Chris Cunningham

The latest Studio Stack newsletter dropped on Friday — and in it, I unpack why community is the most underutilized competitive advantage in most organizations but ESPECIALLY in the Venture Studio sphere. 💡 87% of leaders say community is critical to their company’s mission 📈 79% report it’s directly impacting business results Yet most studios still treat it like a side project. In the article, I break down what actually works in 2025: → Build where people already “play” → Force connection (because they won’t do it themselves) → Curate, don’t just collect 'If you’re serious about standing out in a sea of 1,000+ studios, this one’s for you. 📰 Read the full issue — packed with new frameworks, launches, jobs, and insights from Studio builders and thought leaders across the world. 👉 https://lnkd.in/eZ2AtsDy

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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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New from AIVO Standard - Preliminary AVII™ Reliability Framework AI visibility metrics now sit inside audit and disclosure boundaries. The challenge is no longer seeing where your brand appears, but proving that the data is real, reproducible, and verifiable. The AI Visibility Integrity Index (AVII™) defines how. Built on the Data Integrity & Verification Methodology (DIVM v1.0.0), it quantifies four measurable integrity dimensions: 🔹 R — Reproducibility 🔹 T — Traceability 🔹 S — Stability 🔹 V — Verifiability Each dimension is scored and combined into a reliability index (A–E scale) that determines whether AI-mediated visibility data can withstand audit review. AVII™ converts dashboards from observation tools into evidence frameworks. Under Articles 10 & 52 of the EU AI Act, by 2 August 2026, verifiability ceases to be optional. AVII™ provides the control layer enterprises will need to demonstrate compliance and disclosure integrity. 📄 Read the full framework in comments below 👉 Preliminary AVII Reliability Framework (PDF) 🔗 Published in the AIVO Standard — Governance Series DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17650231 #AIVOStandard #Governance #AIVisibility #Audit #EUAIAct #DataIntegrity #RiskControl #Reproducibility

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🎯 🚀 Building the Future of Web3 Advertising: W3AP's Developer Ecosystem 📝 How W3AP's real integrations and partnerships create sustainable value for developers and advertisers 🧠 Intelligent Analysis: W3AP's developer ecosystem focuses on practical, sustainable integration models that address real pain points in Web3. Our ad-supported transaction infrastructure reduces gas fees by leveraging advertising revenue, creating immediate value for dApp users. Through our multi-chain ViewFi wallet integration, developers can access cross-chain compatibility without complex bridging solutions. The BlockSky analytics platform provides transparent data on ad performance and user engagement, enabling developers to optimize their implementations. https://lnkd.in/gbGgXDHM

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🎯 🌍 W3AP's Global Expansion: Strategic Partnerships & Sustainable Growth 📝 How W3AP's ad-supported blockchain model creates real value for users, advertisers, and partners worldwide https://lnkd.in/g7UZsPh7

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He raised $5.3million in seed funding from ABSTRACT VENTURES LLP Susa Ventures, and then a $15million Series A from Andreessen Horowitz. Imagine if that $20million had been distributed between honest, ethical female-founded startups. #FundFemaleFounders Julie Bort TechCrunch https://lnkd.in/ey6eiGwF

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Anthropic is investing $100M in its Claude Partner Network, and is setting the tone for new partner programs in the AI era. Yes, Anthropic is partnering with the biggest names in tech and services, but they also "see a massive opportunity for smaller partners and smaller businesses looking to add Claude to their technology stacks", which should be welcome news to the many boutique and AI-native services firms looking to get into this ecosystem. This CRN interview with Steve Corfield, Anthropic's head of partners, is worth a read. https://lnkd.in/e6WW3TzM Steve's comment that they want to "demonstrate that Anthropic is the most committed AI company in the world to the partner ecosystem" is one of the many reasons they're a key player in our Tercera 30 research.

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This is a great article about HOW Kellanova is using AI-based predictive scores to impact their business. The first 3 paragraphs put it right on the tin: "Kellanova, in partnership with data firm Vidmob and MMA Global, has found it can more quickly connect the dots between campaign creative and business outcomes by leveraging artificial intelligence to power predictive impact scoring, which crunches past performance data to pinpoint creative criteria for driving specific KPIs." "In an analysis of more than 443 Kellanova creative assets, the marketer of snack brands Pringles, Cheez-It and Pop-Tarts found that predictive impact scoring can forecast three-second view-through rates (VTR) with 83% accuracy, improve performance by more than two times and contribute to an 11% increase in ROI. " “Predictive impact scores are like creative fingerprints – unique to our brand, actionable and incredibly powerful for driving both brand distinctiveness and performance,” said Charisse Hughes, senior vice president and chief growth officer at Kellanova, in a statement. “At scale, these go beyond growth and drive transformation, and with AI we can do this with increased speed and accuracy.” Amen!

