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Robert Webster posted thisJensen Huang just reframed the entire AI adoption conversation in one sentence. There's a difference between a job's tasks and its purpose. A software engineer's tasks are writing code. Their purpose is solving problems. AI takes the tasks. The purpose doesn't just survive. It finally gets the room it deserves. A company without purpose handed AI a loaded gun with no target. I've always seen AI as a multiplier. Not of output. Of the purpose we carry inside us. My job for 25 years has been to use information technology to help people be their best selves. The tools have changed completely. That purpose hasn't moved an inch. If you have a purpose, AI is a friend not a threat. Figure out what you're actually for first. The rest follows.
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Robert Webster shared thisGreat article. Nick beat me to the punch on this one. There is so much data in dv 360. Gemini makes that so much more accessible. Fold in google ads and you have super powers. Now i would also say dv 360 is the wrong choice as a retail media dsp due to how it handles first party cookies but thats a nuanced debate. Ie, Google ecosysten is bad for onsite. Also the question of marking ones own homework.Robert Webster shared thisDespite the headline of this article focusing on AI driven planning and buying I think these developments are largely on a linear scale to developments we have seen over the last 6-8 years. Yes, there are some nice developments in terms of uploading plans and automatically translating it to set up, but this feels evolutionary rather than revolutionary. The most interesting part of Google’s announcements looks at the enhancements to measurement that DV360 is rolling out and especially with its focus on retail media. At the turn of the year there were more articles than you could shake a stick at discussing how retail still needs to crack cross channel measurement to continue its incredible rise. Google seems to have made some intelligent developments that could be game changing. Confidential Publisher Match (personally I’m excited for the confusion that the CPM acronym will create!) signals a shift toward privacy-safe identity that can finally connect CTV impressions to conversions. That “cross-device memory” is what the industry has been chasing for years. Integrating Kroger’s first-party data and SKU-level reporting brings us closer to true closed-loop measurement on CTV and YouTube. With AI handling the planning and optimization, measurement is no longer a downstream separate exercise anymore, it’s theoretically baked into the system in real time. Google has always strived to own the end-to-end system whether it is buying DoubleClick or AdMeld, to build out the full stack, this is a massive step up to ensure capabilities that rival or beat what Amazon and TTD are doing. Because once you can tie impressions to households to transactions to SKUs, CTV stops being an awareness channel and becomes a full-funnel performance driver. #CTV #Measurement #AdTech #RetailMedia #Programmatic #DV360
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Robert Webster shared thisWhy My Chatbot Told Me I Didn't Like Detail I asked Claude to rate my AI skills. It (kindly) gave me a 6 out of 10 for detail work. I wasn't offended, almost relieved, colleagues had been saying it for years. I have long suspected I have ADHD, even booked a diagnosis once but cancelled by the pandemic. Today though I'm not diagnosed. I feel guilty even writing that because maybe I'm just impatient and looking for a label. But whatever the truth is, the symptoms are real: I love building frameworks, I get exhausted by specification documents, and I once described a £2M technical architecture using a car analogy instead of a flowchart. So when I came across The AI Skill Hierarchy, four levels that determine how effective you are with AI development. I asked my AI to score me, then sent the results to my team on WhatsApp. The Four Skills Prompt Craft, writing clear instructions that get good outputs. Everyone's teaching this. Your nan's probably been on a course. I'm a 7. Context Engineering, building the infrastructure around AI. What data it accesses, how it's structured, what it remembers. This is systems thinking. I'm an 8.5, not because I learned it for AI, but because I spent 25 years mapping how marketing systems connect. Intent Engineering, making sure AI solves the right problem, not just solves a problem well. 9.5. This is home, designing what good looks like. Specification Engineering, translating intent into precise, machine-readable instructions. Detailed. Rigorous. Exhausting. 6 (at best) The Pattern Strong in the middle. Bored at the edges. My brain loves a framework and switches off at the granular. This means I need colleagues score a 9 on specs, whose brains light up exactly where mine dims. This is something I have always hired for in my teams. Left alone I'd build beautifully architected systems that work 85% of the time. My team makes them work 99%. This matters, a lot. Why This Matters First of all, these are really interesting skill areas that matter to how good your AI is. Lose out on each area makes your application dramatically worse. Its why teams with the right mix of detail, engineering and subject matter expertise are vital. You can't hire one person who's a 9 across all four. They don't exist. Engineers might score 8, 9, 4, 9, technically brilliant, strategically blind. Extreme strategists score like 5, 5, 8, 3 great in a boardroom, useless in a codebase (these people exist in big agencies). The magic is in the middle. Context and intent engineering need something you can't teach in a weekend: deep subject matter expertise plus systems thinking. Your marketing veteran with 20 years of experience isn't someone who needs to "learn AI." They already have the hardest skill to acquire. I sent my scores to my team and suggested everyone rate themselves. Not to share. Just to look in the mirror. Self-awareness is the prerequisite for every skill on this list. Mine told me I don't like detail. Fair!!
