Explore every episode of the podcast Signal & Noise

In this episode of Signal & Noise, Brett, Rio, and special guest Shiv Gupta (Founder & CEO of U of Digital) dive into the seismic impact AI is having on the advertising industry. Listen as they explore Meta’s bold push toward fully automated media buying, question the future of the agency FTE model, and examine how AI could upend traditional workflows while opening the door for new roles, business models, and human-centered strategy.

In Episode 3, Brett and Rio take aim at a problem that quietly siphons billions of dollars and erodes trust every single day: digital ad fraud.

The question is neither theoretical nor hyperbole: for many brands, it genuinely feels like the bad guys are winning. Bot farms masquerade as premium publishers, MFA sites inflate metrics, and even “safe” channels like CTV are showing cracks with pervasive illicit activity.

No one agrees on exactly how much ad fraud is out there – but everyone agrees there is a lot. Most estimates say it amounts to multiple billions of dollars annually, a staggering total.With the stakes so high, this is an important topic.

That’s why we invited Dr. Augustine Fou, one of the industry’s most relentless fraud hunters, to cut through the noise. Over the next hour we confront the uncomfortable truths, expose the latest tactics, and—crucially—outline concrete steps you can take before your next media plan goes live. Let’s roll up our sleeves and see who’s really winning.

In episode 2, we dive deep into Georgian's research on AI adoption across marketing and technology teams, the opportunities and challenges associated current agentic and generative AI solutions, and potential impacts across industries.

While we believe AI augments existing software rather than replaces it, there will be impacts on specific job functions and work streams critical to marketing and advertising transformation.   Learn what organizational changes are needed for effective AI integration, how to get started, and the challenges you'll likely face as AI adoption increases across your organization.

In this episode of Signal & Noise, Stephanie Layser (AKA, Google-slayer) joins hosts Brett and Rio to discuss how publishers can adapt in a digital landscape dominated by tech giants. She explores the role of AI in improving monetization, the shift toward direct ad sales, and the need for innovation to stay competitive.

The episode covers brand safety, content control, and changing consumer habits—especially among younger audiences. Stephanie also highlights the importance of streamlining ad sales and using data to drive engagement and revenue.

Signal & Noise: Live from Advertising Week 2025 dives into the most urgent conversations shaping modern advertising — from AI enablement and data transparency to the evolution of streaming, publishers, and the creator economy. Hosts Rio Longacre and Brett House speak with industry leaders to unpack how technology, innovation, and authenticity are redefining outcomes and quality in media. Tune in for fresh insights from the front lines of ad tech’s most transformative moment. Featured Interviews for AdWeek 2025: Johnathan Barnes, Founder & CEO, Population Science; Alyssa Furth, Senior Manager, Credera; Tim Rowe, Curator, State of Streaming; Scott Messer, Principal & Founder, Messer Media; Krish Raja, Founder, Mindmaker AI; Alexis Hochleutner, Founder, Arc Digital; Shiv Gupta, Founder, U of Digital; Karsten Weide, Principal & Chief Analyst, W Media Research; Ethan Steininger, Founder & CEO, Mixpeek; Erez Levin, Principal, Emet Advisory; Anne Thiel, Senior Director Ad & RevOps, Cox Automotive; and Bob Walczak, Founder & CEO, MadConnect

Hearst Consumer Media Chief Data Officer, Jessica Hogue, joins us to unpack how a 137-year-old publisher is rebuilding its data foundation—linking first-party identity, contextual intelligence, and tighter supply paths—to grow revenue beyond the open auction. We tackle AI’s “zero-click” squeeze, brand-safety overblocking, and the push for outcomes without backsliding into last-click. Enjoy!

This episode of Signal & Noise features industry veteran and well-known personality Lou Paskalis in a wide-ranging conversation on the state of advertising, brand safety, and the future of news media. The discussion explores why marketers have historically avoided advertising in news, the misguided reliance on keyword and domain blocking, and new research showing ads next to quality journalism don’t harm brand perception.

Paskalis also dives into how AI, programmatic buying, and publisher data strategies are reshaping the economics of journalism—and why supporting trustworthy reporting is both a civic duty and a smart business move

In this episode of Signal & Noise, hosts Rio Longacre and Brett House sit down with Erez Levin—former Google leader, ad quality advocate, and cultural reformer—for a wide-ranging conversation about speech, norms, and the dangerous space between censorship and permissiveness.Erez has spent his career challenging broken incentives—from paid media’s obsession with outcomes over quality to workplace norms that quietly discourage responsibility. In this conversation, he turns that same lens toward culture itself, introducing his TABOO framework: a call to restore shared social boundaries around overt bigotry, dehumanization, and the endorsement of violence—without reviving cancel culture or state censorship.The discussion explores how cancel culture unintentionally weakened society’s ability to enforce real moral limits, why antisemitism has become a visible stress test for eroding norms, and how both the “woke left” and “woke right” exploit the same failures from opposite directions. Erez makes the case that social consequences are not censorship, that forgiveness must follow accountability, and that societies collapse not when speech is free—but when nothing is out of bounds.This episode isn’t about partisan politics. It’s about guardrails, courage, and what happens when no one is willing to hold the line.Topics include:- Cancel culture vs. consequence culture- Antisemitism as a warning sign, not an exception- The woke left, the woke right, and tribal immunity- Why taboos protect pluralistic societies- How norms fail—and how they can be restored

Ad verification is no longer just about blocking bad ads—it’s becoming a core input into how media is planned, optimized, and measured. In this episode of Signal & Noise, hosts Rio Longacre and Brett House sit down with Mark Zagorski, CEO of DoubleVerify, to unpack how verification is evolving in the age of AI.Mark brings a rare perspective, having led multiple AdTech companies across market cycles—from building and selling eXelate to Nielsen, to turning around Telaria, and now steering DoubleVerify as a public company. We discuss how that background shapes his philosophy as DV moves from being the industry’s “referee” to a more active co-pilot for marketers focused on outcomes.The conversation covers a wide range of timely topics: DV’s strong recent performance and what’s driving it, the shift from protection to performance and attention, and how acquisitions like Scibids AI and Rockerbox signal a tighter connection between media quality and business results. We also tackle some of the industry’s toughest debates—over-blocking and its impact on quality news, the role of AI in verification and optimization, CTV fraud and measurement gaps, sustainability and carbon signals, and how brands can invest confidently in credible journalism without sacrificing suitability.This is a candid, operator-level discussion about trust, transparency, and accountability in modern media—and what it really takes to connect quality signals to outcomes in a rapidly changing ecosystem.

From the show floor to the executive suites, CES 2026 wasn’t just another technology expo — it was a global turning point for AI, media, data, and the future of digital experiences. In this special edition of Signal & Noise, co-hosts Rio Longacre and Brett House bring you their top takeaways, on-the-ground interviews, and operator-first analysis straight from Las Vegas. In this finale episode of our CES series, Rio and Brett break down how AI has moved from feature to foundation — reshaping go-to-market strategies, content ecosystems, and the connective tissue between brands, agencies, and consumers. They dive into why AI isn’t just automating yesterday’s playbook but reinventing how decisions get made and value gets created. Along the way, you’ll hear candid field notes and executive voices from across the ecosystem — from founders and technologists to data leaders — illuminating what matters most heading into 2026 and beyond. Whether it’s AI infrastructure, data ontology, media activation, or the renewed energy of in-person connections after years of remote events, this episode captures the signal above the noise.Hit play to learn:- Why AI is now the operating system of modern business- How semantic layers and probabilistic data are reshaping media performance- What executives are prioritizing in a future where trust and context matter more than ever- Real talk on the return of deep human interaction in a digital worldThis is Signal & Noise CES 2026 — an operator’s view on what’s next. Tune in.

Recorded live in Las Vegas during CES 2026, this special Signal & Noise conversation brings together Rio Longacre and Brett House with one of the industry’s most trusted—and outspoken—voices: Lou Paskalis.

In this wide-ranging discussion, Lou digs into the future of the industry in light of the rise of a tidal wave of AI-generated content, synthetic versus authentic signals, regulatory changes versus human discernment, and how trust is shifting from institutions to people.

Given these dynamics, we dig into the role of creative and how content creators will play an outsized role in the future of the industry—exploring the evolving roles of platforms, advertisers, and agencies in a future that's increasingly fractured and AI-driven.

As always, Lou doesn’t pull punches, ending on an surprisingly optimistic note for the industry, especially beleaguered news publishers. "For the industry, this is 1942," he quips. The year 1942, if you'll recall, is when the allies began to turn the war around. This is a candid, no-holds-barred conversation about the future of the industry—and our society.

What actually mattered at AWS re:Invent 2025—once the keynotes ended and the hype faded?

In this belated, boots-on-the-ground debrief from Las Vegas, Signal & Noise hosts Brett House and Rio Longacre break down the real signals from re:Invent 2025, drawing on executive conversations, daily floor recaps, and firsthand time with partners and practitioners across the ecosystem. Joined throughout by Credera's Alyssa Furth, the episode focuses less on announcements, and more on what’s actually changing inside modern data, marketing, and AI stacks.

Across conversations with partners including Databricks, Tealium, Treasure Data, Claravine, and Jasper, a few themes came through loud and clear:

• Agentic AI is real now — moving from buzzword to builder toolkit with services like Nova, Bedrock, Transform, and MCP

• Interoperability matters more than ever — as brands struggle to connect fragmented MarTech and AdTech stacks without massive re-platforming

• Data foundations are non-negotiable — governance, consent, metadata, and taxonomy are still the gating factors for everything AI promises

• IRL is back — re:Invent proved that real relationships and in-person collaboration are accelerating progress faster than months of remote meetings ever could

Rather than chasing shiny objects, this episode surfaces a more grounded truth: AI doesn’t replace fundamentals—it exposes where they’re broken. And the organizations making progress are the ones investing in connective tissue, not just new tools.

If you’re navigating agentic AI, modern data stacks, or the future of marketing and analytics—and want to know what actually changed at re:Invent—this episode separates signal from noise. Enjoy!

The Customer Data Platform, or CDP, was supposed to be marketing’s system of record. Instead, it’s become one of the most fragmented—and misunderstood—categories in the stack.

In this episode of Signal & Noise, hosts Brett House and Rio Longacre sit down with Matthew Niederberger, Founder of MarTech Therapy, for a candid, practitioner-level conversation about where the CDP market actually stands today—and where it’s headed next.

Matthew brings 20+ years of hands-on MarTech experience and a global perspective from working directly with brands across Europe and beyond. Together, the group unpacks why so many CDP initiatives stall, why buyers remain confused despite a decade of “category maturity,” and why analyst frameworks like the Gartner Magic Quadrant are becoming increasingly misaligned with how marketing technology is really bought and used.

This isn’t a vendor ranking episode. It’s a reality check.

