Chris George

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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Closing out Season 2 of Embracing Erosion with Alena Morris, VP of Product Marketing at Kargo 🙌 Alena has spent 15+ years in ad tech and media, leading product marketing across the publisher, DSP, and SSP sides at PubMatic, Quantcast, and now Kargo. Few people have seen this ecosystem evolve as closely (or as practically) as she has. In this episode, we go deep on where ad tech is actually headed. How AI is unlocking creative intelligence - surfacing patterns, themes, and performance signals that were never accessible before, and turning creative into a true optimization lever. We also dig into: - The blurring lines between SSPs, DSPs, and retail media - Why competition in ad tech is more aggressive than ever - What it takes to lead product marketing and sales teams through real transformation and much more! A fitting way to wrap 20 episodes in Season 2... and 66 total since we started🤯 🎧 Full episode: https://lnkd.in/gwv7JhmW

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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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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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🚨 The landscape of CTV Advertising has undergone a significant transformation with the recent Roku-Amazon Alliance announcement at Cannes Lions. This strategic partnership marks a pivotal moment, granting access to approximately 80% of U.S. CTV households, equivalent to around 80 million homes, as highlighted by John Tomase of LinkedIn News. 👉 Initial outcomes are already demonstrating the impact of this collaboration: - 40% increase in unique viewers - 30% reduction in repeated ads - 3x surge in the value of ad spend Having been part of Roku during its early stages, witnessing this development is not merely exhilarating but also the realization of our long-standing vision to establish a dominant presence in the CTV advertising realm through strategic alliances and unparalleled scalability. This partnership signifies more than a mere business deal; it marks a seismic shift in the future landscape of television advertising. 💡 Why This Development Is Significant: 1. The Strategic Move: Scale, Data & Authenticated Reach By amalgamating Roku's CTV reach with Amazon's DSP, a colossal authenticated identity graph is being constructed—a dream come true for advertisers. This translates to reduced wastage of impressions and enhanced precision in targeted, measurable ad delivery. 2. Leveraging Artificial Intelligence Empowered by extensive first-party data and user log-ins, AI can now be leveraged comprehensively to drive hyper-personalized ad experiences. Imagine dynamic ad placements based on real-time behaviors and preferences, transcending traditional demographic targeting. 3. Addressing Key Concerns Will this consolidation potentially stifle market competition? The dynamics of pricing control might shift with increased influence in Amazon's domain. The neutrality of DSP is under scrutiny—what implications will this have for platforms like The Trade Desk? 🔮 Anticipated Developments: ✅ Enhanced focus on authenticated data and AI integration ✅ Emergence of "super-platforms" consolidating inventory and data control ✅ Encouraging brands to adapt: If you're not already optimizing for Amazon’s DSP, now’s the time. ✅ Potential for both innovation and consolidation risks This is a moment of truth for the CTV ecosystem. As we adopt smarter, AI-powered advertising, we must also ask tough questions about data control, interoperability, and competition. Do you think this will reshape the future of media buying for the better or limit it? #CTV #Advertising #Roku #AmazonAds #DigitalAdvertising #MediaBuying #Marketing #AdTech #ConnectedTV Read more: https://lnkd.in/gAzSAAeb

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My First AI Post @2025 (and thank you to the Aperiam AI Fellows and to Dawn West and Alex Netelkos for making that happen!): If viewability was the training wheels of digital measurement, attention is the carbon-fiber racing bike we’ve just learned to ride. Erica kicked us off by pointing out the obvious: “viewable” doesn’t mean “seen,” and certainly doesn’t mean “engaged.” McKinsey’s neat formula — time × focus × intent — resonated as a starting point, but the real magic is in using that across channels and across the funnel. Why does this matter now? Because omni-channel is no longer a buzzword — it’s the messy, lived reality. CTV, digital out-of-home, mobile gaming, social feeds — each has wildly different engagement norms. An attention metric gives marketers and publishers a lingua franca, a Rosetta Stone to compare value and outcomes without pretending a click on a banner is the same as leaning into a big-screen spot. Publishers want credit for premium environments. Marketers want to normalize buys across hundreds of brands, countries, and media types. Attention-weighted CPMs (ACPMs) start to solve both. Even a global CPG can look across Meta, YouTube, stadium signage, and print — and make sense of it. Is it perfect? No. Is it better than a stack of inconsistent KPIs and gut feel? Absolutely. And yes, AI is in the wings — not as the protagonist, but as the stagehand making the hard stuff easier. It can normalize messy data, connect attention signals to outcomes, and embolden teams to try bolder experiments. Which brings us to the closing provocation: What if a few brave brands and publishers agreed to really transact on attention — rough edges, no gaming, shared responsibility for outcomes? The moment feels right to test whether attention can become not just a metric, but a currency. Marc Guldimann Adelaide David Zapata AB InBev Michael Shields Cory Treffiletti Rembrand McKinsey & Company

