Ari Paparo

Excited to share that Aperiam has invested in Bedrock Platform. Obvious statement of the century: programmatic advertising has a complexity problem. The infrastructure that was built to give media buyers control has, over time, done the opposite. Burying teams under layers of operational overhead, legacy tooling, and opaque supply chains. Bedrock is built on a simple but powerful thesis: what if you stripped away the bloat and rebuilt the stack around what actually matters... precision, transparency, and speed to execution. Their platform combines AI-driven campaign automation with curated, premium inventory across video, CTV, DOOH, and audio, and aims to be flexible and get smarter over time. Plus, the team (Shane, Austin, Ryan, James) has deep roots in the infrastructure layer of ad tech and understands the plumbing better than almost anyone. We believe the next generation of programmatic will be leaner, faster and AI-first. Bedrock is building that.

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Love this - AI is the Oppenheimer moment for marketing. It fundamentally collapses the time and cost of production. A $2.5 million campaign that used to take four months can now be delivered for $500,000 in four weeks. Legacy firms that charge based on hours with the 'time-driven' model are existentially threatened by this.

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Everyone's fixated on the wrong story about adtech. Market caps are falling, but while Wall Street debates valuations, publishers are bleeding revenue through a thousand data cuts. Here's programmatic's uncomfortable truth: every bid request broadcasts publisher data to hundreds of parties. Publishers get 60-70p in the Pound, while their audience intelligence trains everyone else's models. The current value chain: -Publisher exposes signals in bid requests -Multiple intermediaries each take their cut -Data gets repackaged and resold -Publisher margins compress -Direct deals become harder to justify As a technologist, I'm skeptical of solutions looking for problems (blockchain for programmatic, anyone?). But one vision makes sense: publishers maintaining control of their data while still enabling efficient transactions. Smart publishers are playing both ends: -Today: Fix the basics - broken header bidding, floor prices, redundant vendors -Tomorrow: Architect for direct agent-to-agent negotiation where data never leaves publisher control The 30-40% currently lost to complexity and intermediation could flow back to content creators and brands. Not through disruption for disruption's sake, but through removing genuinely unnecessary friction. The future belongs to publishers who optimize today's 70p while building toward tomorrow's 95p. At Kiln, we're helping with both - finding hidden revenue in current operations while architecting for a more direct future. #AdTech #Publishing #DigitalAdvertising #DataStrategy https://lnkd.in/emqVW6g5

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Roku’s Snr Dir, global ad platform partnerships & biz dev, Miles Fisher, joins us for a deep dive into how Roku’s new Amazon Ads partnership will drive CTV’s full funnel future. https://lnkd.in/gc_cSZYh

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Audio represents 20%+ of consumer media time but under 5% of ad spend (eMarketer). For pharma brands focused on reach, frequency, and trust, this unlocks smarter investment without sacrificing accountability. "Viant Technology’s direct integration with iHeartMedia... allows both companies to match their data graphs and create shared IDs for targeting audiences in digital audio, as well as broadcast radio, where audience ID signals are scarce." Net-net: we're making hard to measure channels measurable and heping healthcare marketers better understand who they’re reaching, how often, and how audio fits into the full patient and HCP journey. Audio has always driven impact. Now, with Viant, it drives insight too. #HealthcareMarketing #PharmaMarketing #Viant #Programmatic #AddressableAdvertising #MeasurableMedia #AudioAds https://lnkd.in/ek8J-iJE

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Happy to help our partners at Amazon with this measurement initiative. Proof that real purchase data, not modeled proxies, is what closes the gap between streaming exposure and verified sales outcomes.

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GenAI is flooding our feeds with new ads. But is it flooding it with good ads? That’s the question. Because while AI has made it easier (and cheaper) than ever to crank out creative, the risk is that we end up with forgettable ads and a lot of wasted budget. So, what to do about it? We’ve launched our Creative Data Feed API, a tool that lets brands, agencies, and ad tech platforms instantly test AI-generated ads for emotional impact, attention, brand recall, and purchase intent. Plug it in, and you’ll know in real time if your ad is likely to connect or just blend into the background. https://lnkd.in/dhjMC2fP