Topics include:

• Why the CDP category feels both overcrowded and incomplete

• Platform CDPs vs. composable stacks—and where agentic AI actually fits

• The hidden costs of monolithic ecosystems and switching friction

• Why “data quality” still matters more than architecture diagrams

• How regional maturity (especially in Europe) changes buying behavior

• What marketers should actually trust when evaluating CDP options

• Whether “CDP” survives as a standalone category—or dissolves into something else entirely

If you’re a CMO, CIO, MarTech leader, or practitioner navigating CDP decisions in 2025, this episode will help you separate signal from noise—and avoid buying technology that looks great on a quadrant but fails in the real world.

👉 Subscribe to Signal & Noise on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts for weekly, no-BS conversations on data, tech, and AI—and what actually matters next.

What if dashboards are dying—and analytics is about to feel more human? In this episode of Signal & Noise, hosts Brett House and Rio Longacre sit down with Adam Greco, one of the most influential voices in digital and product analytics, to unpack a provocative idea: Vibe Analytics.Adam—former Omniture and Amplitude leader and current Product Evangelist at Hightouch—argues that the future of analytics won’t be defined by dashboards, SQL queries, or rigid reporting tools. Instead, it will be driven by natural language, AI-powered interfaces, and warehouse-native architectures that let teams ask questions the way humans think.Together, we explore:- What “Vibe Analytics” actually means—and why it’s more than a buzzwordWhether traditional analytics platforms like Adobe, Amplitude, and Tableau are at risk- How AI and conversational UX could democratize analytics (and de-specialize it)- What this shift means for analysts, marketers, CMOs, and data teams- Why warehouse-native stacks built on Snowflake and Databricks are foundational to what comes next- We also dig into real-world implications for measurement, attribution, personalization, and data collaboration—and debate whether this moment represents evolution… or extinction… for legacy analytics tech.If you work in analytics, marketing, product, or data—and you’ve ever felt constrained by dashboards—this is a conversation you don’t want to miss. Enjoy!

Every year, leaders from across advertising, technology, and media gather in San Francisco for RampUp, the annual conference hosted by LiveRamp. Over the past decade, RampUp has become one of the most influential events in the AdTech ecosystem—bringing together brands, agencies, publishers, data providers, and technology platforms to discuss the future of identity, data collaboration, and responsible advertising.

LiveRamp sits at the center of that conversation. The company built its reputation as a pioneer in identity resolution—helping marketers connect fragmented consumer signals across devices, platforms, and channels in a privacy-conscious way. Today, LiveRamp’s technology powers a broad data collaboration ecosystem that allows organizations to safely match, analyze, and activate data across partners, platforms, and clean room environments. As the advertising industry moves deeper into a world defined by privacy regulation, signal loss, and AI-driven decisioning, LiveRamp’s role as a neutral identity and data collaboration layer has only grown more important.

In this special Signal & Noise episode, Rio Longacre and Krish Raja kick things off with a recap of RampUp 2026, sharing their perspective on the biggest themes from the event—from the evolution of identity infrastructure to the rise of retail media networks, the increasing importance of data collaboration, and the growing influence of AI across the marketing ecosystem.

The episode then features a series of conversations with some of the industry’s leading voices who attended RampUp:

• Shailley Singh, COO & EVP of Product at IAB Tech Lab, discussing the future of industry standards, interoperability, and the technical infrastructure shaping digital advertising.

• Leigh M. Freund, CEO of Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), on privacy, regulation, and the evolving role of self-governance in digital advertising.

• Austin Leonard, VP/GM of Dollar General Media Network, exploring the continued rise of retail media and how new entrants are building powerful commerce-driven advertising platforms.

• Daniel Block, Head of Corporate Business Development at Fetch Rewards, on the growing role of consumer data platforms and loyalty ecosystems in modern marketing.

• Scott Messer, Founder & CEO of Messer Media, offering an independent operator’s perspective on the current state—and future direction—of AdTech.

Together, these conversations paint a picture of an industry that is rapidly evolving. Identity is being rebuilt. Data collaboration is becoming a core operating model. Retail media continues its explosive growth. And AI is beginning to reshape how campaigns are planned, executed, and optimized.

In other words, RampUp 2026 offered a glimpse into the next phase of digital advertising—and in this episode, we separate the signal from the noise.

In this episode of Signal & Noise, Rio and Brett sit down with Crystal Santos Wallace — enterprise operator, data leader, and longtime architect of modern marketing infrastructure across global holdcos — for a candid conversation about what AI is actually doing inside agencies.Crystal has worked across the major networks and now operates at the intersection of data, identity, and transformation at Omnicom and Acxiom. She’s seen data evolve from passive record-keeping to operational truth — and now into fuel for agentic systems.Her thesis is simple but sharp: AI doesn’t fix broken data. It makes broken data louder.What We CoverFrom Platformization to Agentic Workflows:For the last decade, marketing technology has centered on “monolithic SaaS” platforms promising integration and control. Crystal argues we’re entering a new phase — not the death of platforms, but their transformation. The future isn’t fewer systems; it’s orchestrated systems, powered by agents and governed by design.Governance Is Not Optional:As AI accelerates, governance becomes existential. From model access and data leakage risks to inappropriate automated outputs, Crystal makes the case that compliance, security, and policy must evolve alongside innovation — not trail behind it. Human-in-the-loop isn’t a philosophical preference; it’s a risk mitigation strategy.Synthetic Audiences & Continuous Learning:We explore the rise of synthetic focus groups, digital twins, and always-on modeling. Used correctly, these tools compress the research cycle and create test-and-learn loops at scale. Used carelessly, they amplify bias. The difference? Data quality and disciplined inputs.The Changing Commercial Model:As AI reshapes workflows, the traditional FTE model inside agencies comes under pressure. Crystal speculates about usage-based, tokenized, and outcome-oriented commercial structures — and why the winners will balance technical literacy with strategic altitude.The Future CMO:Tomorrow’s CMO isn’t just a brand steward. They’re an orchestrator of systems, a translator between data science and business strategy, and a leader who understands enough about AI to direct it — without being consumed by it.This is a conversation about scale, identity, governance, and the pace of change. It’s also a reminder that technology doesn’t absolve us of responsibility. It magnifies it.If you’re navigating AI transformation inside an agency, a brand, or a data organization — this one’s for you.🎙️ Subscribe to Signal & Noise wherever you listen.

For decades, user experience has been built around a simple assumption: the human is the operator. We click, swipe, navigate, and tell systems what to do. But that assumption is breaking down.In this episode of Signal & Noise, hosts Rio Longacre and Brett House sit down with Drew Burdick to explore what happens when AI systems stop waiting for instructions and start acting on our behalf. As agentic AI moves from experimentation to production, UX is no longer about screens and flows—it’s about designing relationships, trust, and alignment between humans and autonomous systems.Drew brings a practitioner’s perspective on how UX must evolve when agents anticipate intent, take action across systems, and reason about outcomes. We dig into what “Agentic UX” really means, which long-held UX assumptions no longer apply, and why the next generation of interfaces may be invisible, conversational, or entirely new in form.The conversation covers emerging interaction models, transparency and control, trust calibration, failure states, and the ethical responsibilities designers inherit when machines begin making decisions. We also discuss how UX teams, designers, and organizations need to restructure skills, roles, and workflows to stay relevant in an agentic world.This episode is for designers, product leaders, and technologists grappling with a fundamental shift: when AI becomes a collaborator instead of a tool, experience design becomes one of the most strategic disciplines in the company.

The marketing industry spends more than $4,000 per U.S. household every year.

Analysts estimate that 20–30% of that spend may be lost to waste, inefficiency, and outright fraud — tens of billions of dollars annually.

So here’s the uncomfortable question:

If everyone knows the plumbing is broken… Why does the system keep running?

In this episode of Signal & Noise, Rio Longacre and Brett House sit down with Sarah Caputo & David Nyurenberg to unpack what rarely gets said out loud: the persistence of media waste isn’t just a technology problem — it’s an incentive problem.

From opaque take rates and arbitrage models to CTV supply path manipulation, from procurement-driven CPM pressure to vanity metrics masquerading as performance — this conversation pulls back the curtain on how the ecosystem actually works.

Sarah and David bring firsthand experience from agencies, holding companies, publishers, and the brand side. They share real stories of:

• Arbitrage margins north of 80%

• Inventory labeled one way and delivered another

• Contract loopholes that block transparency

• The career risk of asking the wrong questions

• And the quiet pressure to “not rock the boat”

The uncomfortable truth? Silence is often rewarded. Transparency can be punished. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

We dig into what brands can do right now — from contractual protections and audit rights to internal capability building — to regain leverage and reduce exposure to hidden inefficiencies.

If you work in AdTech, MarTech, CTV, programmatic, or media buying, this episode will feel very familiar.

If you’re on the brand side, it may change how you think about your next RFP.

Read the companion article:
👉 https://www.signalandnoise.ai/post/the-cost-of-keeping-quiet

Subscribe for more candid, operator-level conversations about advertising, media, technology, and the incentives shaping what’s next.

No hype. No spin. Just signal.

Part 2 of this series. If you haven’t watched Part 1, start there for the core framework on aligning GTM and CX as one operating system.

In this episode, we look at real-world examples of companies that either connect—or fracture—GTM and customer experience.

We reference operator-driven clarity at DoubleVerify, premium ecosystem consistency at Apple, channel fragmentation in Auto, mature orchestration at Flywheel, and competitive GTM tempo from OpenAI.

We also touch on ServiceNow, HubSpot, and Datadog as B2B SaaS examples of alignment done well.

The throughline is simple: when GTM and CX operate as one system, growth becomes repeatable—not accidental.

GTM is not messaging. It’s the operating system that turns value into adoption.

GTM is the promise you make to the market. Customer experience is the proof the customer lives with.

When GTM and CX are disconnected, you get three predictable failures:

• Story drift: sales sells one thing, onboarding delivers another, CS explains the gap
• Adoption drag: the product may be good, but the experience doesn’t get users to value fast enough
• Trust decay: customers don’t renew based on features, they renew based on the outcomes they felt.

Commerce media is exploding—projected to surpass $100B in US ad spend by 2028—but beneath the hype, a harder question is emerging: is this truly incremental growth, or just a rebranded tax on brand dollars?

In this episode of Signal & Noise, hosts Rio Longacre and Brett House sit down with Amie Owen, Global Chief Commerce Officer at IPG Mediabrands, to cut through the noise surrounding retail and commerce media.

With Amazon and Walmart controlling roughly 80-85% of U.S. retail media spend—and more than 200 retail media networks now live—brands are facing growing fragmentation, opaque measurement, and rising pressure to “pay to play” on the digital shelf.Together, we unpack:

- The difference between retail media and commerce media—and why it matters

- Why many brands see commerce media as both a growth engine and a brand tax

- How closed-loop attribution and deterministic purchase data are reshaping media strategy

- Whether retail media is truly incremental—or simply reallocating trade spend

- The role of CTV, clean rooms, and commerce signals in the next wave of growth

- How agencies can help brands navigate fragmentation, standardization, and measurement chaos

- What AI, agentic systems, and commerce data mean for the future of media planning

In a wide-ranging discussion, Amie brings a pragmatic, operator’s perspective—grounded in real client outcomes—on how brands should think about commerce media in 2025 and beyond: where to lean in, where to push back, and how to avoid confusing scale with success.