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Robert Webster posted thisThe biggest challenge facing CMOs and agency leaders right now isn't AI itself. It's adopting AI within the reality of how enterprises actually work. Time-poor teams. Overstretched resources. Infosec requirements that move slowly. Procurement cycles that move slower. And while you navigate all of that, three things are quietly going wrong: Some of your competitors are moving faster than you. Your best people are getting frustrated — either undervalued, unsupported, or blocked from working with modern tools. They'll leave for somewhere that lets them build. And one rushed decision puts you on the wrong side of a security or compliance headline. We've seen this film before. Remember CDPs? Millions spent on technology installed without a deep understanding of marketing use cases. Most became expensive shelfware. The lesson was clear: technology without process understanding is just cost. AI is heading the same way for a lot of organisations right now. Now I can't not say that this is the problem TAU was designed to solve. We're not theorists. We're practitioners with 25 years in marketing, adtech, and transformation — who also build the technology with a strong AI dev team We map process before we write a line of code. Everything we build is secure, runs on your infrastructure, and you own every line of it. Short-term outcomes. Long-term capability. No vendor lock-in. Rather than fighting the wave its time to ride it. Get in touch if your ready!
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Robert Webster reposted thisRobert Webster reposted thisAlongside our own session, a couple of sessions at MAD//FEST North today really resonated and reinforced the reasons we set up TAU: to make AI work for Marketing - properly. Here's what we mean. Starting with one of the best session titles of the day "From Data to Dough" Antony Bradshaw from Domino's shared a strong example of what “doing AI properly” actually looks like. Not layering on tools for the sake of it, but explaining how they are using AI to understand their customers better, to allocate spend more intelligently and improve relevance (as they roll out their new chicken product in particular). That’s the difference between using AI to do better (not just more) marketing. Beyond media, what stood out was the application of AI in the physical world analysing product quality and then evaluating store performance, connecting operational insight with marketing outcomes. This is where AI shifts from tools which layer on complexity, to orchestration that builds and compounds intelligence across the organisation. In the Republic of Media and the Skipton Building Society, a different but equally important theme resonated: agility and real partnership. Louisa Humpage discussed how direct access to independent expertise matters when you want to move fast. As a challenger brand, you don’t win by outspending. You win by being sharper. By driving attentive reach. By working with partners who challenge you constructively and operate independently of share deals. It's a message that certainly landed with the packed crowd in the room, and it's also where we see such strong opportunities for the independent agencies to use AI to create leverage. It allows clients like Skipton to outsmart rather than outspend. AI isn’t about volume. It’s about judgement, orchestration, transparency, trust and partnership. If you’re at MadFest and want to chat about true partnerships and building AI into marketing properly, message us or come and find us by the Tech and Media stage. Paul Cooper, Andy Stevens, Robert Webster, Zuzanna Gierlinska and Jill Lloyd #MADNORTH26 #MarketingAI
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Robert Webster shared thisGreat to chat with Tim Norris-Wiles Good to understand company fit and where different AI systems fit. TAU Marketing Solutions is AI that does planning, forecasting, trafficking, media activation, reporting among other things. Neuralift AI is all about crm connection and using advanced ML to find segments you would never have found before. These segments will drive better more efficient marketing. Company overlap 10pc. Synergy. Huge. Better segments plugged into planning, activation and insights leads to better outcomes. Great MAD//FEST exp.
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Robert Webster shared thisShowtime. At MAD//FEST North. In the lineup next to one of my heroes Rory Sutherland Hear about AI adoption and sucess. Every marketing team needs agents supporting humans in 2026.