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The open web is at an inflection point. Thank you, Digiday, for the excellent coverage of the growing movement among publishers to push back against the unchecked use of their content by AI systems — often without consent or compensation. As the article makes clear, this is not just a legal or business issue — it’s a technical one. At IAB Tech Lab, we’re proud to be collaborating with publishers, CDNs, and monetization platforms to develop the LLM Content Ingest API. This permission-based framework gives publishers control over how their content is accessed and used by AI systems and sets the baseline for a fair and scalable renumeration model for media companies. This initiative is open to all LLM providers. We strongly encourage participation from every AI platform to help create a future where innovation thrives alongside a healthy, sustainable content ecosystem. 🔗 Learn more and get involved: https://lnkd.in/ekWgMf6M #AI #Publishers #OpenWeb #LLM #IABTechLab #GenerativeAI #TechStandards

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CMOs demand guaranteed delivery, lowest CPMs, strategic flexibility, and outcome-based pricing. Physics says you can't have all four simultaneously. Principal media delivers three of them. The question is which three matter most. Forrester's new principal media report from the inimitable Jay Pattisall is very much worth a read, and it's going to trigger the predictable debate. Critics will argue agencies are creating conflicts. Evangelists will tout cost savings. Both will miss the strategic reality: CMOs facing compression don't have the luxury of perfect markets. I've watched boards push CMOs for guaranteed outcomes while slashing budgets. In that environment, academic arguments about strategic flexibility mean nothing. The anti-principal media argument assumes unlimited client patience, perfect information, and rational markets. Reality looks different. Reality is: your board wants cost certainty so they can model P&L without media volatility. Reality is: your CFO wants guaranteed delivery so you're not scrambling for Super Bowl inventory in scatter markets. Reality is: your CEO wants outcome-based pricing that ties media spend to business results. Principal media trades strategic flexibility for the three things boards actually care about: cost certainty, delivery guarantee, and outcome alignment. The Forrester report shows 80% of marketers are interested in principal media advantages. That's not because CMOs are naive about conflicts of interest. It's because they're making rational trade-offs under real constraints. The criticism of principal media comes from people who've never faced the impossible triangle. They can afford to optimize for strategic flexibility because they're not accountable for the P&L impact when media costs spike or inventory disappears. Yes, principal media requires transparency. Yes, it needs contractual controls and performance accountability. Yes, clients should cap how much spend flows through principal arrangements. But the mechanism itself? It's agencies finally building inventory positions that enable the outcome-based pricing we've demanded for years. I'm a big supporter as, for two decades, I've watched CMOs demand that agencies move from billing hours to pricing on outcomes. "Put skin in the game," they said. "Share the risk." Now agencies are doing exactly that with principal media, and the industry is calling it a conflict of interest. We can't have it both ways. Forrester predicts principal media will grow to one-third of billings by 2026. Read their report, then decide which three variables matter most for your business. https://lnkd.in/eKHg5qmk #PrincipalMedia #MediaBuying #CMO #MarketingLeadership #MarketingStrategy

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Should publishers rely on platforms like Amazon or invest in Direct-to-Consumer channels? One of the conversations in publishing I hear most days right now is around distribution strategy. Should publishers continue to rely heavily on platforms like Amazon or shift more decisively towards Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) models? The benefits of platform sales are clear: scale, sales, visibility, and convenience. But what’s often lost in the process is control over pricing, customer data, margins, and the overall brand experience. Thankfully we continue to see a growing number of publishers looking to take ownership of their digital presence and invest in D2C infrastructure. Yes, it’s a relatively small investment these days and it needs time to manage, but the long-term value of owning your customer relationship and building loyalty directly is hard to ignore. I believe the future isn’t an either/or but both, with a smarter balance that puts publishers in the driver’s seat. #ecommerce #publishing #sales

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The DOJ took one step closer towards potentially forcing Google to divest from AdX and GAM. Like I mentioned a couple weeks ago, this could put AdX dynamic allocation in GAM at risk which would dramatically change sell-side ad optimization. What would be the cascade effect of that? - Google competing via header bidding client-side and/or server-side? - AdSense creating a competing ad server to GAM? - Disruption of Google compliance? Do you think it would be good or bad for publishers? https://lnkd.in/gt42nudz

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The DOJ’s ruling against Google’s ad tech practices confirms what many in our industry have long known: transparency fuels innovation. Here I share why this decision marks a turning point for publishers, advertisers, and consumers. Read now: https://lnkd.in/eH6AQf-z #FundedByAdvertising