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This is Big. And part of a trend. For years there has been a open v closed ecosystem debate. I have long said a pure open auction is not the way. Some walls are needed. This trend has long been apparent and now extending particularly in ctv. Youtube is no 1 in ctv and its got high walls. Netflix is number 2 in viewership (not yet ads) and whilst its ad platform is new, it definitely has walls. Here Amazon plus Roku is a clear no 2 in ads. More trends. The collaboration between tv networks in the US, the UK and globally. Broadcast quality ctv almost exclusively has walls. This is a good thing. Death of a DSP? Well thats click baitey but it does relegate the importance of the DSP. That being said the likes of TTD have their own powerful ecosystems. Its these private ecosystems that then fight for share.

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Beyond excited to announce Cllct’s partnership with RAJ Sports (Portland Thorns FC, Portland Fire) to help build the most ambitious collectibles ecosystem in the history of women’s professional sports. https://lnkd.in/e5ZxvTy7

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Spotify doesn't pay out royalties to 87% of its catalog (~175.5 million songs) because they don't hit the minimum streaming threshold for payments. Last year, that was approximately $45.5 million in royalties that was withheld from low stream count songs and redistributed to the top 13% of tracks on the platform. With that in mind, it's crazy to me that independent artists still largely focus their release marketing on driving people to streaming platforms. A $50 merch sale is roughly equivalent to the royalty payment for 15,000 streams (a stream count that many artists would be excited by!). For independent artists, wouldn't it make sense to focus release marketing on revenue generating channels and have streaming as a secondary focus? Shout out to Tony van Veen of Discmakers for crunching these numbers for the rest of us.

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An awesome conversation with Instacart's very own Ali Miller and The Drum's Kiri Masters on how Instacart's platform allows retailers of all sizes to participate in retail media without contributing to the fragmentation that has been so challenging for brands and agencies to manage. Definitely worth the read! Here we go!

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Amazon just made a serious leap forward in connected TV by deepening its relationship with Roku. As someone who’s talked directly with the Roku network, I’ve always been struck by Roku’s confidence in offering steep discounts on OTT/CTV inventory. This new partnership makes me wonder: will that pricing power shift now that Amazon is taking a more central role? It’s clear Amazon wants to be the connective tissue for streaming media advertising. By integrating Roku’s inventory into its own DSP, it’s positioning itself as the go-to platform for omnichannel campaigns. For agencies, this could streamline media buying and improve targeting across screens, but it also raises questions about transparency, pricing dynamics, and control. If all Roku ads now funnel through Amazon’s ecosystem, how much flexibility will buyers really have? There’s upside here but also caution. We may gain new efficiencies through Amazon’s scale and shopper data, but if Roku’s “network discount” advantage gets diluted, we’ll need to reevaluate how we allocate spend across CTV platforms. I’ll be watching closely to see how the marketplace reacts and whether this ultimately helps or hurts brands looking for both performance and pricing power in a fragmented media world. #Amazon #Roku #CTV #ConnectedTV https://lnkd.in/gd62Rrzc