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LiveRamp Ventures just released a new map of the AI in advertising landscape. Credit to Jimmy Ren and team for the work here to organize and synthesize such a fast moving space. Aperiam is proud to back 10 of the companies highlighted. We’ve held the thesis for years: AI will fundamentally disrupt adtech and martech. Over the past 24 months, we’ve gone even deeper in AI investments - driven by accelerating technology, new company formation, and early adoption. It’s clear we’re now entering the “it’s getting real” stage. AI isn’t just a tool. It’s the foundation of the next epoch, as Brian once put it. Every layer of the stack is being rebuilt: - Creative is now generated and personalized in real time - Ad ops is going agentic, automating what used to be manual - Media buying is being completely reimagined with custom algorithms, new signal types, and novel decisioning frameworks (a concentrated bet for us, given our DNA) - Measurement is shifting from static to adaptive Two predictions: 1) This map will evolve. Companies will move boxes. New categories will emerge. (Our Aperiam CEO Slack has been debating this!) 2) As in previous shifts, there will be multiple winners. Some are already on this map. Others haven’t even been founded yet. We couldn’t be more excited. All in on AI.

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TrueTrends from Sila's consumer insights unit is a semantic consumer intelligence platform that allows market researchers and marketers to detect trends before they happen. Keyword search is a thing of the past - with multi-category AI, computer vision (image+video - audio coming soon) and semantic understanding powered by LARA, you get an unparalleled vision of what consumers actually want, desire, who they are and their motivations. More importantly, it actively solves challenges and directs R&D. It understands your intent as much as theirs. I think we've all been burned by social listening tools driven by keywords and having to construct boolean operators, and as a result just making outcomes full of biases and frankly untrustworthy with the amount of junk. That's why we've re-written the script on what different data sources, including social, can bring to market research in any language (not just 22 dialects of Arabic). The difference? 118% better content discovery because we understand meaning, not just mentions. More than a marketing tool, this is a way to replace costly trend agencies, test concepts with real behavioral data (not panels of 20 people), and predict outcomes that researchers and marketers can actually trust. Real-time intelligence instead of quarterly reports. A groundbreaking piece of kit the Sila | صلة market research and tech team has worked on tirelessly to cut through the noise, and I've got to say as a completely biased observer, an amazing tool that's already replacing traditional research methods at enterprise level across MENA. More details: https://lnkd.in/d8RFGdfp Reach out if you'd like a demo - I'll show you true trend semantic intelligence vs keyword bingo.

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Babak, your comments in Joao-Pierre Ruth InformationWeek piece from Davos, and your BBC News interview this morning, really struck a chord. That article made a strong point that AI was front and centre for business leaders at Davos, while still feeling more peripheral for many politicians. The commercial world clearly sees where this is heading, but the reality on the ground is moving far more slowly. The Wall Street Journal recently noted that AI adoption across companies is still “slow and uneven,” with most organisations stuck in pilot mode rather than real, scaled deployment. Lots of noise. Plenty of decks. Not nearly as much real impact in the day-to-day customer journey. That idea that the future of AI isn’t one giant assistant, but lots of specialised agents working together behind the scenes, feels exactly where things are heading. The retail leaders and agency teams I’m speaking to aren’t asking if they should use AI anymore. They’re asking where it improves service, conversion, and customer confidence right now, especially across the direct-to-consumer journey, and who ultimately owns the first-party data coming out of it. Working from London with the Silicon Valley-based team Mind Over Media , I’m seeing real traction from practical, brand-owned agents that sit inside the customer journey, remove friction at the exact moment it matters, and keep the relationship and the data with the brand. As founders Andy Anderson and Jamie Parker put it: “As commerce moves toward agents and agent-to-agent interactions, every brand will need its own intelligence representing it. We build for the brand, not the channel, so that brain sits with the company, and they keep ownership of the customer relationship, the data, and the commercial outcome.” And this isn’t about replacing people. It’s about giving teams better tools that actually work in the real world. As someone who’s dyslexic thinker, AI has genuinely transformed my day-to-day working life. As Sir Richard Branson often says, it can be a powerful co-pilot, but human creativity still matters most. That balance between human judgement and agent-driven systems feels like the real direction of travel. Much of the work around Mind Over Media AI sits right in the middle of this shift. Let me know what you think? #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #GenerativeAI #AgenticAI #Davos #CustomerExperience #DirectToConsumer #FirstPartyData #DigitalTransformation #Retail #Ecommerce #MarketingTechnology #FutureOfWork

