Marketing, Media & Adtech

Richard K. Howe is not your average adtech CEO. He’s not selling AI that guesses which shampoo you bought last week or stuffing identity graphs with browser crumbs and bad intentions. No—he’s building something far more dangerous to the status quo: AI that actually thinks.In this episode of The ADOTAT Show, we sit down with the CEO of Inuvo, a structural engineer turned advertising insurgent, who’s throwing the entire surveillance-based ad model into the recycling bin (right next to your cookie policy pop-ups). Richard walks us through how his team built an AI platform that doesn’t care who you are—but why you do anything. It’s not about identity anymore. It’s about motivation. Psychology. Intent.We unpack:Why the “who” question that adtech has obsessed over for 30 years is officially uselessHow Inuvo’s AI can sniff out a sleepless dog owner in Iceland… and sell them Bose SleepbudsWhy retargeting is the AOL CD of marketingHow the open web has become a junkyard of skipped impressions—simply because they lack a cookieAnd why most adtech vendors know they’re selling snake oil but keep doing it anywayRichard also drops wisdom on mergers and acquisitions, why integration fails most of the time, how AI projects are like building bridges, and yes—his inability to remember garbage day. Spoiler: his biggest rival in life might be the trash bin.Oh, and if you’re wondering how Karen Carpenter, Metallica, and short-nosed pugs all fit into the same episode… you’ll want to listen.Big thanks to our sponsors:💼 Troutman Amin LLP – The lawyers who actually understand this industry and aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty.📊 Incremental.com – The measurement company that’s finally putting a stake in the heart of vanity metrics. If you're tired of dashboards that lie to you, they’re the ones who’ll show you what’s actually working.This is adtech without the nonsense. Just sharp insights, broken myths, and a whole lot of pug snoring.🧠 Watch now.💣 Rethink everything.🎧 And stay bold, stay curious, and know more than you did yesterday.

Adam Potashnick, North American CEO of Brainlabs, blends military-grade leadership with a passion for team culture. He discusses the importance of hiring socially gifted individuals over 'rockstars' for effective collaboration. Adam tackles the shortcomings of AI in advertising, emphasizing the need for genuine human connections. He underscores the significance of celebrating wins, big or small, and shares personal anecdotes about resilience and growth. With candor, he reveals the realities of ad tech, making this conversation a refreshing take on modern marketing dynamics.

Chris Kane, from Jounce Media, delves into the chaotic world of ad tech, revealing shocking insights about the state of the open web. He discusses the downfall of Multi-Functional Advertising (MFA) and how DSPs serve low-quality impressions instead of high-value ones. Kane sheds light on the economic struggles of publishers, caught in their own Hunger Games of optimization. He emphasizes the critical need for transparency and trustworthiness in ad tech, all while sharing his personal growth philosophy and the occasional dance-off. Dive in for a rude awakening!

Welcome to another brutally honest episode of The ADOTAT Show, where we rip the vanity metrics out of your cold, dead dashboards and ask the uncomfortable question: does your marketing actually do anything?This time, Rabbi Pesach Lattin sits down with Bradley Keefer, the CRO of Keen Decision Systems and the man currently babysitting over $7.5 billion in marketing budgets—all while casually setting fire to industry sacred cows like ROAS, brand love, and that PowerPoint deck your agency spent three weeks justifying.In this episode, we talk about:Why ROAS is the participation trophy of marketingHow most CMOs have the lifespan of a forgotten yogurt in the breakroom fridgeWhat “headless MarTech” actually means (and why your agency’s tech stack is probably a crime scene)How AI agents are already making media plans better than your team—and don’t need sleep, snacks, or SlackAnd the impending death of Frankenstein’d holding companies held together by duct tape, panic, and legacy contractsKeefer doesn’t pull punches. He explains why Net Present Value (NPV) is the only metric CFOs trust, why AI forecasting will soon replace your “gut instincts,” and how indie agencies with five people and an API are beating global networks with 5,000. Also, someone says “six-fingered avatar” and we mean that literally.🔥 Brought to you with support from our chaos-sponsoring heroes at Troutman Amin, and the attribution truth-tellers over at Incremental—who will tell you if your media spend is working, even if it hurts your feelings.👇 Hit subscribe if you like brutal honesty, data-driven heresy, and guests who don’t sound like they were media-trained into a coma.Stay bold. Stay curious. And know more than you did yesterday.#AdTech #MarketingTruths #BradleyKeefer #KeenDS #CMODoomsday #ROASSucks #HeadlessMarTech #ADOTATShow #MediaPlanning #Incremental #TroutmanAmin #MarketingMetrics #AIinMarketing #pesachlattin https://new.adotat.com/subscribe

