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Battle-tested C-suite operator through periods of rapid growth. What I do: I’m…
Articles by Andrew
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Alligators and the Habits AI Amplifies
Alligators and the Habits AI Amplifies
Kraftisms #31 - AI amplifies behaviors..
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Digital Ads and Star Formation
Digital Ads and Star Formation
Since January, I've been on an advertising industry Listening Tour: holding 100 meetings - in person and virtual - to…
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100 Visions and Parallax
100 Visions and Parallax
Since January, I've been on the road on an advertising industry listening tour: holding 100 meetings to listen (and…
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7K followers
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Andrew Kraft shared thisKraftisms #48 is out! The news called the Taboola/NBCU programmatic ad deal "desperation." But I've run this play. It works. https://lnkd.in/gdzhGS2B A decade ago Microsoft fired its salespeople. Brian O'Kelley said AppNexus would sell for them instead, then called me: "Do you know how to sell ads?" My answer: "Um... no." Within the year, we were running Microsoft's programmatic ad business globally with only 13 people (vs. the 400 when Microsoft was doing the selling). The rule everyone misses: a sales house works only when it owns no inventory of its own. Taboola qualifies. Inside: the checklist before you sign your own programmatic outsourcing relationship - incentives, the boring metric, the jealousy question. Featuring Brian O'Kelley, the Taboola deal landed by Adam Singolda and Krishan Bhatia, and Katie Kulik's NET Revenue. More in Kraftisms #48: The Return of the Sales House: Taboola and NBCU. https://lnkd.in/gdzhGS2B
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Andrew Kraft shared thisKraftisms #47 is out! LiveRamp shareholders rejected an $82.6M executive payout 6 to 1 on Monday. It pays out anyway. https://lnkd.in/gapvAq_U Point. LiveRamp's shareholders approved the Publicis acquisition easily and rejected the payout overwhelmingly. Only one of those votes could bind anyone. Counterpoint. At The Trade Desk last September, shareholders voted to keep a share class carrying ten votes a share. That class was 49.3% of the entire electorate, voting on its own privileges. Opposite structures. Same result. The vote was real, the count was honest, and it was not the thing that decided. Most coverage calls founder control a governance defect. A year in the filings convinced me it is backwards, and that it belongs in your vendor review next to security and financial health. More in Kraftisms #47: Corporate Control Is a Vendor Attribute. https://lnkd.in/gapvAq_U
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Andrew Kraft shared thisKraftisms #46 is out! Targeting. Measurement. Attribution. Verification. Same data, different scales. Consolidation brings transparency. https://lnkd.in/gEwGQQA8 The headlines say Nielsen buying DoubleVerify kills independent measurement. My take: we lied to ourselves that independence meant truth. We couldn't tell, because four vendors using four different words for the same event can each be right while the campaign is wrong. One of the sharpest supply-side operators I know took this argument apart. He calls the category a tax. He's probably right, and it doesn't change what the deal does: unification of taxonomy and terminology. Clarity. More in Kraftisms #46: The Four Horsemen Are Finally Learning One Language https://lnkd.in/gEwGQQA8
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Andrew Kraft shared thisKraftisms #45 is out! AI drift is guaranteed. Material Drift is somebody's fault. Use that term to hold them accountable for it. https://lnkd.in/grth76t2 Every AI system wanders off what it was sold as. The problem is the clause you're asked to sign saying your vendor isn't responsible. So I'm naming it. Put it in your contracts. "Material Drift" is when a system crosses a line it should never have been able to cross, and nobody stopped it. Don't accept it. Everyone says they have guardrails. Most only have guidelines. There's a ten-second test in there you can run in your next vendor meeting. Listening Tour and pre-read thanks to Jay Friedman, Mario Diez, Kenneth Rona, Ph.D., Ari Paparo, and Mouna Apperson More in Kraftisms #45: Demand Accountability for Material Drift. https://lnkd.in/grth76t2
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Andrew Kraft shared thisKraftisms #44 is out! "But it was just drift" is about to become the most valuable EXCUSE in advertising. https://lnkd.in/gG53R2Mb Fraud is defined as promising one thing and then purposefully delivering another. That word "purposefully" is what makes it blameable, and what every willful misconduct clause you have ever signed is built on. AI doesn't choose. There is no state of mind in a model to find. So it can't be "willful." The headlines call this a governance problem. I have a different take: intent was never what made you responsible. It was the most available evidence that you were. That evidence is going away. More in Kraftisms #44: Will There Be Any Difference Between Drift and Fraud? https://lnkd.in/gG53R2Mb And thank you Brian O'Kelley for the great relevant examples of cleaning up an ecosystem from our time at AppNexus.