If you’re a CMO, media leader, or brand navigating retail and commerce media today, this episode will help you separate signal from noise.

In Part 1, we talked about bots. In Part 2… we follow the money.

Brett and Rio sit down again with Dr. Augustine Fou, and this time the conversation goes deeper—and gets a lot more uncomfortable. Because the real issue isn’t just fraud. It’s the system that quietly profits from it.

We break down what actually happens between the moment a marketer places a bid and the moment a publisher gets paid. The gap is bigger than most people realize. In one example, a $1.50 CPM turns into just $0.15 for the publisher. In another, increasing your bid doesn’t get you better inventory—it just means someone in the middle keeps more of your money. And a lot of what gets reported as “performance” can be completely fabricated—clicks, conversions, even analytics data .

This episode is about that hidden layer most teams never see: take rates, pass-through opacity, spoofed supply, and the growing gap between what advertisers pay and what publishers actually receive.

Then we turn to what’s coming next: agentic AI.

Because if your inputs are broken, automation doesn’t fix it—it just scales the problem faster. The same systems that already struggle with transparency are now being handed more autonomy, more budget, and more control.

We get into why blended averages hide the truth, why the industry’s long-standing “1% fraud” narrative doesn’t hold up, and why so many optimization systems are quietly steering budgets toward cheaper, lower-quality inventory. We also unpack the difference between “attention” and actual human engagement—and why so much of what’s sold today is closer to performance theater than real outcomes.

By the end, this isn’t just a critique—it’s a playbook.

If you’re a marketer, this episode will change how you think about where your dollars are going, who’s extracting value in the supply chain, and what you can do—right now—to take back control.

Because the real question isn’t:“Is there fraud?”

It’s: “Who’s getting paid—and how much are they taking?”

Careers in AdTech don’t follow a straight line. They follow the market.

In this episode of Signal & Noise, we sit down with Evgeny Popov, a global media operator whose career cuts across publishers, agencies, AdTech platforms, and now television data—from News Corp to Lotame, Verve, and today at Samba.

This isn’t just a career story.
It’s a map of how the industry actually works.

Because Evgeny has seen every layer of the ecosystem up close—how publishers monetize, how agencies operate, how data platforms scale, and how companies position themselves for exits. 

And now he’s sitting at the center of the next major shift:
the transformation of television into a data-driven, measurable, and programmable channel.

1. From engineer to global AdTech operator
Evgeny didn’t start in media—he started in engineering. That technical foundation became a career advantage as the industry shifted toward data, automation, and programmatic systems. 

2. Building a career across every layer of the ecosystem
Publishers → agencies → DSPs → data platforms → CTV
This wasn’t random. It created a rare, full-stack perspective on how media actually functions—and where the leverage sits.

3. What actually drives successful exits in AdTech
Evgeny has been part of multiple acquisitions. The takeaway:
It’s not just about product. It’s about timing, signal, and positioning within the market.

4. Why relationships matter more than people admit
In an industry that constantly reinvents itself, networks compound.
Or as Evgeny puts it: “I collect good humans.” 

5. Inside Samba and the rise of ACR data
We break down how Automated Content Recognition (ACR) actually works—and why it’s becoming one of the most important data signals in the CTV ecosystem:

• What’s actually being watched (not just served)
• Cross-platform viewership across streaming, linear, and gaming
• A deterministic layer in an increasingly fragmented landscape

6. The real state of CTV (beyond the hype)
CTV is growing fast—but measurement is still broken.
Fragmentation, inconsistent currencies, and platform silos are holding the market back.

7. Television is becoming a data problem
Not a media problem.
Not a creative problem.

A data + identity + measurement problem.

And whoever solves that layer controls the future of TV advertising.

We’ve spent the last decade talking about:

• Programmatic
• Identity
• Data platforms

But television is where all of it converges.

And for the first time, we’re seeing:

• Deterministic signals (ACR)
• Cross-platform measurement
• Real competition for the “currency” layer

This isn’t just the evolution of TV.
It’s the reconstruction of the largest media channel in the world.

• AdTech operators thinking about where the market is heading
• Anyone working in CTV, streaming, or measurement
• Early-career folks trying to understand how to actually build a career in this industry
• People who want the real version of how this ecosystem works—not the slideware version

If you strip everything else away, this episode comes down to one idea:

The people who win in this industry aren’t the ones who stay in one lane.
They’re the ones who understand how the entire system connects.

Evgeny is one of those people.

In this episode of Signal & Noise, we sit down with Leighton Welch (CTO) and Sarah Martinez (CCO) from Tracer to unpack a fundamental shift happening across enterprise data, marketing, and advertising:

The stack is being rebuilt around data—not applications.

And at the center of that rebuild? The semantic layer.

This conversation goes beyond the usual “data unification” talking points. Instead, we break down the five structural shifts reshaping enterprise data strategy right now—and why they matter more than ever as AI moves from experimentation to execution.

Tracer provides a practical lens into this transformation. Not as another dashboard or point solution, but as a system designed to solve a harder problem:

How do you create shared, trusted business logic across fragmented systems so both humans and AI can act on the same truth?

1. Why enterprise data strategy is suddenly back on the front burner
AI didn’t create the data problem—but it exposed it. As Leighton puts it, AI is forcing organizations to prioritize initiatives they should have tackled a decade ago, from centralized data ownership to consistent definitions. 

2. The five shifts redefining the stack

• Semantic layers as the new business logic layer
• Warehouse-native architecture replacing SaaS silos
• Zero-copy activation reducing data duplication
• Governance becoming infrastructure—not compliance
• AI readiness as the new forcing function

3. The semantic layer as the control plane for AI
If AI is the operating layer, then definitions, context, and trust become the system of control. Without a shared “data dictionary,” agents don’t just fail—they amplify inconsistency.

4. Why monolithic SaaS is under pressure
Enterprises are moving away from copying data into every tool. The warehouse is becoming the system of record, and everything else is being forced to justify its existence.

5. The real problem: not data, but meaning
Most companies don’t lack data—they lack agreement on what that data actually means. Tracer’s approach focuses on turning raw data into reusable, governed business logic that can power decisions across teams.

6. AI readiness isn’t about models—it’s about foundations
Clean data, consistent taxonomy, shared definitions, and governance aren’t “nice to have.” They are prerequisites. Without them, AI becomes a very fast way to make very bad decisions.

For years, the industry debated identity vs. platforms, CDPs vs. composability, centralization vs. federation.

But that’s not the real shift.

The real shift is this: Data is no longer an input to the system.
It is the system.

And the companies that win won’t be the ones with the most data—they’ll be the ones with the most trusted, reusable, and operationalized context.

• CMOs and marketing leaders trying to make AI real
• Data and analytics teams dealing with fragmented stacks
• AdTech/MarTech operators navigating warehouse-native architectures
• Anyone tired of waiting 6 months for insights that are outdated on arrival

If you take one thing from this episode, it’s this:

AI doesn’t fix bad data. It exposes it.
And the semantic layer is how you fix it.

The CDP isn’t dead—but it’s definitely not what it used to be.

In this episode, Rio Longacre and Brett House sit down with Dale Renner, CEO of Redpoint Global—and one of the earliest architects of the space—to revisit the rise, fragmentation, and uncertain future of the CDP.

From helping shape the first-ever CDP deal to navigating today’s fractured landscape, Dale unpacks what actually happened—and where things went sideways .

They get into:

• Why the category splintered across identity, segmentation, and activation

• The real tension between marketing, IT, and data ownership—and why most CDPs failed to bridge it

• How “everyone became a CDP,” turning the category into a mile-wide, inch-deep mess

• Why many companies ended up with multiple CDPs—and still didn’t solve the problem

• The hidden truth: without high-quality data and identity, personalization is just noise

And most importantly—what comes next.

As AI reshapes the stack, Dale makes a clear bet:
The future isn’t vendor-built platforms or pre-packaged agents.

It’s data readiness, composable architectures, and company-owned agentic layers—built on top of systems that can actually handle identity, scale, and complexity.

Because in the end, this was never about CDPs. It was always about the data.

AdTech has built some of the most sophisticated technology in the digital economy — and some of the most forgettable marketing.In this episode of Signal & Noise, we sit down with Joe Zappa, Founder & CEO of Sharp Pen Media, to unpack a hard truth the industry rarely confronts:You can’t outsource belief.For decades, AdTech companies have treated marketing as something downstream — polish it, package it, delegate it. But Joe argues that’s exactly where things go wrong. When CEOs hide behind feature lists, jargon, and generic positioning, marketing becomes interchangeable. And in a crowded ecosystem where everyone claims better targeting, better measurement, and better AI, invisibility becomes the real risk.Joe makes the case that the CEO must be the chief evangelist — not a mascot, not a quote-approver, but an active communicator who can clearly articulate:

• What’s broken in the industry
• What they believe about the future
• Why their company exists
• And why anyone should care

We go deep on:

• Why AdTech messaging collapses into sameness
• The difference between product speak and narrative
• How to build a simple, usable messaging “Bible”
• Why controversy is often safer than invisibility
• The collapse of institutional gatekeepers — and what that means for founders
• How AI can amplify clarity — or create “slop cannons”
• Why humanities training may be more valuable than ever in the AI era

This conversation isn’t just about marketing tactics. It’s about leadership, conviction, and attention in a world where distribution is democratized and authenticity matters more than ever.If you’re a founder, CEO, CMO, product leader, or operator in AdTech, MarTech, or media — this episode will challenge how you think about voice, visibility, and responsibility. Because in 2026, you don’t win by having the best deck. You win by having the clearest belief.

Lucas Longacre officially joins Signal & Noise—and in his debut episode as an Executive Voices contributor, he starts exactly where great product work begins: in the mess.

In this conversation, Lucas sits down with Zach Grumet—product leader, operator, and one of the key figures behind Lucas’s own transition into product—to unpack what it actually means to “structure the ambiguity.”

This isn’t a conversation about frameworks or buzzwords. It’s about the real work:

• Why product managers don’t “ship features”—they own the mess

• How unclear problems, bad communication, and organizational friction kill good products

• The difference between product managers and actual product leaders

• Why most teams solution too early—and miss the problem entirely

• And how AI is quietly rewriting the rules of product development in real time

Along the way, they get into the uncomfortable truths: failed decisions, broken processes, internal chaos—and why those moments are where real product thinking is forged.

