Jack Marshall

we've posted a couple of reports in the past - but I think that this one is the BEST and most interesting one we published (...so far...) this is a true comparison of "attribution" vs. incrementality - comparing the actual aggregated, weighted, and indexed results based for the clients who share attribution data with INCRMNTAL Super interesting - get it below!

13

With principle-based buying returning to the forefront, Brian Chap's recipe for agency accountability takes me back to Jon Mandel's explosive rebate disclosures back in March 2015. Jon's kimono-opening moment was undoubtedly the catalyst that woke us all up to the billions leaking from media budgets by way of non-transparent kickbacks and fees. The can of worms has yet to be closed. That's why principle-based buying doesn't sit well with me. It feels like we're rewinding the tape after making so much progress over the last decade. BUT ... if you're a client-side media buyer that chooses to engage with a principle-based agency, there are three of Brian's "BENCH" framework activities that I think should be prioritized to the top. These three are relatively simple to do and can dramatically increase transparency and accountability. 1 - Secure platform access to your ad server, your DSP and the major SSPs through whom you are buying. Ensure you know how to compare media costs at each step in the supply-chain. 2 - Conduct audits. Whether as Brian recommends or simply by contacting a handful of publishers where you buy media, you should be able to reconcile your cost input to your media value output. And while you're at it, you'll be strengthening your direct publisher relationships, which has many longer-term benefits both in terms of media cost and priority. 3 - Most definitely hold your agency accountable. This applies also to every adtech vendor in your media supply-chain. I am not a fan of principle-based media buying. But if you're going to try it out, you need to remember that this is far from a set-it-and-forget-it approach to advertising. https://lnkd.in/eDw-Z3w8

6

3 Comments

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

88

3 Comments

VIOOH, a global digital #OOH supply-side platform, is partnering with OUTFRONT Media, an IRL media company, to expand programmatic access to #DOOH inventory across the U.S. https://lnkd.in/ebwMEpw4

4

1 Comment

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

18

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.

19

By using AI to interpret real-time content signals, advertisers can now align messaging with where users are in the buying journey. The result? Fewer wasted impressions, stronger engagement and better ROI 📈 Seedtag’s latest blog unpacks how intent based marketing bridges privacy & performance by predicting readiness through real-time content analysis - no tracking required. https://lnkd.in/e8fzMCiC #AdTech #ContextualAdvertising #AIIntentionModels #AttentionToIntention

16

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.

109

14 Comments

By 2027, publishers optimizing for human buyers will be invisible to 30% of programmatic spend. Here's the shift happening: 87% of programmatic buying decisions are now algorithm-driven (confirmed by IAB data), but most publishers still package inventory like it's 2018. The brutal truth: Your sales deck is unreadable to the buyers with the biggest budgets. What the data shows: - Publishers with machine-readable inventory consistently outperform manual setups - PDF-based deal packages are increasingly bypassed by automated buyers - The performance gap widens every quarter What works going forward: - Structured data feeds (not PDFs) - API-first inventory descriptions - Automated quality scoring (Thank you Traffic Cop) The prediction: Publishers who rebuild their ad stack for algorithmic discovery by beginning of 2027 will see 25-40% Session RPM improvements over those who don't adapt. The humans are still there - they're just programming the machines that do the buying. Is your inventory ready for algorithm-first buyers?

7

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince points out that the ratio of web pages crawled to visitors referred has ballooned from 2:1 a decade ago to 18:1 in June. Similarweb likewise reports that zero-click searches, which do not generate any referrals, grew from 56 percent to 69 percent year-on-year in May. Meanwhile, Google says that's all rubbish and based on flawed methodologies. It's clear that publishers urgently need a new approach to valuing and licensing their content in the AI era.

2

Great report! Really brings to light the problems so many platforms have in their ID graphs. Managing the process of mapping IPs to households is a task that many take too lightly. If you don't know where the data is coming from, then it is likely inaccurate. Our entire graph is built on knowing the household IP and mapping all other IDs back to the household. Want to know how we do it? #identity #IDGraph #data

4

CTV is a driving force for digital ad spend growth, but those of us who have been around since the days of "Ad Network 1.0" know that non-transparent "ad bundles" and fuzzy PMPs with fancy logos and no accountability will burn out the minute that the supply - demand imbalance come into play. With the rise of Amazon Prime Video and the growth of FAST channels reaching saturation overload, we are just about there. Program level transparency and full impression-level accountability across all CTV sources is only a matter of time.

