Marketing, Media & Adtech

What happens when you walk away from adtech chaos for the so-called serenity of the yoga industry—only to discover the “founder as guru” cult is just as messy as programmatic? You come back stronger, sharper, and funnier. That’s exactly what Kurt Donnell, CEO of Freestar, did. In this episode of The ADOTAT Show, Pesach Lattin digs into Donnell’s journey from Om shante to OpenRTB, and why he’s leading a quiet rebellion against the industry’s addiction to “more.”This isn’t your usual buttoned-up PR fluff. Kurt lays it out:Why publishers need to stop hoarding partners and ad slots—and how cutting down can actually raise CPMs and RPMs.The OpenPath effect: 3× win rates, 20% CPM lifts, and why direct pipes don’t always cannibalize SSP spend.How buyers are now sniper-rifle hunting, not shotgunning impressions, and what that means for publishers stuck in the “more is better” trap.The hard truth on identity providers, SSP sprawl, and M&A roll-ups—why half the logos in Lumascape could disappear without anyone shedding a tear.Freestar’s remote culture playbook: cameras on, uncomfortable transparency, radical trust, and llama yoga jokes that actually matter.The eternal culture debate: is a hot dog a sandwich? Kurt’s team still hasn’t solved it.And yes—we talk AI. Kurt’s take? “AI has to be the frosting on the cupcake, not the sprinkles.” In other words: stop slapping AI labels on useless chatbots that make customers want to throw their laptops. Use AI to exceed human potential, not replace it.If you’re in programmatic advertising, digital media, CTV, yield optimization, supply path efficiency, or even identity solutions, this episode is your cheat sheet to what’s next. From snipers vs. shotguns to remote leadership hacks, Donnell’s lessons are both tactical and big-picture—and you’ll leave either smarter, more paranoid, or both.👉 Don’t just read the headlines—watch the full interview and hear why sometimes subtraction is the real growth hack.🙏 Thank You to Our SponsorsThis episode of The Dōdge Show is made possible by:Troutman Amin LLP — the legal heavyweights keeping adtech honest.Incremental.com — the measurement pros helping brands prove what really works.Without their support, we wouldn’t get to ask the kind of questions that make PR teams sweat.Keywords: Freestar, Kurt Donnell, Pesach Lattin, The Dōdge Show, programmatic advertising, adtech podcast, adtech interview, header bidding, OpenRTB, SSP, DSP, identity solutions, supply path optimization, CTV advertising, digital media, AI in adtech, advertising technology, marketing technology, yield optimization, RPM, CPM, advertising consolidation, mergers and acquisitions, remote culture, ad management, OpenPath, future of programmatic.

This week, Rio Longacre, a marketing transformation expert with over two decades of experience, dives into the world of Agentic AI. He emphasizes its potential to revolutionize media planning, highlighting the shift from traditional dashboards to real-time decision-making. Longacre addresses ad fraud, skepticism about brand motivations, and warns that junior media staff may be left behind in the AI revolution. He also discusses the evolution of agencies into strategic governance roles, and the future where AI could eliminate verification duopolies.

Advertising has always loved its own lies—clicks that pretend to be insight, dashboards that look like truth, and “engagement” that usually just means someone fat-fingered a banner while trying to close Candy Crush. In this episode of The ADOTAT Show, I sit down with Anders Lithner, CEO of Brand Metrics, to dismantle the entire circus.Anders is Swedish, armed with data, and just dangerous enough to say the quiet part out loud: most marketers don’t actually want the truth—because the truth might get them fired.We cover everything the industry doesn’t want you to think too hard about:🔹 Why clicks are cheap dopamine and optimizing for CTR is “optimizing for stupidity.”🔹 Why you can’t buy behavior—you can only influence minds and hearts.🔹 How Whirlpool and Heinz prove that perception always precedes behavior.🔹 Why publishers like the Guardian and Financial Times leaned into Brand Metrics to survive the CPM race to the bottom.🔹 How millions of survey responses are now training predictive engines that may replace panels entirely by 2030.🔹 Why attention ≠ viewability, and why frequency is misunderstood (hint: too little frequency kills campaigns faster than too much).🔹 The brutal truth about CTV measurement: your TV being on doesn’t mean anyone’s paying attention.Anders doesn’t pull punches. He tells us directly: “You can’t skip the step. You can’t buy behavior. You can only influence people.”This isn’t about dashboards or vanity metrics. It’s about the future of brand measurement: predictive models, attention as currency, and brand lift as the new ROI. If you think your quarterly report is safe behind CTR and impressions, Anders has some news for you.👀 Watch if you want the truth about advertising’s future.💬 Comment if you think clicks still matter (spoiler: they don’t).📌 Subscribe for more conversations where we ruin PR spin for sport.https://new.adotat.com/subscribe#Adtech #BrandMetrics #AdvertisingTruth #AttentionEconomy #CTV #MarketingMeasurement