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Robert Webster shared thisReally looking forward to this and showing off TAU's shiny new platform. First of all. What a pleasure to be speaking on stage with such an excellent group of colleagues and clients. In 2026 the Agentic world has finally landed. TAU enables you to quickly and safely get to a world where humans and agents work togethee to deliver best in class marketing.Robert Webster shared thisIs AI experimentation☠️ killing ☠️ marketing efficiency? That’s what TAU Marketing Solutions will be unpacking on stage MAD//FEST North this week. If you lead digital, marketing, or tech transformation this conversation will change how you think about AI implementation. We know that the challenge for marketers right now isn't whether to use AI, it's how to apply it without creating chaos. The media ecosystem is already complex: - Data overload - Layered activation platforms - New AI tools launching weekly In trying to make sense of this we see brand and agency teams experimenting with LLMs, building their own GPTs and Gems. At first, it works: Quick wins. Faster outputs. Real momentum. Then complexity explodes. More tools than strategy, overlapping functions, limited clarity on what's actually working 🤯 The wins don't scale. Sound familiar? This isn't an AI problem it's an orchestration problem. Our MAD//Fest session "From Experimentation to Orchestration: Making AI Work for Marketers Now" tackles exactly this: ☑️ How to start with practical applications that deliver value immediately ☑️ How to design tools that connect from day one ☑️ How to turn quick wins into scalable, measurable impact in weeks Find out how TAU can help you move fast with structure and turn your AI experiments into a systematic competitive advantage. DM me for a meeting across Wednesday & Thursday.
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Robert Webster shared thisYouTube is now a top TV Media Property. Yet Google have tried to block these numbers by handing BARB a cease and desist order. This is why we need independent data and AI. The holdcos too are not our saviours here as they have a tendence to prefer opacity to granularity. This is why we need independent data and AI. Whoever owns measurement owns the space. Google already owns the defacto measurement of DR with Google Analytics, CM 360 and control of search and the browser (including Apple with their search deal). This measurement and control has already decimated web publishers. Forget all the other competing acronyms. This is the fight for independent media.Peppa Pig vs Google: Why Media Planning Needs Independent AIPeppa Pig vs Google: Why Media Planning Needs Independent AI
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Robert Webster liked thisRobert Webster liked thisThe ultimate use case for AI is as a personal assistant. Microsoft had the right idea with Co-Pilot but somehow managed to completely screw up the execution. Give me an agent that can read an email or chat convo, understand the context of say a meeting I'm trying to organise and then suggest realistic dates and times I can reply with, and then seamlessly execute. Give me an agent that understands I'm researching a paper and suggests useful ideas for how to structure it based on what I've written so far and historic writing style. Have it look at emails, chat convos or meeting notes on the same topic to better understand the brief. Give me an agent that can remind me to follow up on an important action point from a meeting or email. Or an agent that can plan my diary and task list for me based on upcoming strategic priorities. I don't need an LLM to do the work. I need it to handle the admin so I have more time to do the important stuff.
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Robert Webster liked thisRobert Webster liked thisLast week my 7-year-old built a Roblox game with AI. This week I built something for him. 🎓 He sits the 11+ in two years. I looked at tutors, platforms, workbooks. All good. None of them know my kid. So I built an adaptive exam prep app where correct answers earn coins that unlock brainrot characters. 🦈 My son doesn't think he's revising. He thinks he's grinding for Bombardiro Crocodilo. Every design decision - 20-minute sessions, coins not stars, a mascot owl that pulls faces - maps to something only a parent would know. AI didn't give me that knowledge. It just made it buildable. 🔨 New post breaks down the design decisions, the invisible infrastructure that keeps family life running, and why parenting might be the hardest domain expertise to replicate. Link in comments 👇From vibe coding Roblox to revising for the 11+: how AI changed how I parentFrom vibe coding Roblox to revising for the 11+: how AI changed how I parent
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Robert Webster liked thisRobert Webster liked thisI really think people need to take agencies at their word when they say they're becoming platforms for the AI age. I'm still meeting people with ad tech solutions who are mystified about why they can't get in with holding companies.WPP Media Launches AI-Driven YouTube Tool 'YouTube 5K' - VideoWeekWPP Media Launches AI-Driven YouTube Tool 'YouTube 5K' - VideoWeek
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Robert Webster liked thisBack on the road this week, taking our Vercity engagement day up to Leeds. It’s always a long day getting there and back, but it’s one of those trips that’s always rewarding. I love to see how well people lean into it. Different teams, different perspectives, all working together, sharing ideas, challenging thinking and getting stuck into the problems that matter. These days only work if people show up properly. Thankfully Vercity people always do! So, another strong session and a good reminder that when you create the space for people to connect and contribute, the value follows… #OneVercity #TeamVercity #Leadership #Collaboration #ContinuousImprovement
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