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We’re excited that our partner Laconia Capital's portfolio company Bluefish raised a $20M Series A led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Salesforce Ventures. Bluefish is the AI marketing platform for the Fortune 500. From day one, Bluefish has been helping brands like Adidas, Omnicom, and Tishman Speyer gain visibility and influence across AI platforms like ChatGPT, Google AI, Meta AI, and Amazon Rufus. With 10x revenue growth in the past six months and over 80% of its customer base coming from the Fortune 500, Bluefish is quickly becoming the go-to enterprise solution in this space. #AI #marketing #AImarketing #DigitalMarketing #enterprise #fortune500 #chatgpt

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Confession: Most influencer marketing is lazy 🤦‍♀️ And honestly? It deserves to be skipped. I was recently on a podcast where I said something that might ruffle some feathers: "Your creative is lazy. You deserve to have your ad skipped." Here's the brutal truth about what I see in our industry: The Lazy Approach:  → Mass emailing the same script to 500 creators → Zero personalization or creative tailoring → Stacking 5 ad reads in a row on podcasts → No onboarding calls with creators → Treating influencers like human billboards This all comes form agencies responding to brands racing to the bottom on paying the lowest agency fees. HINT: If an agency fee % feels too good to be true - it probably is. The Strategic Approach:  → Understanding what each creator's audience actually wants → Tailoring content to fit naturally into their style → Making the creator the only sponsor for that piece of content → Collaborative creative development → Investing in measuring real business impact, not just vanity metrics At Digital Voices, we have done a lot creatively exciting work that cuts through the noise on social. For our client Surfshark, we had creators in shark costumes, Colin Furze built a massive shark he could literally surf on, others do comedy skits and animations. Why? Because entertainment drives conversion. Authenticity builds trust. The result? We guarantee results to our clients. If we don't hit our numbers, we commission more content or refund our agency fee. Because lazy marketing shouldn't be rewarded. Bottom line: If your influencer content feels random, scripted, or interruptive - you're doing it wrong. Audiences are smart. They can smell lazy marketing from a mile away. Time to do better. 💪 What's the laziest influencer campaign you've seen recently? #InfluencerMarketing #CreatorEconomy #Marketing #DigitalMarketing

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Campaigns Don't Build Confidence Campaigns create spikes. Systems create stability. In capital markets, episodic marketing doesn't work. A quarterly earnings push, a conference blitz, and a funding announcement create visibility, not conviction. Institutional investors don't make decisions based on moments. They make decisions based on patterns. Confidence comes from repetition. From seeing the same strategic narrative reinforced across channels, quarters, and stakeholder touchpoints. From the alignment between what management says and what the market observes. Most IR and corporate comms teams have visibility covered. What's missing is the connective tissue: the system that turns scattered touchpoints into a coherent, repeatable story. Systems sit between visibility and confidence. They ensure your narrative compounds instead of competing with itself. Are you building spikes, or are you building trust? #InvestorRelations #CapitalMarkets #IRStrategy #CorporateComms #FinancialMarketing

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🎙️ New Podcast Episode: A Deep Dive into the Ad Tech Ecosystem with Mark Zagorski, CEO of DoubleVerify Really enjoyed this one! We had the pleasure of sitting down with Mark Zagorski for a wide-ranging conversation covering his incredible journey including trade sales, a merger, an IPO, and major acquisitions of comapnies like OpenSlate, Scibids, and Rockerbox. From the evolution of the LumaScape to the convergence of the buy and sell sides, Mark breaks down how the ad tech ecosystem is transforming — and how DoubleVerify is moving well beyond brand safety into measurement, pre-bid optimisation, and the emergence of what we like to call Super Signal Aggregators (SSAs). We also talked about DV’s strategic investment into FirstPartyCapital — their first-ever VC fund investment — and why they see it as a way to fuel innovation, access early-stage tech, and deepen partnerships with the next generation of ad tech pioneers. 👇 Link in the comments. #AdTech #MarTech #VentureCapital #Measurement #Optimisation #SSA #DoubleVerify #FirstPartyCapital #FPCpodcast

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