51

2 Comments

"𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐨𝐭 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐜𝐤, 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐨𝐭 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐲 𝐚𝐬 𝐢𝐭 𝐩𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲" That's how Scott Brinker describes the challenge facing marketers today as AI fundamentally reshapes our industry. After mapping the martech landscape from a few hundred tools to over 15,000, Brinker has seen it all. But he's clear: "𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘣𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘪𝘨𝘨𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘶𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘴." 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐖𝐞 𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝐍𝐞𝐞𝐝 While we've been waiting for martech consolidation, the opposite happened. AI hasn't simplified our stack – it's created new complexity. But here's what's different: for the first time, technology is becoming easier to use even as it gets more powerful. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐞? 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐬 "𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡'𝐬 𝐋𝐚𝐰": 📈 Technology changes exponentially 📉 Businesses change logarithmically Sound familiar? That growing gap between what's possible and what we can actually implement is hitting every marketing team right now. 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐀𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 The early wins aren't flashy, but they're real: ✅ 𝐁2𝐁 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐟𝐟𝐬: AI agents prep sales materials, research leads, and create personalised outreach the moment leads qualify ✅ 𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐚𝐬𝐤𝐬: Cold email sequences, ROI calculators, and research briefs that nobody had time for before ✅ 𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐫𝐬: Finally breaking down silos between marketing, sales, and service 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐡 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠... Get ready for a fundamental shift. The predictable seat-based pricing we've relied on? It's giving way to consumption and outcome-based models. We'll need to forecast AI usage like IT teams forecast cloud costs. The maths isn't hard, but the mindset shift is significant. 𝐌𝐲 𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐘𝐨𝐮 Where are you feeling that "ferry pulling away" tension most acutely? Is it the gap between AI capabilities and your team's ability to implement them? Budget pressures from new pricing models? Or something else entirely? The opportunity is massive, but so is the risk of being left behind. The good news? You don't need to transform everything at once. Start small, align cross-functionally, and begin building the governance frameworks you'll need. Scott Brinker, Editor-in-Chief of chiefmartec and VP Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot. Andrew Birmingham 🕵️‍♂️ at Mi3Australia https://lnkd.in/gptJk3Vs #MarTech #AgenticAI #MarketingStrategy #DigitalTransformation #MarketingOps #AI #MarketingLeadership

19

2 Comments

When is CTV not CTV? This attached article is a tough read, and it has big implications for the UK and EMEA. Anyone who’s had the misfortune of reading my recent posts will know I’m a massive CTV fan and generally a glass-half-full type. But this is a cautionary tale. Firstly, the US market is significantly larger, yet the amount of true CTV inventory available is limited and, if we trust the numbers, well below what’s being sold as CTV. Or as the article highlights: "CTV ad spend now amounts to more than 31% of all ad spend on TV, a 3X gap between spend and viewing share" US audiences are far keener than those in the UK to shift from linear TV to streaming. As many will know the viewing experience on linear is very different to our tightly regulated markets: long ad breaks, very variable creative, and no if any signposting. I remember my first trip to the US - I was amazed, and not in a good way. Apply that lens to the UK and other EMEA markets, and the picture looks very different. Yes, audiences (especially younger ones) are leaving linear but not at the same and you can see where this is going. Many will spot the parallels with programmatic, which caused major problems for the open web: >Claimed vs actual reach, and overly loose definitions of "premium" >Targeting: ticking too many boxes, making it hard, if not impossible, to find the right inventory >Pricing: the CPM the campaign was sold (maybe realistic at the time) at vs the real value once targeting and supply constraints are factored in Put all of that together and it becomes impossible to deliver without compromising on at least one of the above. Or as seems to be the case in the US - mixing in low-quality inventory. CTV remains a massive bright spot for premium media owners. And with developments in AI content creation, there’s real potential for publishers of all shapes and sizes to benefit if we get it right. Some of you will have seen I’ve partnered with Dominic Finney at Ascentinel on a buy-side survey about premium video. The results were overwhelmingly positive. But - and it’s a big but - we didn’t ask about fraud or invalid traffic. We’re planning to run the survey again in September, and this time, it feels like it should be part of the picture? We are in conversation with a number of partners on this - but if you'd like to get involved LMK. I’ve got my own thoughts on what needs to happen next - but I’d love to hear from others on the US vs UK (or EMEA) CTV markets. How fair is the comparison? And what do we need to be watching out for? https://lnkd.in/edGApx5G

19

5 Comments

There’s nothing like a good conversational style article to break down and make sense of the fundamentals of today’s evolving distribution landscape. Many of you have asked what I actually do, what B2B channels really mean, what these new opportunities are that we’re introducing... 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞’𝐬 𝐚 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝟏𝟎 𝐐&𝐀𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭. Something tells me this won’t be the last... another conversation might be coming soon!

3

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

5

Excited to help launch additional agentic specifications with the tech lab. If we look at the broad ecosystem, there are unmet needs today (for example, agentic negotiation of the appropriate targeting for a campaign brief) and met needs (for example, confirming authorized sellers, consent, or programmatic execution). If we focus on extending the MANY met needs from the IAB Tech Lab specs to the agentic ecosystem, we can also help enable better focus on the unmet agentic needs without worrying about re-building things like ads.txt for agentic. I say this is not an AdCP OR TechLab debate. It's a TechLab + TechLab agentic + third parties like AdCP. More concretely, if we don't leverage the many safeguards of tech lab specs like authorization (ads.txt, app-ads.txt, sellers.json, supplychain) and consent (TCF, GPP), we risk the viability of an agentic future. Thanks to Anthony Katsur, Shailley Singh and the IAB Tech Lab for spearheading this, and Equativ will be an active partner here, in parallel to our help in building net-new use cases with our agency partners and groups like AdCP. We've already been busy building new agentic capabilities we're excited to launch publicly soon!

17

As Commerce Media Networks (CMNs) reshape the digital advertising landscape, #privacy considerations are top of mind for organizations tapping into these powerful new business model. IAB’s latest white paper “Untangling the Issues in Commerce Media Networks: Key Considerations Under U.S. State Privacy Laws” explores the various types of CMNs, data flows for different types of CMNs, legal roles and responsibilities under U.S. state, and more: https://okt.to/PFxJk9

6

1 Comment

This represents a good trend for advertisers and publishers…and should lead to better CPMs for sellers and better value for buyers. No, that is not inherently a contradiction. https://lnkd.in/eMDSCJH6

4