From reducing onboarding friction to predicting parking enforcement patterns (yes, really), Zach brings battle-tested lessons from FinTech, HealthTech, and SaaS—while Lucas connects it to a new reality where prototyping happens in hours, not quarters.

But beneath it all is a bigger question: If AI accelerates everything… what actually matters more?

This episode is about clarity in a world that’s only getting noisier. And it’s just the beginning.

Programmatic advertising has spent the last 15 years optimizing for one thing: speed.

But somewhere along the way, we lost something more important—control, transparency, and true decisioning intelligence.

In this episode of Signal & Noise, we sit down with Adam Heimlich, Founder & CEO of Chalice AI, to unpack what happens when an operator who spent decades inside the system decides to rebuild it from the ground up.

Adam’s perspective is different. He’s not theorizing about programmatic—he ran it. He understands the incentives, the inefficiencies, and the architectural limitations of RTB and DSP-driven buying. And now he’s building a new model.

We cover:

• Why RTB infrastructure is fundamentally constrained by legacy “pipes”- How Chalice is using containerized decisioning to move logic closer to the bidstream- What the Agentic RTB Framework (ARTF) actually is—and why it matters
• Why AI agents may reshape how media decisions are made (and who controls them)
• The shift from platform-centric buying → modular, agent-driven ecosystems- Why data is commoditized—but modeling and service are not
• The real implications of agentic trading and AI-native marketplaces

We also go beyond the tech:

• Adam’s transition from agency operator to founder- Building Chalice alongside his partner Ali Manning
• The reality of startup life vs. the mythology
• And yes… the philosophy behind AdTech shitposting

This is a conversation about more than bidding mechanics. It’s about whether the entire architecture of digital advertising is about to change—and who wins if it does.If you care about where programmatic is actually heading—not just what vendors are selling—this one is worth your time.

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Most B2B companies don’t fail because the product is bad.
They fail because the system around it is broken.

In this episode of Signal & Noise, we sit down with Marc Sabatini, Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer at HighSignals, to break down what Brett has been calling the GTM Slop Problem—and why so many launches stall before the market even has a chance to decide.

Marc has spent 30+ years operating at the intersection of product, sales, marketing, and customer success—the exact place where strategy either turns into revenue… or quietly falls apart. 

This is not a theory episode.
This is how go-to-market actually works—or doesn’t—in the real world.

1. Why GTM breaks before the market even decides
The biggest failure point isn’t competition.
It’s internal:

• Misaligned teams
• Fuzzy narrative
• No shared system
• No clear ICP

As Marc puts it: “It’s not just slop from inexperience. It’s slop from lack of coordination.” 

2. The Six Dimensions of GTM (and where they fall apart)

We walk through the six dimensions every company thinks they have dialed in:

• Narrative (not messaging—commercial logic)
• ICP & targeting (focus vs. “sell to everyone”)
• Competitive readiness
• Offer & proof
• Field enablement
• Activation & measurement

The takeaway:
Most companies don’t have weak pieces.
They have weak connections between the pieces.

3. Problem Market Fit vs. Product Market Fit vs. Platform Market Fit

One of the most important frameworks in the episode:

• Problem Market Fit → You can sell, but it’s messy
• Product Market Fit → You can scale
• Platform Market Fit → You can compound

Most companies get stuck in the first phase—generating revenue without ever building a system that scales.

4. Why “great products win” is a myth

The uncomfortable truth:

The best product rarely wins.
The best go-to-market does.

Even strong products fail when:

• Narrative is unclear
• Proof is weak
• Sales is improvising
• Customer success is disconnected

Or simply:
Too much activity. Not enough coherence.

5. Partner-Based Buying is changing everything

Buyers aren’t buying alone anymore.

Agencies, SIs, cloud partners, and ecosystems are now:

• Influencing decisions
• Validating vendors
• Acting as gatekeepers

Which means:
You’re not just selling to the end buyer.
You’re selling to the entire buying system.

And that changes your proof stack completely.

6. Why most companies fail entering the US market

Marc breaks down a common pattern:

• Too broad ICP
• Weak local proof
• Misread buyer expectations
• Activity without traction

The result:
Burned time, burned budget, and burned field trust.

7. The real job of GTM: building a system, not running campaigns

This is the core idea of the episode:

GTM is not marketing.
GTM is not sales.
GTM is not a launch plan.

It’s a connected commercial system.

And when that system breaks:

• Messaging gets blamed
• Sales gets blamed
• Product gets blamed

But the real issue is lack of alignment and orchestration.

There’s more product being built right now than ever before.
AI has lowered the barrier to creation.

But it hasn’t solved:

• Positioning
• Differentiation
• Commercial execution

If anything, it’s made the problem worse.

More products.
More noise.
More GTM slop.

• Founders trying to turn product into revenue
• CROs, CMOs, and GTM leaders fixing broken systems
• Anyone launching B2B SaaS or AI products
• Operators tired of “more activity” being the answer

If there’s one idea to walk away with, it’s this:

A launch is not ready just because the product is ready.
It’s ready when the system around it is coherent.

Most companies never get there.

Everyone agrees first-party data matters. So why is almost none of it actually showing up in media?

In this episode of Signal & Noise, Rio Longacre and Brett House sit down with Rob McLaughlin, Founder & CEO of AUDIENCES, to unpack one of the biggest disconnects in modern marketing: the gap between data strategy and data activation.

Despite years of investment in CDPs, clean rooms, cloud migrations, and identity graphs, less than 3% of media spend is actually informed by first-party data. 

That’s not a tooling problem. It’s a model problem.

Rob breaks down why the industry has been stuck—and what needs to change:

• Why first-party data is widely understood… but rarely used
• Where activation actually breaks (hint: it’s not just tech)
• How data movement, cost, and org friction quietly kill execution
• Why brands are still paying a “tax” to use their own data
• And why the future isn’t more platforms—it’s less movement, more signal

Marketers didn’t fail to invest. They failed to connect.

Most brands now have:

• Cloud infrastructure
• Massive first-party datasets
• Sophisticated media partners

But the “last mile”—getting that data into live campaigns—is still fragmented, expensive, and slow. 

The result? Campaigns ship without it. Rob’s thesis is simple—but disruptive: Stop moving data. Start moving signals.

AUDIENCES flips the model:

• Keep data inside the brand’s cloud
• Activate directly from the source
• Eliminate onboarding, duplication, and unnecessary cost

This isn’t just cleaner architecture—it changes:

• Privacy dynamics (no data copying)
• Cost structure (no per-record tax)
• Speed of activation (real-time, not batch)

Forget the buzzwords. This is where it works:

• Suppression → Stop wasting spend on existing customers
• Seed audiences → Outperform platform-native targeting
• Lookalikes → Scale what actually drives value
• Retail media & supply-side data → Unlock real reach

And yes—brands are still getting retargeted with products they already bought.

This episode goes beyond tactics into structure:

• Why the future agency looks more like an operating system than a service layer
• Why identity + infrastructure is becoming the real differentiator
• How the balance of power is shifting back toward data owners
• And why agencies without deep data integration risk becoming assemblers—not operators

• “CDPs are irrelevant in a cloud-native world.”
• “There should not be a tax on activating your own data.”
• “The problem isn’t that brands lack data—it’s that they can’t use it.”

• CMOs and Heads of Media trying to unlock real performance from 1P data
• Data & platform leaders stuck between cloud investment and activation reality
• Agency leaders navigating the shift from services → infrastructure
• Anyone tired of hearing “first-party data is the future” without seeing results

Explore AUDIENCES: https://weareaudiences.com
Connect with Rob McLaughlin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robanalytics/

If you’re building at the intersection of data, media, and AI—this is your playbook.

Subscribe to Signal & Noise on:

• Spotify
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• YouTube

🔍 What You’ll Learn⚡ The Big Idea: The Last Mile Is Broken🧠 A Different Model: Signals, Not Datasets🚀 Where First-Party Data Actually Wins🏗️ What This Means for Agencies & HoldCos💥 Hot Takes from Rob🎯 Who This Episode Is For🔗 Learn More🔊 Listen & Subscribe

Everyone says they want growth. Very few organizations are actually built to deliver it.

In this episode of Signal & Noise, we sit down with George Musi—former executive across Publicis, WPP, IPG, and Horizon, now an advisor to Fortune 500 and high-growth companies—to unpack why growth consistently breaks inside large organizations.

This is not a conversation about frameworks or slideware.
It’s about what actually happens when strategy hits reality.

George brings an operator’s lens to one of the biggest disconnects in the industry right now: companies are overflowing with ideas, AI roadmaps, and transformation narratives—but still struggle to execute consistently. 

Why growth is structurally hard
Growth doesn’t fail because of a lack of strategy—it fails because of how organizations are wired. Incentives, silos, and decision-making systems break execution long before ideas do.

The HoldCo → Operating System shift (and what’s real vs narrative)
Every agency claims to be building an “operating system.”
George explains why most of these are still fragmented point solutions—and what a true system actually requires.

Why agencies are colliding with consultancies and platforms
As agencies move into data, tech, and integration, they’re stepping directly into the territory of firms like Accenture and Deloitte—while also competing with platforms like Google and The Trade Desk.

AI is not a tool problem—it’s an operating model problem
Most companies are layering AI on top of broken systems.
The result: more noise, not more output.
Real impact requires rebuilding how knowledge, workflows, and decisions actually operate.

The real future of the agency model
The FTE-based, labor-driven model is under pressure.
What replaces it? Outcome-based partnerships, deeper expertise, and a shift toward “growth architects” over execution vendors.

Why institutional knowledge is the ultimate advantage
Data is commoditized. Models are commoditized.
The real differentiator is the ability to capture, retain, and compound organizational knowledge over time—and most companies are terrible at it.

• Strategy isn’t the problem. Execution systems are.
• AI amplifies what already exists—it doesn’t fix it.
• The agency model is being reshaped from labor → leverage.
• The winners will be those who build systems of intelligence, not just tools.
• Growth will be owned by those who can connect strategy, operations, and execution into a single system.

George also joins Signal & Noise as part of our Exec Voices platform—bringing a no-BS perspective on growth, go-to-market, and what actually works inside complex organizations.

If you care about where agencies, consultancies, and platforms are heading—and what it really takes to scale—this is a must-listen.

Listen on Spotify | Watch on YouTube | Read more at signalandnoise.ai

What we cover:Key takeaways:

The MarTech landscape exploded from a few hundred tools to more than 15,000. But according to Scott Brinker, the real story isn’t software sprawl — it’s the collapse of the silos between marketing, advertising, data, AI, and enterprise operations....

In this episode, we sit down with the “Godfather of MarTech” to unpack one of the biggest shifts happening in modern business: the convergence of MarTech and AdTech into a new AI-driven operating model for marketing.

We explore why the old world of disconnected systems, fragmented customer journeys, and rigid SaaS categories is breaking apart — and what replaces it. From first-party data and composable architecture to agentic AI and context engineering, Scott lays out a vision for a future where marketing systems become less about interfaces and workflows… and more about intelligence, orchestration, and decision-making.

