Perion CEO Tal Jacobson is more than a little sick of talking about AI as if it’s some brand-new innovation.
The industry has been using similar techniques to steer ad spend for years, just under a different name.
“You know, we’ve been doing AI for 15 years and we called it ‘machine learning,’” Jacobson says on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks. “Why didn’t we say ‘machine learning’ 700 times an hour? AI is just another phase of technology.”
Founded in 1999 as an email client called IncrediMail, Perion has since cycled through search arbitrage and ad tech roll-up phases to become a multichannel advertising platform.
That long evolution is now colliding with the latest AI boom.
Jacobson is tired of the hype, but Perion is leaning into the underlying tech, rebuilding itself around an AI media trading agent called Outmax, which allocates budgets across CTV, digital-out-of-home, retail media, YouTube, Meta and TikTok.
Perion also spent $65 million last year to acquire Greenbids, an AI-powered media optimization tool in the same vein as Chalice and SWYM.ai (both still independent) and Scibids, which was acquired by DoubleVerify for $125 million in 2023.
Jacobson argues that what really matters isn’t how bids get placed, but rather what the system is optimizing toward. The point of AI isn’t cheaper impressions or a better cost per acquisition, he says. It’s outcomes.
“That should be the only single truth of everything,” he says. “Anything else? It’s just noise.”
Jacobson also has a blunt prediction for the humans caught in the middle of the AI revolution/evolution.
“The manual work [of ad ops] is doomed, but I think manual work for every single occupation is doomed,” he says. “People need to figure out how to add value [and] how to solve problems.”
Also in this episode: Perion’s recent performance – the company had a good Q4 – despite market fluctuations, what’s fueling growth in digital out-of-home and how Jacobson went from being an animator (his first job) to becoming an ad tech CEO.
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