that bell icon, and drop a comment below. We actually read them. Even the spicy ones.https://new.adotat.com/subscribe🧠 Want more behind-the-scenes insights, strategy breakdowns, and marketing truth bombs?Subscribe to ADOTAT.com – where independent adtech journalism lives, breathes, and occasionally yells.#AdTech #ProgrammaticAdvertising #CTVAds #DigitalMedia #AgenicAI #DSP #Olyzon #AdvertisingTechnology #AIinAdvertising #MediaBuying #CTVTargeting #ContextualAdvertising #AdMeasurement #Incrementality #LegalCompliance #TroutmanAmin #Incremental #HorizonMedia #JeanMarcPapin #PesachLattin #AdTechNews #MarketingInnovationStay Bold. Stay Curious. And Know More Than You Did Yesterday.

Zack Rosenberg is BACK — and this time, he’s naming names, dragging dusty taxonomies into the sunlight, and explaining why most video targeting is about as accurate as your uncle’s weather predictions.In this no-holds-barred ADOTAT Show sequel, Pesach Lattin sits down once again with Zack Rosenberg, founder and CEO of Cortex, the AI company actually doing the hard work of understanding video—frame by frame, emotion by emotion, without resorting to creepy surveillance or outdated page metadata.🔍 Topics we rip apart like a bloated media plan:Why the video ad ecosystem is still powered by taxonomies last updated when BlackBerry was a thingThe invisible bias built into “brand safety” tools that mistake diversity for dangerWhat a word like “whoa” actually doesn’t tell you about a video (spoiler: everything)And why your DSP might be labeling plane crash footage as "Travel Content" (yes, really)🔥 This episode gets deep into the messiness of targeting, the myth of “neutral” AI, and the fundamental flaws still clogging up your media stack. If you work in adtech, media planning, brand strategy—or if you’ve ever stared at a dashboard and wondered what the hell am I looking at—you need to watch this.🧠 Zack doesn’t hold back. And neither do we.SPONSORED BY:👉 Incremental.com – Finally, incrementality without smoke and mirrors.👉 Troutman Amin – The legal dream team you want when adtech starts breaking bad.📅 Next Week: We sit down with Jules Minvielle, Co-founder and CEO of Olyzon, and formerly behind Mozoo and Ogury. Prepare for French-accented brilliance, retail media realness, and maybe a few shots at the status quo.Subscribe, like, comment—but more importantly: stay bold, stay curious, and know more than you did yesterday.https://new.adotat.com/subscribe

Welcome to another episode of The ADOTAT Show — where ad tech comes to get emotionally undressed and no buzzword leaves with its dignity intact.This time, we’re graced — again — by the one and only Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab and unofficial frequent flyer of our guest chair. That’s right: third time on the show. At this point, we’re contractually obligated to get him a branded mug or start issuing loyalty points. Possibly both.And what are we unpacking? Oh, just the usual carnival of chaos that is digital advertising:Google’s Cookie Resurrection Tour: Just when we were planning the eulogy, Chrome said “never mind.” Is this a smart industry save or a Groundhog Day reboot with worse privacy implications?CTV’s Glow-Up: Is Connected TV really the golden child of media innovation — or just linear TV wearing a trench coat and pretending to be digital? Spoiler: There’s more emotion than logic, and also some QR codes that know you better than your therapist.Fingerprinting — the F-word of Ad Tech: Is it a gentle handshake or a biometric tattoo you didn’t ask for? Anthony dives into the nuance while Pesach gleefully pokes the bear.Fraud: The Rash That Won’t Go Away: We talk ad fraud like it’s an STD the entire industry pretends not to have. Why is no one willing to fund the research to actually figure out how bad it is? (Spoiler: Fear of finding out. Yes, FOFO is real.)Desert Island Ad Tech: We strand Anthony Katsur on an imaginary island (again) and make him choose his survival tools. Hint: They’re nerdier than a Swiss Army knife but just as useful if your metric dashboard crashes mid-campaign.Legacy, Leadership, and Lying to Ourselves: Anthony gets personal about his journey from NetGravity to now, drops names (yes, Megan Pagliuca, we see you), and waxes philosophical about why ad tech needs to stop beating itself up — and each other — like some deranged Fight Club in a WeWork.This isn’t a fireside chat. It’s a flamethrower session. If you’re in the business of digital media, you owe it to yourself to watch two people call B.S. on the things we all pretend are working.Subscribe, argue in the comments, and maybe — just maybe — ask your DSP how it’s really feeling.Stay Bold. Stay Curious. Know More Than You Did Yesterday.