Ever wonder what happens when a seasoned ad veteran starts pulling the thread on 30 years of marketing lies—and doesn’t stop?In this sharp, hilarious, and wildly informative episode of The ADOTAT Show, host Pesach Lattin sits down with James McDonald, Managing Director of Audience Group, to rip apart the industry’s most sacred assumptions and expose the real mechanics behind successful advertising. Spoiler: it’s not your CTR. And it’s definitely not your last-click attribution report from Google Ads.With the energy of a detective, the wit of a comic-book superhero (literally—check the thumbnail), and the experience of someone who’s seen every adtech hype cycle from dial-up to programmatic, James delivers insight after insight on what actually drives effectiveness in media and why most marketing dashboards are just dashboards of delusion.🔍 In this episode, we go full-on X-ray vision into:Why Cost Per Memory Day (CPMD) might be the only metric worth fighting forHow to tell if your “attention” vendor is selling smoke and mirrorsWhat went right with Slater & Gordon’s attention-optimized campaignCoca-Cola’s underrated playbook on brand salience and light buyersWhy performance marketing without memory is like selling coupons in a blackoutWhat “search as shelf space” really means—and why branded keyword spend might be your budget’s saddest line itemAnd yes—we talk about the platform scam economy:💸 Google selling you the ad, grading the test, and sending the invoice💸 Meta promising viewability while hiding actual engagement💸 The rise of performance marketing addiction and what happens when you pull the plug👓 “If advertising’s job is to make decisions easier, why are we optimizing for things people forget in 3 seconds?”Whether you’re a media buyer trying to escape the CTR hamster wheel, a CMO who wants long-term brand equity without boring decks, or a performance marketer who suspects the spreadsheet is lying to you—this conversation is your sanity check.🧠 Plus:James unveils his Campaign Reality Check Worksheet—a practical tool to align your media, creative, and strategy teams around real metrics, not marketing cosplay.https://new.adotat.com/subscribe

Alexis Hochleutner has been behind the curtain at Google, Meta, Amazon, and more — not as a bystander, but as one of the few people actually trying to fix what most of the adtech world prefers to ignore.In this no-holds-barred conversation, Alexis unpacks a career spent inside the engine room of digital advertising — putting out fires caused by brand safety meltdowns, battling fraud rings operating in plain sight, and navigating the ethical black holes of platforms more interested in revenue than responsibility.She’s seen how verification vendors quietly normalized fraud. She’s watched premium inventory get outbid by garbage traffic. And she’s done being quiet about it.This episode isn’t about theories. It’s about what actually happens when your ad shows up next to extremist content, when your DSP bundles 40 MFA sites under one line item, and when your brand safety strategy depends on a spreadsheet that can’t update fast enough to keep up with reality.What you’ll learn:📉 Why MFA sites still dominate even after being “blocked”🧾 Why fraud isn’t a bug — it’s a business model🌴 What adtech would look like if you rebuilt it on a desert island (spoiler: no dashboards)🤖 Why AI is mostly theater, not strategy🧠 Why real change starts with people who actually give a damnIf you work in advertising, adtech, media buying, or just wonder why your CPMs keep rising while your results get worse — this is essential viewing.Subscribe. Watch. Share it with someone still measuring success by CTR.🧠 Stay Bold. Stay Curious. And Know More Than You Did Yesterday.

Andrew Casale, CEO of Index Exchange and ad auction expert, dives into the evolving world of ad tech with Pesach Lattin. They discuss why SSPs are gaining respect and the transparency of take rates compared to sparkling water. Andrew humorously dubs CTV as the 'high-maintenance teen' of ad tech, delving into its challenges like burst traffic and inventory fragmentation. He also shares insights on the industry's shift towards efficiency and accountability, along with personal anecdotes about moving from Toronto to the bustling NYC.