We also dig into:

• Why the SaaS business model is under pressure
• The rise of the “hyper-tail” of custom AI-built software
• Why analytics may be the first MarTech category fully disrupted by AI
• The hidden organizational problem behind poor data strategy
• Why “context” may become the most important concept in enterprise software
• How AI is changing the relationship between platforms, APIs, services, and custom development
• Why brands need to rethink the divide between owned media and paid media
• The future of composable MarTech stacks and semantic data layers
• Why the next generation of marketers will need radically different skills

Scott also shares his perspective on:

• The evolution from suites → ecosystems → composable AI systems
• Why traditional UI-driven software may be headed toward a major transformation
• The role of first-party data in connecting customer experience across channels
• Why most organizations still aren’t prepared for the operational realities of AI
• And why the companies that bridge MarTech and AdTech most effectively may have a major competitive advantage in the years ahead

This conversation goes deep into the infrastructure layer of modern marketing — but ultimately it’s about something bigger: how organizations make decisions in an AI-native world.

If you care about:
AI + marketing
Composable architecture
Customer data strategy
Enterprise software
Agentic workflows
The future of SaaS
Or the convergence of MarTech, AdTech, and DataTech…

…this is a must-listen episode.

What if nearly half of every dollar spent on Connected TV is being wasted before an ad is ever served to the right person?

In this episode of Signal & Noise, Brett House and Rio Longacre sit down with Scott McKinley, one of the advertising industry’s most outspoken voices on data quality and identity. As founder and CEO of Truthset, Scott has spent years exposing a problem that sits at the heart of modern advertising: the vast majority of audience data flowing through digital and CTV ecosystems is far less accurate than marketers assume.

Drawing on decades of experience spanning Nielsen, Exelate, and his own entrepreneurial ventures, Scott explains why advertising markets ultimately run on one thing: trust. When buyers and sellers lack confidence in audience quality, the result is friction, inefficiency, and billions of dollars in wasted media spend.

The conversation takes a deep dive into Connected TV, where Scott argues that a hidden “accuracy tax” is undermining the promise of precision advertising. Much of today’s CTV targeting relies on probabilistic links between IP addresses and consumer identities—connections that, according to Truthset’s research, are often wrong the majority of the time. The result is a system where advertisers believe they are buying highly targeted audiences, while in reality they are frequently reaching the wrong households altogether.  

Scott also shares a provocative thesis about the future of media: publishers, broadcasters, and streaming platforms must embrace authentication if they hope to compete with the walled gardens. Companies like Google, Meta Platforms, Amazon, and Netflix command premium advertising economics not simply because they have scale, but because they know exactly who their users are. Without authenticated audiences, much of the open internet risks becoming an increasingly commoditized marketplace of low-quality impressions and collapsing CPMs.

Along the way, Scott and the hosts explore:

• Why trust is the foundational currency of advertising markets
• How bad identity linkages create massive inefficiencies in CTV
• The historical role Nielsen played in establishing confidence in television advertising
• Why many marketing measurement systems reward cheap reach over true effectiveness
• The economic case for authenticated audiences across the open web
• How publishers can dramatically increase yield by prioritizing data quality over scale
• Why CPMs for truly verified audiences are likely to rise significantly in the years ahead
• The need for independent standards and governance to restore confidence in digital advertising

This episode is a powerful reminder that sophisticated algorithms, AI, and attribution systems are only as good as the data beneath them. If the underlying audience signals are wrong, every optimization built on top of them becomes suspect.

For marketers, publishers, and technology providers alike, Scott makes the case that the future of advertising belongs to those who can prove that their data is accurate—and earn the trust that makes markets work.

What does it actually mean to be “full stack” in a world where AI is starting to write the code for you?

In this episode of Signal & Noise, Lucas Longacre sits down with Viktor Williamson for a deep, practitioner-led conversation on the evolution of software engineering—from fundamentals to the fast-emerging agentic future.

This marks Lucas’s second long-form appearance on S&N and builds on his work as an Executive Voices contributor, bringing a product-led perspective to a rapidly shifting technical landscape.

Together, Lucas and Vik break down:

• What “full stack” actually means—and why it’s becoming more critical than ever
• How modern frameworks like Next.js are reshaping development paradigms
• Why performance, flexibility, and cross-functional thinking are redefining engineering roles
• The real impact of AI and agentic coding on how software gets built
• Why engineers are shifting from writing code → reviewing, guiding, and orchestrating it
• The growing importance of accessibility, security, and human-centered design in modern systems

But this isn’t just a technical conversation—it’s a philosophical one.

As AI accelerates development, the question isn’t whether engineers will be replaced. It’s whether they can evolve fast enough to stay relevant.

“We’re not doing less work. We’re being asked to do more—with higher expectations and faster timelines.” 

From personal projects and “disposable apps” to the future of software as hyper-personalized infrastructure, this episode explores where the craft of engineering is headed—and what it means to stay human in the loop.

• Full stack as a mindset, not just a skillset
• Agentic coding and the rise of AI-assisted development
• From builders to orchestrators: the new role of engineers
• Personal software, micro-apps, and the death of bloated platforms
• Accessibility and security as non-negotiables
• Human judgment in an automated world

Viktor Williamson is a full stack engineer, educator, and mentor with a passion for human-centered development. With roots in front-end engineering and deep experience across the stack, Vik brings a rare combination of technical depth, communication skill, and real-world perspective on how engineers learn, build, and evolve.

The independent infrastructure era may be ending. In this inaugural Signal Break, we unpack one of the most consequential AdTech deals in years: Publicis Groupe acquiring LiveRamp.

Joined by Bob Walczak and Krish Raja, we break down what this deal really means for identity, clean rooms, publishers, UID2, systems integrators, and the future of the open internet.

• Is this the end of “neutral” identity infrastructure?
• Are HoldCos becoming walled gardens?
• Does agentic AI accelerate consolidation—or make it obsolete?

We get into all of it.

This is the first official Signal Break: rapid-response episodes covering the biggest shifts happening across AdTech, AI, media, and infrastructure in real time. Enjoy!

What if marketing’s biggest problem isn’t a lack of data… but a lack of discipline?

In this episode of Signal & Noise, we sit down with Greg Stuart, CEO of the Marketing + Media Alliance (MMA), for a deep, unfiltered conversation on why marketing still struggles to earn trust—and what it will take to fix it.

Greg has spent the last several years rebuilding MMA into a global force focused on one core mission: turning marketing from a field driven by opinions, proxies, and vendor narratives into a real profession grounded in science, evidence, and predictable outcomes. 

This conversation is a hard reset.

Because despite more dashboards, more tools, and more AI than ever, most marketing organizations still can’t answer the one question that matters:
Is this actually making better decisions—and driving real business impact?

The “Age of Opinion” is Ending
Greg argues that marketing has operated for decades without a codified body of knowledge—unlike finance, medicine, or engineering. And until that changes, trust from the C-suite (and especially the CFO) will remain fragile.

Measurement ≠ Better Decisions

• Only ~30% of marketers trust their KPIs enough to use them for strategy
• Only ~29% can trace decisions back to data
• Just ~22% describe their analytics capabilities as robust 

The problem isn’t dashboards. It’s decision-making maturity.

The Attribution Illusion
From last-click to MMM, Greg breaks down why most measurement frameworks still fall short—and why marketing continues to struggle to prove value in financial terms that CFOs actually believe.

AI Won’t Save Broken Foundations
AI doesn’t create truth—it reflects patterns. If your assumptions, metrics, and operating model are weak, AI will simply scale those weaknesses faster.

Why Marketing Lacks Trust (and How to Fix It)

• No standardized “science” of marketing
• Overreliance on vendors and proxies
• Weak linkage to financial outcomes
• A discipline still driven too often by narrative over evidence

• Marketing’s credibility problem is structural, not cosmetic
• Measurement maturity is organizational—not just technological
• CFO trust is the ultimate test of marketing effectiveness
• AI is a force multiplier—but only if the fundamentals are sound
• The future belongs to teams that move from reporting → experimentation → evidence → prediction

This isn’t another conversation about dashboards, tools, or tactics.

It’s about whether marketing can evolve into something more rigorous, more trusted, and more predictable—or whether it continues to operate as a function driven by opinion, intuition, and fragmented incentives.

If you’re a CMO, operator, or builder trying to navigate measurement, attribution, and AI… this episode will challenge how you think about all of it.

Watch the full episode and join the conversation.

#SignalAndNoise #Marketing #AI #Attribution #Measurement #CMO #AdTech #MarTech

🔑 What We Cover💡 Key Takeaways🎯 Why This Episode Matters

For the better part of two decades, the buy-side controlled the game.

Data. Decisioning. Optimization. Margin. Publishers? Commoditized. Intermediated. Squeezed.

But that era may be ending.

In this episode, Joe Root (Co-Founder & CEO, Permutive) returns to Signal & Noise with a sharper—and far more disruptive—thesis: AI is shifting the center of gravity of advertising back to the sell-side.

We unpack what happens when:

• Decisioning moves closer to the data
• Signal-rich environments outperform identity graphs
• And publishers stop selling impressions… and start selling outcomes

Because if the most valuable data lives on the sell-side—and AI can act on it in real time—then the entire AdTech stack gets rewritten.

The Death of the “Buy-Side-First” Internet
Joe breaks down why the traditional model—where DSPs optimize against thin, degraded signals—is fundamentally broken. By the time an impression reaches the bidstream, most of the signal is already gone. The result? Poor targeting, wasted spend, and a race to the bottom.

The Rise of Sell-Side Intelligence
Permutive’s approach flips the model: decisioning happens at the edge, inside publisher environments, where the richest behavioral and contextual data actually exists. 
This isn’t just better targeting—it’s a different architecture.

From Curation to AI-Driven Outcomes
What started as curation and probabilistic targeting is evolving into something bigger:
→ Real-time prediction
→ Continuous optimization
→ Outcome-based execution

We explore how AI turns fragmented signals into scalable performance—and why this unlocks a new commercial model for publishers. 

The “Outcomes Era” Explained
Selling impressions is easy. Selling outcomes is hard.
Joe explains what actually has to change—technically and commercially—for publishers to move from CPMs to measurable business results. 

Agency Business Model Reset
As AI erodes the billable-hours model, agencies are being forced into a new role:
→ Investment managers
→ Principal traders
→ Outcome owners

We dig into how this shift is reshaping incentives, margins, and how media gets bought.

Agentic Trading & the Future of the Market
If both buyers and sellers deploy AI agents, what happens next?
Do auctions disappear—or get demoted?
Does allocation move upstream—before an impression is ever served?
And who wins when media becomes negotiated instead of auctioned? 

This isn’t a conversation about incremental optimization.

It’s about who controls the advertising system in an AI-driven world.