How do you rebuild your life after an unimaginable loss—and turn tragedy into a lasting legacy?In this powerful and deeply personal Season 5 premiere of The ADOTAT Show, Pesach Lattin sits down with Kevin Krim, President & CEO of EDO, but known to many New Yorkers for a profoundly different reason: the heartbreaking loss of his two young children, Lulu and Leo, in one of New York City’s most widely covered tragedies of the past decade.Rather than be defined solely by grief, Kevin and his wife Marina transformed their pain into purpose through the creation of Choose Creativity, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering children with creativity and resilience. This remarkable conversation reveals how creativity became Kevin’s lifeline, teaching him lessons about leadership, letting go, and redefining what really matters in life and business.On a lighter—but no less insightful—note, Kevin and Pesach also venture deep into the rabbit holes of adtech, from battling the industry’s obsession with vanity metrics like GRPs (seriously, let it go!) to sorting out the real innovators from the QR-code-obsessed pretenders in the CTV landscape. Think: less PowerPoint nonsense, more predictive data brilliance.Key topics covered (with trademark irreverence and wit):How genuine creative leadership can transform your team—no buzzwords required.Why outcomes and predictive metrics are finally toppling tired impression-based models (it's about time).The messy yet fascinating world of convergent TV, programmatic chaos, and who’s actually pushing adtech forward.Why should you watch?This special episode goes beyond business. It's a human conversation about resilience, grace, and how deeply personal experiences shape leadership and innovation. You’ll walk away inspired, entertained, and ready to rethink your own relationship with creativity and data.Special thanks to our sponsors:Incremental.com, because real insights matter more than pretty dashboards.Troutman Amin LLP, handling your adtech legal headaches so you can actually sleep at night.👉 Subscribe, hit like, and share your thoughts on this powerful conversation below.👉 Get the full industry scoop straight to your inbox—subscribe to the ADOTAT newsletter: http://new.adotat.com #AdTech #CTV #CreativeLeadership #ChooseCreativity #MarketingInnovation #ProgrammaticAdvertising #IndustryInsightsFor more on Choose Creativity and how to support their mission, visit: https://choosecreativity.org/Learn more about ADOTAT: https://new.adotat.com/subscribe

What happens when you sit down with one of adtech’s longest-running insiders, who helped turn a four-person startup into a $2 billion global media infrastructure—and he actually tells the truth?Welcome to this episode of The ADOTAT Show, where host Pesach Lattin talks with Tyler Kelly, President of Basis Technologies, about what it really takes to scale, lead, and stay sane in an industry obsessed with shiny objects and meaningless metrics.Tyler’s been in the trenches since before most DSPs had names, let alone logos. He’s not just steering the ship—he helped build the shipyard. And in this brutally honest, refreshingly irreverent conversation, he breaks down everything from adtech burnout to the future of automation, why AI is mostly smoke and mirrors, and how Basis plans to become the global operating system for media.In this episode, we cover:💡 The Moonshot Vision:Why Basis isn’t aiming to be “just another DSP”—but the foundation layer every marketer builds on. Search, social, CTV, linear, and beyond.⚙️ Automation Without the Bull:How Basis has quietly automated the ad tech grunt work for years, and why most so-called “AI solutions” are just ChatGPT in a trench coat.📉 Why Click-Through Rates Deserve to Die:Spoiler: they're useless, misleading, and possibly the biggest placebo in modern media metrics.📦 The Myth of the All-Knowing Signal:Tyler lays out why cross-device tracking is still mostly fiction, and why many marketers are building castles on quicksand.🏢 How to Keep 1,000 Employees From Burning Out:From small clients that drain your team to the structure that actually keeps people at Basis for 15+ years.🏕️ Desert Island Scenarios, Fleece Vests, and Tribal Council Votes:Yes, we also talk about which media roles get voted off first in the great agency survival game.Plus, we ask the real question behind all the dashboards and dashboards-for-dashboards:What are we even optimizing anymore—if half the signals are broken and the other half are lies?🧠 Whether you're a media buyer tired of dancing around buzzwords, a strategist trying to sort substance from vaporware, or just wondering how anyone stays grounded in this industry—this episode has the sharp insights and sarcasm you didn’t know you needed.🎯 Featured Guest:Tyler Kelly, President, Basis Technologies— adtech veteran, culture-builder, automation realist, and scrappy operator still thinking like employee #4.🙌 Special thanks to our sponsors:🛡️ Troutman Amin LLP – Legal firepower with an adtech IQ.📊 Incremental.com – Turning retail media from guesswork to growth engine.🔔 Like, comment, and subscribe for more brutally honest takes from inside the media machine. This is The ADOTAT Show—where the BS stays in the press release, and the signal finally cuts through the noise.Stay Bold. Stay Curious. And Know More Than You Did Yesterday.#AdTech #BasisTechnologies #ProgrammaticAdvertising #MediaBuying #Automation #RetailMedia #CTV #DigitalMarketing #PesachLattin #TheADOTATShow #Leadership #MarTech #AIinAdvertising #AgencyLife #AdvertisingTruthshttps://new.adotat.com/subscribe