🎙️ The ADOTAT Show – Hosted by Pesach LattinWelcome to the episode that brand safety tools wish never existed.In this chaotic, hilarious, and dangerously insightful installment of The ADOTAT Show, host Pesach Lattin sits down with Brian O’Kelley — the legendary co-founder of AppNexus, the original architect of modern programmatic, and the only person alive who has both crashed CNN.com and reimagined how we think about suitability, AI, and the ad tech status quo.Together, they unpack the uncomfortable truths of digital advertising, including:🔥 Why traditional brand safety tools are medieval nonsense🧠 How AI can actually understand context (and why that terrifies some vendors)👀 What happens when bots unionize and demand PTO📉 Why most point solutions in ad tech are either obsolete or about to be🧩 How Brian’s building toward a world where every brand has its own AI agent😱 And yes, the time he crashed a fifth of the internet from a basketball courtThis is NOT a sanitized fireside chat. This is a full-blown tech therapy session meets startup roast meets future-of-advertising manifesto, where nothing is off limits and no acronym is safe.💡 Sponsored By:Troutman Amin – The legal team you call when you accidentally disrupt an entire industry. Smart, surgical, and ready to keep you compliant without killing your momentum.Incremental – The measurement platform that tells the truth, not just what your media buyer wants to hear. Real lift, real outcomes, no smoke, no mirrors.📌 Subscribe to stay ahead of the industry curve.📢 Drop a comment if you’ve ever been flagged as unsafe by a keyword blocklist for saying “funeral.”👁️‍🗨️ Stay bold. Stay curious. Know more than you did yesterday.#ADOTATShow #BrianOKelley #AdTech #AI #ProgrammaticAdvertising #BrandSafety #Suitability #Incremental #TroutmanAmin #AdvertisingInnovation #Scope3 #PesachLattin

What do a cold wash detergent commercial from the 1980s, a Shih Tzu named Birdie, and Dynamic Creative Optimization have in common?Apparently, everything—when Fred Godfrey is on the mic.In this week’s wildly entertaining and unexpectedly emotional episode of The ADOTAT Show, we’re joined (again) by the inimitable Fred Godfrey, CEO of Origin and the most honest man in adtech, whether the industry likes it or not. And no, we’re not trying to get rid of him. We wouldn’t dare.This isn’t your typical “best practices” snoozefest. This is a deep, hilarious, and slightly philosophical conversation that blows open the safe, soulless walls of performance marketing and asks a far better question:👉 What if the best ad doesn’t try to sell you anything at all?💡 In this episode, we cover:Fred’s childhood obsession with a detergent ad that just said “brrrr”—and how that minimalist storytelling still crushes 99% of today’s over-engineered brand content.Macy’s holiday ads and the British-inspired art of emotional storytelling that makes people cry and shop.Why DCO isn’t the villain—but how we’ve used it like a blunt object instead of a scalpel.How modern ads lost their soul chasing CTRs, and how to bring back curiosity, memory, and actual resonance.The myth of personalization and the horror of creepy geo-inserted “Hey, [CITY]!” ads.The ROI of saying less. Whispering instead of screaming. Leaving space for the viewer to feel something.And yes: Birdie the Shih Tzu, who has stronger opinions on storytelling than most strategy decks you’ve seen this year.🔥 This episode is for you if:You’re tired of being told “optimize more” when your gut knows the problem is creative bankruptcy.You believe branding can be emotional and effective—but the industry’s forgotten how to get there.You want to make ads that people remember 30 years later—not ones they skip after 3 seconds.You miss the days when advertising was closer to art than algorithm.💬 Drop us a comment if you’ve ever made an ad that made someone cry, laugh, or actually remember your brand a week later.👍 Like this episode?🔔 Subscribe for more irreverent, insightful interviews with the smartest (and weirdest) minds in marketing.🐾 Share with your favorite creative director, brand strategist, or dog lover with ad fatigue.Huge thanks to our sponsors Incremental and Troutman Amin—for making sure this show stays on air and isn’t replaced by a generative AI that uses buzzwords like “omnichannel synergistic personalization.”

In this mind-expanding episode of The ADOTAT Show, we’re joined by the one and only Rishad Tobaccowala—marketing visionary, business philosopher, and the man who’s been calling out the corporate charade long before it became fashionable.This isn’t your typical “future of work” fluff-fest filled with buzzwords and LinkedIn-safe predictions. Rishad dives headfirst into the uncomfortable truths most leaders are too scared—or too siloed—to admit. He drops hard truths about the death of traditional leadership, the failure of most org structures, and why Gen Z will never want your job (and probably shouldn’t).💥 Topics we get into:Why leadership training is a joke (unless you're Walmart)What it means to live in the age of debossificationThe rise of the Company of One—and why your top talent is already acting like oneWhy optional, flexible, and freelance work models are the only ones worth buildingAnd how to spot a real leader (hint: they don’t need a title to lead)🔧 Rishad lays out a new blueprint for work, featuring: ✅ Permeable organizations✅ Portable benefits✅ Outcome-based pay✅ Modular leadership✅ Actual intelligence (not recycled best practices from 2012)He’s not here to make you comfortable—he’s here to help you survive the next version of work before your business becomes a fossil.