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Andrew Kraft shared thisThe greatest save performance in World Cup final history... still lost. Publishers, this one is your game film. Kraftisms #43 is out! https://lnkd.in/gUa7yV_X Emiliano Martínez made eleven saves Sunday. The most ever in a final. Messi took Argentina's only shot of the match. They lost anyway - because they played the contest Spain wanted, and Spain was better at it. The headlines say the best keeper in the world got unlucky. I have a different take: heroic defense is what losing slowly looks like. I played goalie at MIT - zero athleticism, all geometry. I never beat anyone at their game. I changed what the contest was about. Web-first premium publishers are living Sunday's final. Storied brand up front. Revops making record-setting saves - header bidding, floors, curation, identity - against search, walled gardens, and now AI shooting on every touch. Eventually one gets through. But here's the difference: nobody is forcing you to play this fixture. Your data plays more positions than selling ads against it - licensing into the AI conversation layer, measurement, commerce, events. Contests where what only you own sets the terms. A great save feels like winning. It's not. It's a slower way to lose. Change what the contest is about. More in Kraftisms #43: Eleven Saves, No Trophy. https://lnkd.in/gUa7yV_X
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Andrew Kraft shared thisKraftisms #42 is out! Measurement was never truth. It's agreement. What matters now is proving what your number moved. https://lnkd.in/gWiM5RmM I grew up in New York City. No fields, no grass, just blacktop. At recess we chalked our own foursquare courts and paced them off in feet. Our feet. Big-footed Anthony's "eight" ran closer to ten. No two courts matched. We ran a tournament every lunch anyway. Here's why that stuck with me. Nielsen's panel was never "the truth." It was a sample everyone agreed to TREAT as the truth. A different thing. And a useful one. This month Nielsen pulled back from MRC accreditation on its CTV Tracked Ads measurement. VideoAmp withdrew in the same stretch. The trade press is playing it as a crisis of the standard. I have a different take: the standard was always local. And one myth worth killing. MRC accreditation never said your number was right. It said you were doing what you claimed. It audits the method. It doesn't bless the truth. That is not an argument that measurement doesn't matter. It's essential. The meter, the kilogram, the système international d'unités - made up, agreed on, wildly useful. It just isn't truth. It's agreement. And not everyone's walking. Julie Van Ullen (President & CRO, iSpot.tv) makes the argument that gives me pause: an agnostic third party is only as good as the trust it curates, and that matters more in an AI world, not less. Here's the turn. Konrad Feldman (Quantcast) and I worked out a long time ago that you don't win until you're a column on the RFP spreadsheet, charging in units of your data. Getting adopted as the yardstick was the whole climb. It's table stakes now. What the buyer wants next isn't your count. It's proof of what it moved. And no one neutral is checking your work. Own your court. Play on it. Show how you win on it. Then you're not outsourcing your truth. You set it. More in Kraftisms #42: Measure... But With Whose Feet? https://lnkd.in/gWiM5RmM With mentions by and of insights from: David Kenny Julie Van Ullen Konrad Feldman Terence Kawaja
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Andrew Kraft shared thisHe counted his agents on his fingers. A dozen. I’ve built zero, and I finally stopped feeling bad about it: https://lnkd.in/guDCQB6R Because most of what people are counting was never an agent to begin with. Agentic is an adjective. An agent is a noun. Jogging on weekends is athletic; it doesn’t make you an athlete. Kraftisms #41 is about the difference: what an agent actually is (a decision you stopped making), the giveaway that yours isn’t one, and the part of building a real one that nobody brags about. With sharpening from Kenneth Rona, Ph.D., hype-cutting from Shelly Palmer, and 211 definitions of “agent” courtesy of Simon Willison. Two hundred and eleven. What’s the first decision you’d actually let go of? More in Kraftisms #41: I Haven’t Built a Single Agent. Odds Are, Neither Have You. https://lnkd.in/guDCQB6R
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Andrew Kraft shared thisMy feed is full of Cannes (France) retrospectives. This is not one of those. This is my #CannesNYC retrospective, instead! Each year, 100 of the industry's finest come together to shake hands/hug/fistbump and, most importantly, build relationships that power our industry, all while our colleagues are away walking down the Croisette. This is Emilia Kraft and my 9th #CannesNYC that we've hosted, and I'm blown away, year after year, at the love and friendship we all share after so many years in the industry together. Thank you for being such an amazing, supportive, and insightful community. Thank you, as well, to LiveRamp, Index Exchange, Stay22, ArcSpan, Infolinks Media, adops.com, and EX.CO for bringing the French Riviera vibes to a Manhattan rooftop at this event by the industry for the industry. Carl Fremont Randall Rothenberg Kevin Ryan Gareth Glaser Dane Kunkel Alex Stone Tom Pachys Craig Leshen Walt Cheruk Stephanie Mazzamaro Scott Cherkin Alan Chapell John Whitmore Christopher Guenther Joy Ross Alan Chapell Phil Ripperger James McWilliams Rick Bruner Topher Balzan Ryan Maynard Rachel Parkin Lee Garfield Mort Greenberg Jaan Janes Chao Liao Steven Florio Phil Ripperger Mitchell Weinstein Geordie Kingsbury Dave S. and so many more.
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What a team!!!
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Andrew Kraft liked thisAndrew Kraft liked thisThis is great news. Reaching the “C” level at any company, much less one as prestigious as JPMorganChase is no small achievement. It’s a testament to her hard work, discipline, determination and the mad energy (as the kids say) she brings to everything she does. Couldn’t be happier for you, Lauren. Well earned and Congrats!