What happens when you hand an ad tech blowtorch to someone who’s not afraid to use it? You get this episode.Join host Pesach Lattin as he goes toe-to-toe with Scott Ensign, Chief Strategy Officer of Butler/Till—a man who believes fewer impressions are the future, upfronts are fossils, and programmatic curation isn’t dead…it’s just wildly misunderstood.We dig into everything:🥊 How indie agencies are body-checking bloated holding companies🔥 Why Butler/Till blew the dust off a nine-figure pharma campaign—and stole it🧪 Whether curation is a misunderstood genius or a washed-up rockstar🧹 Who’s cleaning the ad supply chain (spoiler: not the people pointing fingers)🧠 What Steven Pinker, Freud, and coconut VPNs have to do with strategy🗑️ Which buzzwords deserve to be yeeted into the ocean (looking at you, “cookieless future”)It’s smart, sharp, and slightly unhinged—in the best possible way. We cover everything from SSP cleanup and MFA site drama to philosophical takes on ad waste, attention scarcity, and the dark arts of media planning.Special thanks to our fearless sponsors:🔹 Troutman Amin — for making sure we don’t get sued for saying the quiet part out loud🔹 Incremental.com — for proving incrementality isn’t just another vanity stat👉 If you’ve ever wanted your ad tech with a side of sass, strategy, and storytelling, hit play.🧁 Stay Bold, Stay Curious, and Know More Than You Did Yesterday.

Richard K. Howe is not your average adtech CEO. He’s not selling AI that guesses which shampoo you bought last week or stuffing identity graphs with browser crumbs and bad intentions. No—he’s building something far more dangerous to the status quo: AI that actually thinks.In this episode of The ADOTAT Show, we sit down with the CEO of Inuvo, a structural engineer turned advertising insurgent, who’s throwing the entire surveillance-based ad model into the recycling bin (right next to your cookie policy pop-ups). Richard walks us through how his team built an AI platform that doesn’t care who you are—but why you do anything. It’s not about identity anymore. It’s about motivation. Psychology. Intent.We unpack:Why the “who” question that adtech has obsessed over for 30 years is officially uselessHow Inuvo’s AI can sniff out a sleepless dog owner in Iceland… and sell them Bose SleepbudsWhy retargeting is the AOL CD of marketingHow the open web has become a junkyard of skipped impressions—simply because they lack a cookieAnd why most adtech vendors know they’re selling snake oil but keep doing it anywayRichard also drops wisdom on mergers and acquisitions, why integration fails most of the time, how AI projects are like building bridges, and yes—his inability to remember garbage day. Spoiler: his biggest rival in life might be the trash bin.Oh, and if you’re wondering how Karen Carpenter, Metallica, and short-nosed pugs all fit into the same episode… you’ll want to listen.Big thanks to our sponsors:💼 Troutman Amin LLP – The lawyers who actually understand this industry and aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty.📊 Incremental.com – The measurement company that’s finally putting a stake in the heart of vanity metrics. If you're tired of dashboards that lie to you, they’re the ones who’ll show you what’s actually working.This is adtech without the nonsense. Just sharp insights, broken myths, and a whole lot of pug snoring.🧠 Watch now.💣 Rethink everything.🎧 And stay bold, stay curious, and know more than you did yesterday.

