AdExchanger Talks interviews key figures in marketing who are transforming digital advertising and media. New and previously published episodes are available on this page and on your preferred podcast app.
AI is reshaping how we shop, but agents won’t take over our carts just yet. LiveRamp CEO Scott Howe explains why the change will be gradual – and how chatbot ads (not just on ChatGPT) will change the online shopping experience.
True Religion CMO Kristen D’Arcy approaches marketing measurement the way you’d shop for jeans – by looking for the right fit. She’s moved past last click, using real-time data to see what actually drives sales, and she isn’t afraid to make fast changes when something isn’t working.
No brand safety? No problem. The Onion’s CMO Leila Brillson shares how the iconic satire site is expanding beyond pithy headlines into documentaries and also helping other brands find their snark – all while staying far, far away from generative AI.
NBCU’s early embrace of ad tech – led by Ryan McConville, its chief product officer and EVP of ad platforms – set the stage for a pandemic-fueled digital transformation that blurred the line between traditional TV and streaming. But that doesn’t mean linear isn’t still a top priority.
As brand safety standards evolve and oversight shifts from platforms to third-party vendors, Brittany Scott, SVP of global partnerships at Zefr, explains what the rise of generative AI – and Meta’s decision to step away from MRC brand safety audits – means for the future of media quality.
Think you know Snapchat’s audience? Think again, says Ajit Mohan, Snap’s chief business officer. Mohan gets real and busts myths, including the idea that Snap is just for kids and its youngest users aren’t big spenders.
Jay Richman, Amazon’s VP of product and technology, on how AI-generated ad creative can still stand out at scale without becoming generic or too samey samey. Plus: The risks brands face if they wait too long to embrace AI.
The Economist is charting its own course in the age of AI, says Nada Arnot, the 182-year-old publication’s EVP of marketing. It’s steering clear of licensing deals and lawsuits and partnering with Claude on its own terms.
AI hype is everywhere, but Moloco CEO Ikkjin Ahn says the real winners in ad tech will be those who can move beyond flashy demos and harness AI at true hyperscale.
You can’t buy your way to the top of a large-language model. At least not yet. But there are things that brands can do to influence how – and if – they get mentioned, says Tracy Morrissey, SVP of media and performance at full-service agency Innocean USA.
There are billions of mobile gamers in this world – mostly adult women with serious spending power – but advertisers are still lagging. It’s time for brands to catch up with gaming audiences, says Gabrielle Heyman, Zynga’s head of global brand sales and partnerships.
Jeff Cohen, Skai’s new chief business development officer, unpacks why the smartest retailers and brands are already connecting the data dots and rethinking their playbooks for the AI era, even though the shopping bots aren’t quite there yet.
Vidushi Dyall went from tracking cybercriminals at the Manhattan DA’s office to dissecting online ad empires. In this episode, she breaks down the DOJ’s antitrust battles with Google – and why she sometimes finds herself rooting for the so‑called evil empire.
Tony Stubblebine became CEO of Medium in 2022 and turned the struggling, loss-making platform profitable by cutting costs, improving content quality and refusing to rely on advertising.
Marketing often gets unfairly pegged as a cost center. But that wouldn’t happen if marketers had access to better measurement that gave them clarity on what truly drives business growth, argues Henry Innis, CEO and co-founder of MMM platform Mutinex.
Anne Coghlan, co-founder and COO of Scope3, on why cutting carbon in ad tech isn’t just about saving the planet; it’s about eliminating inefficiency and financial waste at the same time. Plus: Using AI to automate and optimize digital media buying at the impression level.
Online advertising’s privacy problem isn’t just about bad actors; it’s about bad metrics, says Marc Guldimann, CEO and founder of attention startup Adelaide. “I think a lot of the invasive behaviors in the ad tech space can be traced back to a lack of a shared understanding of quality,” he says.
In the Google search case, a forced spin-off of Chrome was never gonna happen, but a court-ordered divestiture of GAM isn’t beyond the pale in the ad tech case, says Geoffrey Manne, president and founder of the International Center for Law and Economics.
The fundamental shift from traditional search to AI chatbots has major implications for the entire marketing organization, says Bluefish CEO Alex Sherman. If brands want control over how they appear in AI search results, they must think about the content they feed to large language models.
As the newly appointed CMO of Genesis Motor America, it’s Amy Marentic’s job to raise awareness for the luxury auto brand, which is fighting for market share against more well-known incumbents in the US market. To do it, she’s analyzing the data and working on a growth strategy to reach a largely untapped demo: women. Plus: Marentic’s unique origin story, from astronaut hopeful to chief marketer.
HyphaMetrics had barely taken its first steps as a new startup before drawing the ire of measurement juggernaut Nielsen. Four years and several lawsuits later (including one jury trial win for HyphaMetrics), CEO Joanna Drews is more than ready to get the company moving forward again.
When Google reversed its decision to deprecate third-party cookies, the first word in ID5 CEO Mathieu Roche’s mind was an expletive. But it doesn’t really matter what happens with cookies on Chrome anymore. “Most of the industry has moved past the notion that cookies were good enough to target and measure advertising on the web,” Roche says.
Enough with the ROAS obsession. It’s time for a smarter approach to measurement that focuses on more than short-term objectives, says Melanie Babcock-Brown, VP of media and monetization for Orange Apron Media, The Home Depot’s retail media network.
Native advertising has been around for a long time. But creating a native ad unit online is way more complicated than a standard programmatic placement, because multiple teams and systems have to compose it on the fly, says Priti Ohri, CEO and co-founder of startup Advertible, which describes itself as “native-as-a-service.”
Product review site HouseFresh bounced back from losing 91% of its Google traffic last year. Here’s how it’s pivoting in response to stiffer affiliate marketing competition and zero-click AI search.
Paul Longo, GM of AI in ads at Microsoft Advertising, breaks down what it means to bring ads into conversational experiences and how AI-powered tools are changing the way advertisers work. Plus: Microsoft may be shutting down the Xandr DSP next year, but that doesn’t mean Microsoft is getting out of the ad tech game.
DSPs are building tools to bypass SSPs, and SSPs are trying to cut out the buy side. But the real question in the noise is whether the technology improves effectiveness, says Kara Puccinelli, chief customer officer at Nexxen, which just so happens to describe itself as an end-to-end platform.
From one perspective, publishers are up a creek thanks to the rise of generative AI search; the impact on discoverability and traffic is palpable. But that doesn’t mean publishers can’t adapt and find new ways to make money, says Mediavine CRO Amanda Martin.
There are many misconceptions about ad measurement. But the biggest thing most marketers are wrongheaded about is in thinking there’s a single solution for attribution. It simply doesn’t exist, says attribution expert Madan Bharadwaj, founder of measurement startup M^2.
Ron Jacobson took the classic programmatic startup route. Which is to say, he pivoted randomly from a software job at a bank (well, the New York Fed), landed at an ad tech company and later founded his own ad tech startup before getting acquired by yet another ad tech company.