Because if Joe is right:

• DSP-centric decisioning gets abstracted
• SSPs and publishers gain leverage
• And the open web—long written off—may have its strongest comeback yet

The future of advertising won’t be defined by who buys impressions fastest.

It will be defined by who controls signal, decisioning, and outcomes closest to the user.

And for the first time in a long time… that might be the sell-side.

Most companies don’t fail at strategy. They fail at execution=.

In this episode of Signal & Noise, Brett House and Rio Longacre sit down with Tom Amies-Cull—a seasoned operator who has spent two decades inside the most complex, high-pressure agency environments, including senior leadership roles across IPG, Dentsu, and Kinesso.

This isn’t a conversation about AdTech plumbing.
It’s about something far more fundamental—and far more broken:

How organizations actually work.
Or more accurately… why they often don’t.

Drawing from years inside the machine, Tom unpacks the uncomfortable truth behind transformation in large, matrixed organizations:
It’s not a strategy problem. It’s a coordination problem. It’s a leadership problem. It’s an operating model problem.

As he puts it: “Transformation usually fails not because companies lack strategy, but because they can’t convert intent into coordinated behavior.”

This is a candid, sometimes blunt breakdown of what actually gets in the way of change:

• Why most “transformations” are just reorgs in disguise
• How internal politics quietly kill execution
• The real reason employees aren’t change-resistant—they’re resistant to bad change
• Why strategy decks and org charts are not operating models
• How unclear decision rights create organizational paralysis
• The hidden role of middle management as the “connective tissue” of execution
• Why leadership teams say they want accountability—but often avoid it in practice

There’s a lot of industry noise right now about agencies evolving into platforms, operating systems, and AI-powered machines.

Tom brings this conversation back to reality:

Most organizations are further away than they think.

Not because the vision is wrong—
but because the underlying systems (people, incentives, culture, decision-making) aren’t built to support it.

The result?
Pockets of excellence… held together by heroic effort, not scalable design.

Everyone is talking about AI.

But Tom reframes it:

AI isn’t a technology problem.
It’s an operating model and leadership problem.

AI can accelerate planning, production, and activation—but it cannot fix:

• Fragmented P&Ls
• Misaligned incentives
• Poor leadership behaviors
• Broken decision-making structures

If those don’t change, AI just makes dysfunction happen faster.

We also explore why indie agencies and PE-backed firms may have an edge right now:

• Less structural debt
• Faster decision-making
• Clearer accountability
• Stronger focus on value creation

While legacy holdcos wrestle with complexity, challengers are moving faster—and with purpose.

This episode is about closing the gap between:

What companies say they are…
and what they are actually capable of doing.

Because in today’s environment, speed matters.
Clarity matters.
Execution matters most.

• Agency transformation
• Operating models and org design
• Leadership in complex organizations
• AI’s real impact on the industry
• The future of holding companies

…this is a must-listen.

📩 Connect with Tom:
Find him on LinkedIn or through his advisory work (linked in show notes)

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What happens when AI stops being a tool—and starts redefining what work actually is?

In this episode of Signal & Noise, Brett House and Rio Longacre sit down with Jennifer Borchardt—UX leader, systems thinker, and newly minted Signal & Noise Executive Voice contributor—to unpack one of the most urgent questions of our time: What does AI mean for jobs, identity, and society itself?

Drawing on decades of experience at firms like Sapient, Slalom, Wells Fargo, and U.S. Bank, Jennifer brings a rare perspective that blends design, behavioral science, and real-world systems thinking. This isn’t a surface-level conversation about productivity gains—it’s a deep dive into the structural shifts already underway.

Together, they explore:

• Why the labor-based economy may be fundamentally incompatible with AGI
• The rise of the “hyphenate worker”—and the slow death of specialization
• How AI is unbundling work, eliminating entry-level pathways, and reshaping career trajectories
• The uncomfortable truth about who benefits—and who gets left behind
• Why most companies are still wildly unprepared, despite the hype
• The growing tension between innovation, regulation, and power concentration
• And the deeper question few are asking: If work disappears, what happens to meaning, identity, and purpose?

Jennifer also reacts to major industry frameworks, including the OpenAI “Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age” and the Stanford University AI Index, highlighting the gap between bold policy visions and real-world human impact.

This episode is equal parts optimistic and unsettling. Because while AI promises unprecedented productivity and wealth creation, it also forces us to confront a harder reality:

Work isn’t just income. It’s identity. And we’re about to rewrite both.

🎙️ About Jennifer Borchardt
Jennifer is a UX and digital transformation leader who has spent her career at the intersection of design, technology, and human behavior. She recently joined Signal & Noise as an Executive Voice contributor, where she explores the societal implications of AI and the future of work.

📖 Companion Article
Don’t miss Jennifer’s long-form piece on Signal & Noise:
“Architecting Resilience in the Intelligence Age” — a deeper exploration of the ideas discussed in this episode.

If you’re building, hiring, leading—or just trying to stay relevant—this conversation is required listening.

Because AI isn’t just changing how we work. It’s changing why we work.

This compilation episode captures the final day of POSSIBLE 2026 in Miami — where the tone shifts from hype to clarity. Filmed entirely on-site, these conversations reflect what leaders actually think after three days of meetings, launches, and late-night debates.The signal coming out of Day 3 is clear: The industry is moving from tools → systems, from workflows → agents, and from execution → orchestration. This is where AI stops being a feature — and starts becoming infrastructure.Who’s Featured:- Mano Pillai — Co-CEO & Co-Founder, HyperMindZ: Why AI needs a control layer to manage autonomous systems at scale.- Anthony Dominguez — Senior Director, Multichannel Marketing, Orange142: The reality of multichannel execution and why coordination is still broken.- Ian Maier — GM, AdTech, Hightouch: How the composable CDP model is reshaping activation and challenging legacy stacks.- Laura Foster — SVP, Marketing, GumGum: Moving beyond targeting to moment + mindset as the real driver of performance.- Michael Akkerman — Chief Business Officer, Digital Turbine: The untapped opportunity in in-app media and the importance of relevance.- Luc Benyon — Marketing Director at Adsquare: How platform dynamics and buyer behavior are shifting in a fragmented ecosystem.- Sebastian Pinzon — Data & AdTech Strategist: Why interoperability and data infrastructure are becoming non-negotiable.- Joanna Drews — Co-Founder and CEO at HyphaMetrics: Bridging strategy and execution in a rapidly changing landscape.- Joshua John — Head of DSP Strategy, at Yahoo!: The future of DSPs in an agentic, automated workflow world.- Crystal Wallace — COO at Omnicom's Kinesso: The gap between transformation strategy and real execution.- Adam Woods — Chief Product Officer, Incubeta: Rebuilding the agency model around AI-native operating systems.Key Themes* Agentic AI and autonomous media execution* Control layers, governance, and orchestration* The collapse of legacy AdTech workflows* From point solutions → integrated systems* Why timing, context, and signals matter more than everFinal Thought: Day 3 wasn’t about what’s possible. It was about what’s already happening —and how fast the rest of the industry needs to catch up.

Day 2 of POSSIBLE in Miami was Signal & Noise at full speed—filming live from the Press Room, sitting down with some of the sharpest operators across adtech, martech, and AI. If Day 1 was about setting the stage, Day 2 was about how it actually works—the systems, tradeoffs, and rewiring happening underneath the industry.

Here’s who we spoke with—and what they unpacked:

• Adam Heimlich (Chalice AI) — Agentic media buying, containerized decisioning, fixing broken DSP models
• Ana Mourão (Black & Decker) — First-party data activation, martech–adtech convergence, retail media
• Mike Finnerty (Mutinex) — AI-powered MMM, incrementality at speed, killing “great but late” measurement
• Xander Kotsatos (Aqfer) — Zero-copy data, infrastructure economics, data pipelines as the new moat
• David Nyurenberg (InterMedia Advertising) — Digital evolution, agency strategy, performance realities
• Doug Lauretano (Tuple) — DSP reinvention, supply path inefficiencies, unlocking “lost” inventory
• Neej Gore (Zeta Global) — Identity graphs, decisioning systems, AI as the marketing brain
• Sara Martinez (Tracer) & Vinny Rinaldi (Hershey’s) — Semantic layers, measurement clarity, brand execution
• Jill Randell (Fuse) — AI for insights, fixing broken dashboards, trust in data
• Tom Koch (TwelveLabs) — Video understanding AI, multimodal models, unlocking unstructured data 
• Todd Ulise (Nomix Group) — AI, Synthetic Creators, and Commerce at Scale

The big themes from Day 2:

This wasn’t surface-level AI hype. The throughline was clear:

• AI is moving from tools → systems → decisioning layers
• Data is still the bottleneck (and the battleground)
• The stack is collapsing into “operating systems”
• Measurement is being rebuilt from first principles
• The open web vs. walled gardens fight is evolving—not ending

Across every conversation, one idea kept coming up:

The winners won’t just use AI—they’ll re-architect around it.

From agentic trading models to real-time MMM, from identity graphs to video intelligence, Day 2 showed what the industry looks like when you zoom past the buzzwords and into the machinery.

And it’s clear:

The future of marketing isn’t just automated—it’s negotiated, orchestrated, and deeply data-native.

This compilation brings together the sharpest insights, debates, and moments from the floor.👉 Want the full conversations?Each interview is available individually on our YouTube channel.About Possible 2026Possible is one of the fastest-growing gatherings in media, marketing, and technology—bringing together brands, platforms, agencies, and innovators to define what’s next. More from Day 3 coming soon.

Recorded live from the MadConnect Mansion in Miami, this special Signal & Noise episode captures Day 1 of Possible 2026—bringing together some of the sharpest operators across advertising, media, data, and AI.

Across a full day of rapid-fire interviews, Rio Longacre, Brett House, and Krish Raja sat down with industry leaders to unpack what’s actually happening beneath the surface of the hype cycle.

• Dave Rosner — On the untapped power of publisher data and the buy-side blind spot
• Pete Blackshaw — On brand trust in an AI-driven discovery landscape
• Patrick Duggan — On AI monetization and the race to profitability
• Erez Levin — On ad quality, attention, and the race to the bottom
• Aubriana Alvarez Lopez — On orchestration, AI, and fixing the adtech operating model
• Nathan Lindberg — On gaming, creators, and the next media frontier
• MK Marsden — On AI’s impact on sales and the future of the revenue engine
• Sarah Caputo — On CTV monetization, frequency, and the viewer experience

From AI-driven operating models and monetization strategies to CTV fragmentation, ad quality, and the rise of new creator ecosystems—Day 1 of Possible made one thing clear:

The industry isn’t lacking innovation—it’s struggling to operationalize it.

This compilation brings together the sharpest insights, debates, and moments from the floor.

👉 Want the full conversations?
Each interview is available individually on our YouTube channel.

Possible is one of the fastest-growing gatherings in media, marketing, and technology—bringing together brands, platforms, agencies, and innovators to define what’s next. Day 1 set the tone: AI is here, but execution is the real battleground.

