The AI Edge Podcast Ep 3. The AdTech and MarTech Divide Is Dead, featuring Heather Macaulay, President, MadConnect
Dec 8, 2025
Heather Macaulay, President of MadConnect, dives into the exciting changes reshaping marketing technology. She reveals how Black Friday 2025 marked a turning point, with AI shoppers proving more effective than ever. Discussing the breakdown of the long-standing divide between AdTech and MarTech, Heather emphasizes the integration challenges many brands face. She shares insights on Amazon's strategies, the requirements for AI visibility, and the importance of quality data—warning that AI can amplify bad data rather than fix it.
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AI Boosts Conversion But Not Always Growth
- AI-driven referrals converted at much higher rates during Black Friday, but macroeconomics blunt overall growth.
- Heather Macaulay and Shiv Gupta note AI increases efficiency and conversion even if it doesn't immediately grow the market.
Make Your Products AI-Discoverable
- Show up where AI agents and LLMs discover products or you risk losing sales to competitors.
- Make product data machine-readable and optimized for AI discoverability now, advises Heather Macaulay.
The Walled Garden Trade-Off
- Retailers face a choice: stay a walled garden like Amazon or enable external LLMs and give up some data.
- Shiv Gupta highlights the trade-off between visibility in LLMs and retaining customer data and commerce revenue.