What happens when you combine military-grade leadership, agency scars, a refusal to hire “ninjas,” and an unwavering belief that trust matters more than targeting? You get Adam Potashnick, North American CEO of Brainlabs—and possibly the only person in advertising who can talk about team culture, AI, and client relationships without sounding like a TED Talk on autopilot.In this episode of The ADOTAT Show, I sit down with Adam to unpack:Why building the right team means skipping the “rockstars” and hiring the socially gifted humans who actually collaborateHow AI still isn’t smart enough to stop stalking you with weird banner adsWhat real partnerships look like (hint: they survive the hard conversations)And why celebrating the wins—big or small—isn’t just for Yankees fansWe also take a wild detour into personal branding, the myth of measurement, desert island survival squads, and the absolute lie that everything in ad tech is optimized and working perfectly (spoiler: it’s not).🎯 This isn’t just another leadership interview—it’s a masterclass in not losing your soul while navigating Slack purgatory, client fire drills, and the endlessly shifting buzzword bingo of modern marketing.🙏 Huge thanks to Troutman Amin LLP, our sponsor and legal sherpa through this industry’s absurdity—especially Eric J. Troutman, partner, who fights the good fight and still has time to watch this show (probably while reviewing 300-page contracts).👇 Smash that play button. Then like, comment, subscribe, and go re-evaluate your hiring strategy.SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER HERE: https://new.adotat.com/subscribe#ADOTATShow #AdamPotashnick #AdTechLeadership #Brainlabs #ElPresidente #TroutmanAmin #EricJTroutman #MarketingTruths #WittyInterviews #AdTechUnplugged #StayBoldStayCurious

Ever wonder what happens when a seasoned ad veteran starts pulling the thread on 30 years of marketing lies—and doesn’t stop?In this sharp, hilarious, and wildly informative episode of The ADOTAT Show, host Pesach Lattin sits down with James McDonald, Managing Director of Audience Group, to rip apart the industry’s most sacred assumptions and expose the real mechanics behind successful advertising. Spoiler: it’s not your CTR. And it’s definitely not your last-click attribution report from Google Ads.With the energy of a detective, the wit of a comic-book superhero (literally—check the thumbnail), and the experience of someone who’s seen every adtech hype cycle from dial-up to programmatic, James delivers insight after insight on what actually drives effectiveness in media and why most marketing dashboards are just dashboards of delusion.🔍 In this episode, we go full-on X-ray vision into:Why Cost Per Memory Day (CPMD) might be the only metric worth fighting forHow to tell if your “attention” vendor is selling smoke and mirrorsWhat went right with Slater & Gordon’s attention-optimized campaignCoca-Cola’s underrated playbook on brand salience and light buyersWhy performance marketing without memory is like selling coupons in a blackoutWhat “search as shelf space” really means—and why branded keyword spend might be your budget’s saddest line itemAnd yes—we talk about the platform scam economy:💸 Google selling you the ad, grading the test, and sending the invoice💸 Meta promising viewability while hiding actual engagement💸 The rise of performance marketing addiction and what happens when you pull the plug👓 “If advertising’s job is to make decisions easier, why are we optimizing for things people forget in 3 seconds?”Whether you’re a media buyer trying to escape the CTR hamster wheel, a CMO who wants long-term brand equity without boring decks, or a performance marketer who suspects the spreadsheet is lying to you—this conversation is your sanity check.🧠 Plus:James unveils his Campaign Reality Check Worksheet—a practical tool to align your media, creative, and strategy teams around real metrics, not marketing cosplay.https://new.adotat.com/subscribe

Welcome to The ADOTAT Show, where your media plan gets roasted, your DSP gets unmasked, and the bidstream is finally called out for the digital junkyard it is. In this no-fluff, high-signal episode, host Pesach Lattin sits down with Chris Kane of Jounce Media—the guy who stares into the swirling mess of ad tech and actually sees patterns. Terrifying, right?📉 What’s on the table? Everything. MFA’s rapid collapse (it wasn’t a scandal, it was just bad math), QPS transparency (or lack thereof), and how publishers are caught in an economic Hunger Games where everyone’s optimizing themselves off a cliff. It’s not personal, it’s just arbitrage.📊 Chris breaks down:Why the open web is flatter than a La Croix left out in July.How DSPs are serving hot dogs instead of high-quality impressions.Why “signal trustworthiness” is the new FICO score of ad tech—and your DSP probably flunks.The brutal reality: Publishers aren’t villains—they’re just desperate and rational.Why every MFA grifter is already working on the CTV version of their scam—and you’re probably buying it.🧠 You'll also get a rare look into the personal philosophy that fuels Chris: being wrong (a lot), learning like a kid, and listening like a skeptic. Yes, there are dolphins. No, they don't buy your CTRs either.Oh, and yes—this ends with a dance-off. Sort of. You’ll just have to see it.💡 If you're still optimizing for CTR like it’s 2012 and trusting your DSP like it's your rabbi, this episode is your rude awakening.👉 Subscribe. Watch. Share. And for the love of your ROAS—think before you click.🧠 Stay Bold. Stay Curious. Know More Than You Did Yesterday.https://new.adotat.com/subscribe#AdTech #Programmatic #OpenWeb #DSP #CTV #MFA #ChrisKane #Jounce #ADOTATShow #PesachLattin #AdvertisingIndustry #MediaBuying #DigitalAdvertising #AdFraud #AttentionEconomy

