AdTech AdTalk Vendors Lie and Buyers are Stupid
Aug 22, 2025
Jana Meron, a sell-side consultant at Lioness Strategies with a rich background at Google and CBS, discusses the intricate landscape of ad tech. She shares insights from her time at Google and the complexities of header bidding. The conversation includes a provocative take on advertisers, the impact of influencers, and the often obscure world of fees in the industry. Finally, Jana emphasizes the importance of trust and integrity when hiring sales talent, cautioning against short-term decisions that could undermine long-lasting relationships.
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Poolside Header Bidding Deep Dive
- Jana grilled a Rubicon engineer in a heated pool to understand header bidding so she could convince her management to test it.
- She returned and ran header bidding tests that delivered incremental revenue for her publisher.
Unified Auction Didn’t Stay Unified
- Header bidding made competing demand sources equal and removed priority gaming inside the ad server.
- Google later reintroduced advantages (dynamic allocation, double bids) that undermined a true unified auction.
Helping DOJ Understand The Stack
- Jana was deposed multiple times to explain how publisher ad tech works to investigators and DOJ.
- She helped educate enforcement teams about the pub-side stack during the probe into major ad tech conduct.