More from Day 2 coming soon.

What happens when AI stops assisting media teams and starts acting on their behalf?

In this episode of Signal & Noise, we sit down with Ethan Settel, Head of Sales & Accounts at Newton Research, to explore one of the most important developments in advertising today: the emergence of agentic media buying.

While much of the industry remains focused on AI tools that summarize dashboards, generate briefs, or automate reporting, Newton Research is pursuing something far more ambitious. The company is building specialized AI agents that can connect data, execute advanced analytics, build forecasting models, recommend optimizations, and increasingly interact directly with media platforms to support planning, buying, and activation. 

At the center of our conversation is a provocative thesis: the future of advertising may be negotiated by machines.

Rather than relying on human teams to manually interpret reports, adjust budgets, and coordinate across dozens of disconnected systems, agentic platforms like Newton are creating teams of AI specialists that can work together to analyze campaign performance, simulate scenarios, and execute media decisions with unprecedented speed and precision. These agents can communicate with DSPs, publishers, clean rooms, and planning tools, transforming what has historically been a fragmented and labor-intensive process into an increasingly automated operating model. 

We also discuss Newton’s groundbreaking work with NBCUniversal, FreeWheel, Yahoo, and Locality, where buy-side and sell-side AI agents collaborated to support premium video buying across linear television and streaming. The initiative offers a compelling glimpse into a future where software agents negotiate inventory directly with one another, potentially reshaping the role of DSPs, SSPs, and other intermediaries throughout the advertising ecosystem. 

Along the way, Ethan explains why measurement and analytics are the foundation of any effective agentic system. Without trusted data, consistent models, and full transparency into how decisions are made, automation simply amplifies errors. Newton addresses this by combining its proprietary marketing science knowledge base with each client’s unique methodologies, creating a repeatable and highly customized intelligence layer that becomes more valuable over time. 

We also explore some of the biggest questions facing the industry:

• How AI agents differ from generic tools like OpenAI ChatGPT, Anthropic Claude, and Google Gemini
• Why data normalization has historically consumed most of a data scientist’s time
• How agentic systems can democratize advanced analytics for planners and buyers
• The role of protocols such as MCP and AdCP in enabling agent-to-agent communication
• Whether DSPs and SSPs become strategic platforms or simply “dumb pipes”
• Where liability and accountability sit when AI begins making media decisions
• Why human oversight remains essential, even as automation accelerates

Ethan also shares his perspective on the organizational impact of agentic AI. Rather than replacing media professionals outright, he argues that the technology frees analysts, planners, and buyers from repetitive manual work, allowing them to focus on strategy, experimentation, and innovation. The result is not fewer insights, but potentially unlimited analytics applied to every campaign and every decision. 

This conversation offers a rare and highly practical look at what applied AI actually looks like inside advertising. It moves beyond hype to examine how real systems are being deployed today to transform measurement, planning, and activation.

If Ethan is right, the future of media will not be defined by faster reporting or prettier dashboards. It will be defined by intelligent agents negotiating with one another across the buy-side and sell-side, continuously optimizing outcomes in a market that becomes more automated, transparent, and data-driven than ever before.

The negotiated future has already begun.

What happens when a society can no longer agree on basic facts?

In this episode of Signal & Noise, Rio Longacre and Brett House sit down with Vanessa Otero, Founder and CEO of Ad Fontes Media and creator of the influential Media Bias Chart, to explore the growing crisis of trust, polarization, and information quality in the modern media landscape.

Vanessa's Media Bias Chart began as a personal project during the 2016 election cycle and has since evolved into one of the most widely recognized frameworks for evaluating media bias and reliability. Today, Ad Fontes Media has analyzed tens of thousands of articles, podcasts, and news sources to help consumers, educators, advertisers, and publishers better understand the fragmented information ecosystem. 

The conversation explores how the industry arrived at a moment where millions of people consume different versions of reality, why social media algorithms amplify outrage and identity over truth, and whether objective journalism is still possible in an era dominated by platforms, creators, and AI-generated content. Vanessa shares her perspective on the collapse of trust in institutions, the economics of journalism, and why the survival of high-quality reporting matters far beyond the news business itself. 

The discussion also dives into the business challenges facing journalism. As local newspapers disappear, digital advertising consolidates around a handful of technology platforms, and AI reshapes content discovery, many news orgs are struggling to sustain the costly work of original reporting. Vanessa explains why journalism functions as critical societal infrastructure, how advertising incentives have unintentionally weakened the news ecosystem, and why she believes advertisers have a role to play in preserving high-quality information. 

Rio and Brett challenge Vanessa on whether audiences actually want objective reporting, the role of algorithms in reinforcing worldviews, and whether we're witnessing a return to a more fragmented media environment reminiscent of the pre-broadcast era. Together they explore the tension between engagement and truth, the rise of podcasts and creator-driven media, and whether consumers are becoming more aware of the ways technology influences their perception of reality. 

The episode also examines the future of advertising against news content. Vanessa discusses Ad Fontes Media's work helping advertisers identify high-quality news environments, the importance of context and trust in media buying, and why she believes many brands have made a mistake by avoiding news altogether. The conversation touches on CTV, media quality signals, brand safety, and the emerging role of AI in both improving and undermining the information ecosystem. 

Whether you're a marketer, publisher, journalist, technologist, policymaker, or simply someone trying to make sense of today's media environment, this conversation offers a thoughtful and nuanced look at one of the most important challenges facing modern society.

• The origin story of the Media Bias Chart
• Why people increasingly live in separate realities
• Trust, misinformation, and disinformation
• The collapse of local journalism
• Social media, algorithms, and outrage economics
• Why advertisers stopped buying news
• The business model crisis facing publishers
• AI-generated content and the future of journalism
• Podcasts, creators, and media fragmentation
• News quality, media trust, and brand safety
• CTV advertising and Ad Fontes Media's partnership with Viant
• Whether objective journalism is still possible

Vanessa Otero is the Founder and CEO of Ad Fontes Media, the company behind the Media Bias Chart. A former patent attorney, Vanessa launched the chart during the 2016 election cycle to help people better understand media bias and reliability. Today, Ad Fontes Media provides media quality ratings used by advertisers, publishers, educators, researchers, and consumers seeking greater transparency in the information ecosystem.

Signal & Noise Exclusive

Publishers create the content. Publishers build the audiences. Publishers bear the costs.

Yet somehow, after two decades of digital advertising innovation, many publishers capture only a fraction of the value they create.

In this Signal & Noise exclusive, Rio Longacre and Brett House sit down with Keith Petri, SVP of Data, Identity & Supply at Viant, and Rich Hyden, SVP of Publisher Solutions at Viant, for a deep discussion on one of the most important questions facing the open internet:

Can publishers reclaim their economic future—or are the economics of digital media fundamentally broken?

This conversation coincides with Viant's major announcement of Viant Publisher Solutions, a new suite of capabilities designed to improve transparency, signal quality, monetization, identity activation, and supply-path efficiency for publishers while simultaneously improving advertiser outcomes. It represents one of the most significant publisher-focused initiatives launched by a major DSP in recent years.

But this episode goes far beyond a product launch.

Together, Keith and Rich unpack the realities of modern publisher monetization, the hidden inefficiencies inside today's programmatic supply chain, why signal quality increasingly determines revenue, and how identity has become one of the most valuable assets publishers possess.

The discussion explores how technologies such as SupplyIQ, Direct Access, Household ID, and IRIS_ID aim to create a more direct relationship between buyers and sellers while reducing friction, duplication, and information loss throughout the advertising ecosystem.

Along the way, the conversation tackles some of the biggest debates in advertising today:

• Why premium publishers continue to struggle despite creating enormous value
• Whether supply-path optimization helps publishers—or hurts them
• The role of identity in driving publisher revenue
• Why signal quality may be the new currency of digital advertising
• How CTV is reshaping publisher economics
• The growing power of walled gardens versus the open internet
• Why contextual intelligence is becoming increasingly important
• How AI and agentic media buying may transform programmatic advertising
• Whether DSPs can play a meaningful role in helping publishers thrive
• What the future of publisher monetization looks like over the next decade

Keith and Rich also share a fascinating perspective from inside one of the industry's most innovative DSPs, explaining why better advertiser outcomes and healthier publisher economics may no longer be competing objectives.

For anyone working in digital media, ad tech, publishing, identity, programmatic advertising, retail media, CTV, measurement, or AI-powered marketing, this is a conversation packed with practical insights and big-picture thinking.

The future of the open internet may depend on whether buyers and sellers can become more aligned.

This episode explores what that future could look like.

Guests

• Keith Petri, SVP Data, Identity & Supply, Viant
• Rich Hyden, SVP Publisher Solutions, Viant

Hosted By

• Rio Longacre
• Brett House

Topics Covered
Publisher Monetization • Programmatic Advertising • Supply Path Optimization (SPO) • CTV • Identity Resolution • First-Party Data • Household ID • Contextual Targeting • Publisher Data Strategy • AI Advertising • Agentic Media Buying • Open Internet Economics • Ad Tech Infrastructure • Signal Quality • Media Quality • Digital Advertising

#SignalAndNoise #AdTech #ProgrammaticAdvertising #Viant #PublisherMonetization #CTV #IdentityResolution #DigitalAdvertising #RetailMedia #AIAdvertising #OpenInternet #MarketingTechnology

Enjoy!

What happens when an early Amazon engineer who helped pioneer automated advertising leaves AdTech behind to build the world's fastest commercial airliner?

In this episode of Signal & Noise, Brett House and Rio Longacre sit down with Blake Scholl, Founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, for a wide-ranging conversation about innovation, entrepreneurship, aviation, AI, and why some of the world's biggest opportunities are hiding in plain sight.

Before launching Boom, Blake helped shape early internet advertising at Amazon, worked through the hypergrowth years at Groupon, and experienced firsthand the rise of AdTech, recommendation engines, and large-scale customer acquisition systems. Then he made an unlikely leap: leaving software behind to tackle one of the hardest problems in engineering—bringing commercial supersonic flight back from the dead. 

The discussion explores what Blake learned from Amazon, why he believes Groupon missed a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and how short-term thinking can destroy even the most promising companies. Along the way, he shares stories about crashing Google AdWords, building the world's largest spam operation at Groupon, and getting some of his toughest lessons directly from Jeff Bezos. 

The conversation then shifts to Boom Supersonic's mission, the history of the Concorde, the regulatory decisions that stalled aviation innovation for decades, and Blake's controversial view that technological progress didn't slow because the problems became harder—it slowed because society stopped pursuing them. 

Blake also reveals the behind-the-scenes story of Boom's near-collapse, the seven-year pursuit of a partnership with Rolls-Royce, and how a failed engine deal ultimately led to one of the company's biggest breakthroughs: building its own propulsion technology and creating a new turbine business that may help fund the future of supersonic travel. 