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I periodically stumble on Michael Kaminsky's musings, blogs and research, which are consistently well-grounded and seemingly really good science. When I read his most recent article in AdExchanger, his career-long data science track record came through loud and clear. Folks ... AI has tremendous potential. There is no doubt that the advancements over the last few years are nothing short of revolutionary. But buyer beware ... hundreds of "powered by AI" technology companies have popped into the market, but most remain heavy on promise and light on reality. Please don't take this as being a Debbie Downer. Quite the opposite. We are still in the nascent stages of AI in marketing and media. Some use cases are further along than others. But holistically, we still have a long way to go before many of us will clock measurable AI-powered improvements to our businesses. Now is the time for organizations to figure out which business functions will most benefit from AI -- for competitive differentiation, speed, cost reduction -- and gain a comfort level with AI's capabilities to achieve these goals. Start learning the tool-sets so that you can be ahead of the pack when AI shifts from experimental to real utility and value.

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#AgenticCommerce is moving fast, and Richard Crone’s post below makes a simple point every CEO and board should hear: if you let AI agents control discovery and checkout, value quietly shifts away from your brand. In a recent The Wall Street Journal piece I co‑authored with Brian McCarthy and Roland Ehi, my argument is that winners will be the companies that keep the buying decision, the data, and the payment flow inside their own ecosystem – and make AI work for them, not around them. Adding the article link here for anyone shaping their agentic commerce strategy, keeping agentic commerce optimization (#ACO) in mind: https://lnkd.in/eY9xQptJ If your scenarios are “do nothing” or “light experimentation”, they aren’t neutral or no-regret options. These will actually destroy margin, weaken your customer relationship, and compress your multiple over time. Going “all-in” is the only scenario that will pay off, but tha will happen only when leaders treat product pages, checkout, and customer data as strategic assets, with clear rights, controls, and monetization. Agent-to-Agent (#A2A) is disrupting the game faster than you think. Prepare for it or risk getting disintermediated. Choice is yours!

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Today is a huge milestone for our company. We're happy to announce the release of Agile Mix Modeling™ - a first of its kind, full-funnel media measurement solution that leverages advance machine learning models to measure all media - including offline channels and walled gardens. Read the exclusive article from Digiday that explains how our clients Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. and GE Lighting, a Savant company were able to boost ROI and incremental revenue by getting performance insights in a matter of days, not months. Cheers!

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In this episode of The Yield Doctor, I sit down with Alanna Laforet—CEO of Laforet Productions and former head of the IAB Tech Lab—to unpack where AI is actually transforming digital advertising today, and where it's headed next. With experience spanning DoubleClick, Google, Omnicom, and Conde Nast, Alanna brings deep insight into how AI is reshaping media planning, creative optimization, and the ad tech stack itself. We explore: * What’s real vs. hype in current AI implementations * How startups and holding companies are approaching AI differently * Whether AI will democratize the industry or entrench the big players * The potential for AI tools like ChatGPT to act as publishers * The risks of fraud, fake content, and over-optimization in a post-AI world https://lnkd.in/dJMDzTHX

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The digital ad ecosystem is entering a new chapter. A recent U.S. court ruling has put the ad-tech structure under serious scrutiny. It's not just one company. But the entire system we’ve built around it. For years, much of the industry has relied on tightly integrated stacks: → One platform for serving → One platform for exchange → One platform for measurement It made things easier, of course. But also more dependent. Now, the landscape seems to be shifting — and it’s raising important questions: → Do we have enough transparency in how ads are bought and sold? → Are publishers and advertisers truly in control of their inventory and data? → And are we too reliant on infrastructure we don’t own? This isn’t about blame. It’s about rethinking. At DIGIAD DMCC, we’ve been asking these questions for a while — And building solutions that promote flexibility and independence: 👉TheEngage. ai – for activating first-party data with precision 👉Vidcraft. ai – to scale creative without platform lock-in 👉ConnectFAST – for CTV growth in an open, measurable environment 👉ReBid – To increase ad engagement with AI powered rebidding technology. The goal isn’t disruption. It’s evolution. How are you thinking differently about the future of your ad stack? #digitaladagency #adtech #programmaticadvertising #media #advertisingstrategy #DigiAdDMCC

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