Welcome to another brutally honest episode of The ADOTAT Show, where we rip the vanity metrics out of your cold, dead dashboards and ask the uncomfortable question: does your marketing actually do anything?This time, Rabbi Pesach Lattin sits down with Bradley Keefer, the CRO of Keen Decision Systems and the man currently babysitting over $7.5 billion in marketing budgets—all while casually setting fire to industry sacred cows like ROAS, brand love, and that PowerPoint deck your agency spent three weeks justifying.In this episode, we talk about:Why ROAS is the participation trophy of marketingHow most CMOs have the lifespan of a forgotten yogurt in the breakroom fridgeWhat “headless MarTech” actually means (and why your agency’s tech stack is probably a crime scene)How AI agents are already making media plans better than your team—and don’t need sleep, snacks, or SlackAnd the impending death of Frankenstein’d holding companies held together by duct tape, panic, and legacy contractsKeefer doesn’t pull punches. He explains why Net Present Value (NPV) is the only metric CFOs trust, why AI forecasting will soon replace your “gut instincts,” and how indie agencies with five people and an API are beating global networks with 5,000. Also, someone says “six-fingered avatar” and we mean that literally.🔥 Brought to you with support from our chaos-sponsoring heroes at Troutman Amin, and the attribution truth-tellers over at Incremental—who will tell you if your media spend is working, even if it hurts your feelings.👇 Hit subscribe if you like brutal honesty, data-driven heresy, and guests who don’t sound like they were media-trained into a coma.Stay bold. Stay curious. And know more than you did yesterday.#AdTech #MarketingTruths #BradleyKeefer #KeenDS #CMODoomsday #ROASSucks #HeadlessMarTech #ADOTATShow #MediaPlanning #Incremental #TroutmanAmin #MarketingMetrics #AIinMarketing #pesachlattin https://new.adotat.com/subscribe

Alexis Hochleutner has been behind the curtain at Google, Meta, Amazon, and more — not as a bystander, but as one of the few people actually trying to fix what most of the adtech world prefers to ignore.In this no-holds-barred conversation, Alexis unpacks a career spent inside the engine room of digital advertising — putting out fires caused by brand safety meltdowns, battling fraud rings operating in plain sight, and navigating the ethical black holes of platforms more interested in revenue than responsibility.She’s seen how verification vendors quietly normalized fraud. She’s watched premium inventory get outbid by garbage traffic. And she’s done being quiet about it.This episode isn’t about theories. It’s about what actually happens when your ad shows up next to extremist content, when your DSP bundles 40 MFA sites under one line item, and when your brand safety strategy depends on a spreadsheet that can’t update fast enough to keep up with reality.What you’ll learn:📉 Why MFA sites still dominate even after being “blocked”🧾 Why fraud isn’t a bug — it’s a business model🌴 What adtech would look like if you rebuilt it on a desert island (spoiler: no dashboards)🤖 Why AI is mostly theater, not strategy🧠 Why real change starts with people who actually give a damnIf you work in advertising, adtech, media buying, or just wonder why your CPMs keep rising while your results get worse — this is essential viewing.Subscribe. Watch. Share it with someone still measuring success by CTR.🧠 Stay Bold. Stay Curious. And Know More Than You Did Yesterday.

🔥 Welcome to Season Four of The ADOTAT Show – where we ask the questions that make PR teams sweat through their Patagonia vests.In this episode, Andrew Casale, CEO of Index Exchange and reformed Canadian maple syrup trafficker (allegedly), sits down with Pesach Lattin to talk about:🧠 Why SSPs are finally getting respect—or at least better acronyms💸 Whether take rates will ever be as transparent as a glass of LaCroix📺 Why CTV is the high-maintenance teen of ad tech (with trust issues)🧵 And how burst traffic is basically a DDoS attack in yoga pantsOh, and Andrew reveals he has no hobbies, loves ad logs, and voluntarily moved to NYC, so clearly he’s committed to pain.💼 Sponsored by our truth-telling trio:Troutman Amin LLP – Legal warriors keeping us out of jail (so far)Incremental – The future of retail media, minus the guesswork👀 Hit play, grab your artisanal oat milk, and buckle—wait, don't buckle up. Just watch it.📌 Stay Bold. Stay Curious. And Know More than You Did Yesterday.#AdTech #CTV #ProgrammaticTruths #IndexExchange #ADOTATShow #PesachLattin #staycurious 📲 Follow ADOTAT Everywhere📩 Newsletter: https://new.adotat.com/subscribe💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pesach-lattin/