The episode closes with Blake's thoughts on AI, entrepreneurship, and why the biggest impact of AI may not be job replacement—but the creation of millions of new builders capable of turning ideas into reality. 

• Blake Scholl's journey from Amazon and Groupon to Boom Supersonic
• Early AdTech, automated advertising, and internet growth stories
• Lessons from Jeff Bezos and Amazon's long-term thinking culture
• Groupon's rise, fall, and missed platform opportunity
• Why innovation in aviation stalled after Concorde
• Regulatory capture and the history of supersonic flight
• Building Boom Supersonic from scratch
• The failed Rolls-Royce partnership and Boom's engine strategy
• Turbine power generation, AI infrastructure, and data centers
• The future of commercial supersonic travel
• Why AI may create more entrepreneurs than ever before
• Long-term thinking, risk-taking, and building hard-tech companies

Whether you're interested in aviation, startups, AI, AdTech, or the future of innovation itself, this is a fascinating conversation about what happens when someone decides to stop optimizing digital systems and start building physical ones.

#SignalAndNoise #BoomSupersonic #BlakeScholl #Aviation #SupersonicFlight #AI #Entrepreneurship #Innovation #Amazon #Groupon #AdTech #MarTech #HardTech #Technology #FutureOfWork #CommercialAviation #ArtificialIntelligence #StartupLeadership #Engineering #DigitalTransformation

What happens when the technology that powers advertising becomes the thing consumers interact with directly?

In this episode of Signal & Noise, Rio Longacre and Brett House sit down with industry analyst Karsten Weide to explore one of the most important—and controversial—questions facing the digital economy: how AI will ultimately make money.

From advertising inside chatbots to agentic commerce, autonomous media buying, and the future of the open web, Karsten shares why he believes AI will reshape advertising more profoundly than any technology shift he has witnessed in more than three decades covering media, technology, and digital advertising. 

The conversation examines the rapid emergence of agentic AI across the advertising ecosystem, the growing role of automation in media planning and optimization, and why the traditional programmatic supply chain may be heading toward a fundamental transformation. Karsten explains how platforms, DSPs, SSPs, publishers, agencies, and brands are all racing to build their own agentic operating systems—and what that means for the future structure of the advertising market. 

The discussion also tackles one of the industry's most debated topics: advertising inside AI products. Will OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and Perplexity eventually embrace advertising as a major revenue stream? What will AI-native ad formats actually look like? And can advertising coexist with the trust users expect from conversational interfaces? 

The conversation then turns to agentic commerce—the emerging world where AI agents shop, compare products, negotiate prices, and make purchases on behalf of consumers. If agents become the primary buyers, what happens to search advertising, performance marketing, and the broader digital advertising ecosystem? Karsten offers a provocative perspective on why this future may create a surprising renaissance for brand advertising, display, video, audio, and out-of-home media. 

Along the way, the group discusses:

• Why AI adoption in advertising is still in its earliest stages
• The rise of autonomous media buying and agentic workflows
• How Amazon, Google, Meta, and emerging ad tech players are approaching AI-powered advertising
• The future of SMB advertising and self-service media buying
• The battle between open standards and proprietary AI ecosystems
• Why the programmatic supply chain may look dramatically different in five years
• The opportunities and risks of AI-driven creative production
• Whether AGI is actually closer than most people think
• How AI could reshape agency operating models and industry employment

If you've been wondering how advertising, commerce, media buying, and consumer behavior evolve in a world increasingly shaped by AI agents, this episode provides one of the most thoughtful and grounded discussions available today.

The future of advertising may not be humans buying from brands. It may be agents buying from agents. And the implications are enormous.

For weeks, reports that Publicis was exploring a relationship with Hightouch following its acquisition of LiveRamp circulated as an industry scoop. Until now, no one involved had publicly confirmed it.

In this special Signal & Noise Signal Break, we sit down with Hightouch co-founder and CEO Tejas Manohar, who confirms that Hightouch has in fact been in discussions with Publicis.

That confirmation adds an important new dimension to one of the biggest stories in adtech this year. What would a partnership between Publicis, LiveRamp, and Hightouch mean for identity, activation, clean rooms, and the future architecture of customer data?

Rio Longacre, Brett House, and Tejas unpack the implications in a fast-moving, high-energy conversation between three practitioners deeply involved in modern marketing infrastructure. We discuss composable CDPs, warehouse-native activation, agentic workflows, and why the industry's center of gravity may be shifting yet again.

To be clear, Hightouch is a sponsor of Signal & Noise, but sponsorship played no role in our interest in covering this story or inviting Tejas to join us. This discussion was driven entirely by the significance of the news and our belief that it deserves broader industry attention.

This isn't the long-form Tejas episode we originally planned. That's still coming. Consider this an early dispatch—a Signal Break—to share an important confirmation with the market while it's still unfolding.

Topics discussed:
• Tejas confirms Hightouch has spoken with Publicis
• What a Publicis–LiveRamp–Hightouch relationship could look like
• Why composable architectures continue gaining momentum
• How identity, activation, and measurement may evolve post-acquisition
• The growing role of AI and agentic systems in marketing operations

If you're trying to understand where the future marketing operating system is headed, this is one conversation you won't want to miss.

With Rio Longacre, Krish Raja & Brett House

Signal & Noise is on the ground at Cannes-Lions 2026.

This year marks the first time Rio Longacre, Krish Raja, and Brett House have attended Cannes together as a team under the Signal & Noise banner. While each of us has been to Cannes in previous years, experiencing it together—and recording conversations live from Hearst House—made this year’s festival something special.

And what a year to do it.

Cannes Lions 2026 felt bigger, busier, and more energized than ever. The familiar faces from advertising, media, and publishing were all here, but what stood out most was the influx of AI founders, product leaders, engineers, and technologists who are increasingly shaping the future of our industry.

This special compilation brings together our Day 1 opening conversation along with every interview recorded during Days 1 and 2 at Hearst House.

Across these sessions, we explored some of the biggest themes emerging from Cannes:

• Agentic media buying and autonomous analytics
• The transformation of agencies into AI-native operating models
• Self-service television and the future of premium video advertising
• AI-powered measurement, causal modeling, and MMM
• The reinvention of creative workflows
• Healthcare marketing, discoverability, and the changing physician experience
• The role of creators, influencers, and culture in modern brand building

🎙 John Hoctor — CEO & Co-Founder, Newton Research; Founder of Data Plus Math

John discusses analytics agents, causal modeling, MMM, and how Newton is helping agencies such as Horizon Media and Dentsu build toward an agentic future for planning, measurement, and buying.

🎙 Robyn Freye — President, Court Avenue

Robyn shares her perspective on enterprise AI transformation, organizational redesign, and what it means to build an AI-native agency designed for the intelligence economy.

🎙 Daniel Druger — VP Product, Comcast Advertising / Universal Ads

Daniel walks through Universal Ads, Comcast’s effort to bring self-service buying to premium television, making TV advertising accessible to millions of businesses that historically couldn’t participate.

🎙 Brian Vaughan — Executive Creative Director, Shadow

Brian explores how creativity is evolving in the age of AI, why culture-first campaigns still matter, and how PR, creators, celebrity partnerships, and social storytelling can work together to create moments that break through the noise.

🎙 Andrea Palmer — CEO, PHM (Publicis Health Media)

Andrea discusses healthcare marketing’s evolution from compliance-driven communications to discoverability, influence, and helping physicians and patients navigate an increasingly complex information ecosystem.

This compilation episode is available in full on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, while each individual conversation will also be released separately here on YouTube.

And we’re only halfway through the week.

Days 3 and 4 are coming soon, featuring even more founders, product leaders, agency executives, publishers, and technologists helping define what comes next for media, marketing, AI, and advertising.

Stay tuned.

🎧 Full compilation available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
📺 Individual interviews dropping soon on YouTube

Featured Guests

📰 More Cannes coverage, articles, and episodes at SignalAndNoise.ai

Day 3 at Cannes Lions 2026 may have been the hottest day in French history, but it also delivered some of the most thoughtful conversations of the week.

Recorded live from Hearst House in Cannes, this Signal & Noise compilation brings together founders, CMOs, product leaders, publishers, identity experts, and healthcare innovators to discuss what’s actually changing in advertising, media, data, and AI.

A recurring theme throughout the day was that we’re entering a new phase of the AI era. The prototypes are everywhere, but deployment is hard. Brands are still wrestling with fragmented data, trust, context, measurement, and figuring out how agentic systems fit into real business workflows. At the same time, publishers are rediscovering the value of premium relationships, healthcare marketers are embracing AI-driven disruption, and identity is becoming strategically important again.

🎙 Sarah Robertson – Chief Product Officer, Experian
Trusted data, identity as infrastructure, MCPs, consumer agents, and why product teams are being pushed to build capabilities the market isn’t quite ready to consume.

🎙 Christian Monberg – CTO, Zeta Global
Athena, agentic marketing, the new partnership with Palantir, and why brands still haven’t solved their data foundations despite years of investment in martech stacks.

🎙 David Sandström – CMO, Klarna
How Klarna transformed itself from a B2B payments provider into a consumer brand, designing financial experiences for real people instead of “tech bros,” and why shopping remains an emotional experience that agents won’t fully replace.

🎙 Jim Weiss – Founder & Chairman, Real Chemistry
The future of healthcare marketing, precision medicine, longevity, physician influence, and why healthcare may be the industry most ripe for AI disruption.

🎙 Matt Krepsik – CEO, MediaRadar
MMM, metadata, trust, context, speed, creative effectiveness, and how AI may finally make marketing measurement actionable in near real time.

🎙 Mathieu Roche – Founder & CEO, ID5
Identity as advertising infrastructure, the implications of the Publicis acquisition of LiveRamp, and what happens when consumer agents begin acting as extensions of ourselves online.

🎙 Melissa Gordon-Ring – Global President, Omnicom Media Group Health
Healthcare’s emergence at Cannes, AI’s impact on clinical development and commercialization, and why pharma marketers may ultimately benefit most from agentic technologies.

🎙 Lisa Ryan Howard – Global CRO, Hearst Magazines
Publishers are back. Hearst discusses premium audiences, first-party data products, AI-powered sales tools, direct relationships, and why quality content is becoming more valuable in an era of infinite AI-generated noise.

This was our third day together at Cannes Lions 2026, and the themes were impossible to ignore:

• AI is exposing weaknesses in existing technology stacks.
• Trusted data matters more than ever.
• Identity isn’t dead—it’s evolving.
• Publishers may finally have leverage again.
• Healthcare is becoming one of the most exciting categories in marketing.
• Creativity still outperforms algorithms when it comes to moving people.

More Cannes conversations are coming soon, including our Day 4 recap and additional individual interviews from Hearst House.

Subscribe to Signal & Noise on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and watch individual sessions as they are released here on YouTube.