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Rakuten & Bilt believe in helping their members make financial progress. This partnership brings incredible value and savings to Bilt and Rakuten members. With holiday shopping kicking off, there is no better time than right now to sign up and earn. Bilt members can link their accounts to Rakuten and start earning cash back across 3,500+ merchants, which can be redeemed in Bilt points. 🛍️ 💵

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AI that understands advertising context like a brain 🧠 In this interview, Grego Martínez, SVP of Product at Seedtag, speaks with Andy Plesser, CEO at Beet.TV, about how innovations like network-level analysis & embeddings are taking contextual advertising beyond simple keyword matching — paving the way for neuro-contextual AI. “We discovered that with new technologies like embeddings, we could train a system in something way more complex: understanding context like a brain. This is where neuroscience meets contextual,” Grego shared. Watch the full interview: https://lnkd.in/dZdp5K_y #AdTech #NeuroContextual #AI

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Amazon Ads and Roku are teaming up to launch a new advertising initiative by Q4 2025, giving media buyers access to over 80% of U.S. connected-TV households through Amazon’s DSP. This collaboration aims to enhance ad performance, reach, and value for advertisers across platforms like Roku Channel and Prime Video. This partnership will simplify advertising on streaming TV in the U.S. Traditionally, advertisers have had to work with multiple companies to reach streaming TV audiences. Now, Amazon and Roku, two giants in the industry, are creating a unified platform to make ad buying easier and more effective, addressing key challenges in the CTV space. They’ll also be able to target ads more precisely and reduce ad repetition. Early tests have shown impressive results, including a 40% increase in the number of unique viewers reached at no extra cost and a threefold increase in media value. Additionally, the Amazon DSP will enable ad measurement across apps like Hulu and Peacock, utilizing retail data and CTV logs to reduce ad waste and improve attribution. Both Amazon and Roku are introducing a shared ID that will simplify cross-platform CTV tracking, enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of ad campaigns. Benefiting both advertisers and viewers by improving ad targeting, reducing waste, and offering more value. https://lnkd.in/d86PmZg7 #AmazonAds #Roku #CTV #StreamingTV #AdTech #Advertising #DigitalMarketing #MediaInnovation

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I listened to an Invest Like The Best podcast with Wolfgang Hammer this week. Wolfgang helped create House of Cards and has run major studios. Now he’s working with Mitch Lasky and Marc Andreessen on a new model for building films. His thinking applies directly to founders. He breaks a company’s story into three layers: 1. External: what the product does. 2. Emotional: the motivation behind building it. 3. Philosophical: the beliefs about how the world should work. The companies that communicate well operate cleanly across all three. The ones that struggle usually stay stuck in the external layer. Hammer’s prompts are simple: • What are we doing? • Why am I doing this? • How should the world work? Run these for your customer. Run them for your company. Look for the alignment. That’s the narrative you use with executives, frontline teams, customers, and investors. The logic is straightforward: people act when they understand what you do, why it matters, and how it fits into their own view of the world. A clear story makes decisions easier and keeps teams moving in the same direction. Hammer also makes a strong point about the role of a CEO. Communication is the job. The audience changes constantly, but the underlying philosophy should hold steady. When the story is clear, the context-switching becomes manageable. One pattern shows up across every strong narrative: hardship, money, status, and transformation. Almost every meaningful story traces a shift from one state to another. People respond to change, not static descriptions. Takeaway: revisit the three layers often. As the product, market, and team evolve, the narrative needs to evolve with them. A sharp, coherent story makes everything else easier.

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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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For years, we've watched retail media continue to fragment often operating on the promise of "closed-loop data" rather than verifiable, standardized results. In 2025, with IAB's new Commerce Media Standards going live, we're seeing the inevitable fallout: brand satisfaction with RMN transparency has plummeted from 66% to 44%. The market is demanding accountability. Brands are done asking for proprietary dashboards; they're demanding shared, IAB-aligned proof. The old JBP (Joint Business Plan) is evolving into something more like the JVP (Joint Value Partnership), where outcomes replace obligations and standardization is the currency. 👉 Read the full perspective : https://lnkd.in/giDQc9jY #RetailMedia #JBP #JVP #CommerceMedia #Transparency #MediaAMP

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