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Andrew Kraft liked thisAndrew Kraft liked thisWhy Chick-fil-A stays closed on Sundays has nothing to do with maximizing profit. Most businesses make decisions based on what earns them the most money today. Chick-fil-A makes decisions based on the principles they want to be known for decades from now. Closing one day a week has likely cost the company billions in revenue. Yet they continue to do it because great brands are built on principles, not convenience. Your culture is revealed by the decisions you make when they’re expensive. The strongest companies don’t stand out because they chase every opportunity. They stand out because they know exactly what they won’t compromise.
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Andrew Kraft reacted on thisAndrew Kraft reacted on thisThere have been some big days for Sports Illustrated and Minute Media, starting with the day we joined this amazing company back in 2024. Today is another one: The company is celebrating its 15th anniversary with a new name and new branding. We are now known as Minute, a global technology and content company that powers the sports ecosystem for fans all over the world. It’s an exciting new chapter (and a cool new logo) for a business charting the future of sports media and tech. Check out www.minutegroup.com to learn more about how we make every minute count!
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Andrew Kraft reacted on thisAndrew Kraft reacted on thisRare selfie. Ran into Ted Shergalis and Scott Simonelli at NYU. Everyone dropping kids off. Nice to catch up.
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Andrew Kraft reacted on thisAndrew Kraft reacted on thisA new era. A new identity! We are proud to announce our official rebrand from Minute Media to Minute! Why "Minute"? Because a minute in sports means everything - it is the difference between winning and losing, the beginning of a career to the solidifying of a legacy. We capture those minutes and make them matter. Along with our new name, we are introducing a bold new look, a fresh feel and vibrant colors that reflect our evolution. Minute is where sports, technology and storytelling converge - a global technology and content company built for the future of sports consumption. We cannot wait for you to experience this next chapter with us. 👉 Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gr6D5SQ8 #Minute #MinuteMedia #Rebrand #SportsBiz #SportsTech #PublishingTech #Storytelling #DigitalMedia
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Andrew Kraft liked thisAndrew Kraft liked thisFriday marked my official last day at Microsoft. It's a slightly strange sentence to write, given I actually finished up almost two months ago, but it feels like the right time to close the chapter properly. I joined Microsoft four years ago, and it's remarkable how much changed in that time. My own journey took me through MSAN, MATS and, most recently, Performance Solutions. Different teams, different organisations, different challenges, and a role that evolved alot along the way. I had the chance to work across markets, products and teams, to help build and grow new areas of the business, and to lead some genuinely brilliant people. I'm particularly grateful to Carsten Rauh, Ulrik Krag Morell and Helena Dillon for their support, trust and guidance at different points along the way. Also a special shout out to my 'Families Inclusion Network' Co Lead Marta Bociek. And to everyone I've worked with, managed, learned from, debated with and shared the occasional difficult quarter with, thank you. I'm leaving Microsoft incredibly grateful for the opportunities I was given, the people I met and everything I learned along the way. As for what's next, I've enjoyed having a little time to reset before starting the next chapter. More on that very soon.
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Andrew Kraft liked thisAndrew Kraft liked thisI am really proud to share some news about our CTO, Joel M. Prebid just named Joel Chairman, after months serving as interim chair. He's been on the Board since 2023, and he brings 20-plus years of engineering experience to an organization that’s grown its membership 300% over the past five years while staying true to one thing: giving publishers the tools they need to monetize their inventory. He talked to AdExchanger about the appointment, and what I want to single out from his interview is this: without publishers, "you really have nothing." No audiences. No news. And certainly no models trained on their content. Joel truly understands what’s at stake for publishers, and that’s why he’s the right person for this role. Congratulations to my colleague Joel. Proud that you're representing OpenX in this seat. Read the full interview here: https://lnkd.in/gmJATfX4 #Prebid #AdTech #AgenticAINew Chairman Joel Meyer Dishes On Prebid’s Reset For The Agentic EraNew Chairman Joel Meyer Dishes On Prebid’s Reset For The Agentic Era
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Andrew Kraft reacted on thisAndrew Kraft reacted on thisIn this final video from our series with Magnite "Making Waves," Samsung Ads' Youssef Ben-Youssef talks about the growing power of the TV operating system and the value of the home screen ad.
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Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)
Former Chairman, Data Council
-Associate Member in Good Standing (AppNexus). Member, Ad Tech Council Advisory Board Former Chairman, Data Council
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Owen Grover
Greg Glenday hits several resonant notes in his conversation with Podnews Weekly Review: 📺: Video is not the thing itself. It’s a tool that creators can use depending on their goals. And show that requires undivided screen attention is probably something other than a podcast. ☄️: The industry can and should do more to reduce friction for blue chip brand advertisers — and that requires real coordination across the ecosystem. Better alignment will unlock real value for all stakeholders. 🎙️: The business of podcasting must remain laser-focused on the needs of creators. They are its beating heart and soul. As Greg rightly said, “the power is in the hands of the creator.” To extend the metaphor, I’d say Acast is in good hands with Greg at the helm! 🙌🏼
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