From Comic-Con to CPMs: How Fandom Turned Pop Culture into the Ultimate Marketing EngineMost brands trying to “connect with Gen Z” are basically fumbling around in the dark with a 1998 marketing playbook. They’re chasing trends after they’ve cooled, leaning on outdated audience buckets, and confusing “moviegoers” or “gamers” with actual insight.This episode blows that approach to pieces.I sit down with Jeremy Steinberg, CRO of Fandom, to talk about how the world’s largest fan platform—350 million monthly users across 300,000+ communities and 60 million pages—has become the gold standard for cultural targeting. Forget generic categories—Fandom’s FanDNA Helix uses AI and probabilistic modeling to uncover the why behind fandoms, predicting cultural overlaps and next-big-thing trends before anyone else sees them.You’ll hear:Why lazy audience targeting is the “Blockbuster Video” of marketing strategiesHow Helix spots wild but valuable overlaps (think Fantastic Four fans also obsessed with Lilo & Stitch and Baldur’s Gate)Why AI will blow up the “open web” as we know it and trigger the coming “algorithm wars”Special Thanks to Our SponsorsThis episode is made possible by the folks who keep the lights on and the caffeine flowing:Troutman Amin, LLP – The legal lions of adtech. If there’s a fine print, they’ve read it, rewritten it, and made it purr.Incremental – The masters of measurement who make sure your marketing dollars aren’t out there wandering the internet without adult supervision.Without them, this show would just be me shouting into the void about CPMs.The real reason gaming remains wildly under-monetized—and how to win there without getting roasted by the communityHow to activate inside fan culture so it feels authentic, not like you barged in with a press releaseWe also dig into the massive Gen Z reach Fandom commands, the “halo effect” of showing up where passions run hottest, and the future of brand positioning inside closed AI ecosystems.If you care about marketing in 2025—whether you’re in adtech, brand strategy, gaming, or just want to stop wasting media dollars on people who don’t care—this is a conversation you can’t miss.NEWSLETTER: https://new.adotat.com/subscribe

What happens when you try to market to Orthodox Jews with the same recycled LinkedIn playbook? You fail faster than a pop-up on Erev Shabbos.In this episode of The ADOTAT Show, Rabbi of ROAS Pesach Lattin sits down with Avromi Prengler, a sales pro who’s mastered trust-based marketing inside one of the most unique — and underserved — communities in America. We talk WhatsApp status ads, frum media ecosystems, ethical selling, and why shoving pork rinds into the Jewish Press might not be the move.✅ Learn how to build real relationships that actually drive results✅ Why CRM reminders won’t replace real menschkeit✅ And yes, diapers — lots and lots of diapersThank you to our sponsors:🔹 Troutman Amin LLP — For when your compliance needs a halachic backbone🔹 Incremental — Because measuring true lift shouldn’t require divine interventionSubscribe for more brutally honest, deeply curious takes on adtech, media, and marketing.📍 Stay bold. Stay curious. And know more than you did yesterday.#ADOTATShow #OrthodoxMarketing #PesachLattin #AvromiPrengler #JewishMarketing #Adtech #MediaBuying #WhatsAppAds #RelationshipSales #TroutmanAmin #Incremental

🎙️ This week on The ADOTAT Show: Jean-Marc Papin — The Calm Frenchman Who’s Quietly Rebuilding Ad Tech (and Maybe Saving the Planet While He’s At It)What do you get when you cross a nuclear engineer with a media tech executive? No, this isn’t the setup to a bad industry joke—it’s Jean-Marc Papin, Horizon Media’s SVP of Media Technologies and Sustainability, and the guest of this episode.In this deep, wildly entertaining, and unexpectedly philosophical conversation, we unpack how Jean-Marc went from regulated industries with literal life-or-death stakes to the glorious chaos of ad tech. He didn’t just survive the mess—he thrived in it, turning Horizon’s data spaghetti into the Blu. platform, a privacy-first, identity-resilient engine built not from buzzwords but from pure, unfiltered utility.🛠️ We dive into:How "creative disarray" beats clean roadmaps every timeWhy compliance is not a burden—it’s the birthplace of innovationWhat ad tech can learn from nuclear safety protocols (yes, seriously)The “desert island test” for who really belongs on your teamAnd how leadership isn't about control—it's about letting go at the right timePlus: baguettes, rogue AI named Barry, Cannes jury metaphors, and why Jean-Marc will absolutely not suffer a pitch consultant on his stranded island.🚨 If you’ve ever questioned what real innovation looks like behind the scenes—beyond the press releases and Cannes decks—this is the episode you’ve been waiting for.🔔 Subscribe, share, and leave a comment—then head over to ADOTAT+ for the full interview and more stories from the people actually building the future of media.Big thanks to our sponsors:Troutman Amin, LLP — For when you need legal with a backbone.Incremental — Bringing sanity to measurement, one outcome at a time.

Welcome to another brutally honest episode of The ADOTAT Show, where we rip the curtain off the adtech industry and drag the truth into the spotlight—whether it wants to be there or not.In this episode, Pesach Lattin, editor-in-chief of ADOTAT, sits down with Jules Minvielle, the co-founder and CEO of Olyzon, to dissect, dismember, and ultimately bury the outdated beast that is programmatic advertising as we know it.Let’s be blunt:If you think programmatic advertising is “fine,” you’re either not paying attention—or your job depends on keeping it broken.This isn’t another polite panel or recycled press release. This is a full-frontal autopsy of the programmatic media supply chain, DSP inefficiency, and the epidemic of AI-washing plaguing the ad industry in 2025.👨‍🔬 Topics we cover in excruciating, hilarious, and informative detail include:Why the legacy DSP model is fundamentally broken and exists mostly to feed intermediaries and inflate CPMsHow Agenic Media from Olyzon isn’t just another AI buzzword—it’s a complete rebuild of media buying infrastructureWhat it really means to deploy AI-native adtech, not just slap a prompt UI on a crusty platformHow CTV advertising is evolving—and how real-time contextual analysis at the program and scene level changes everythingThe difference between fake automation and true autonomous agentic systems that operate without human babysittingWhy “platforms” are dead, and modular, embeddable, always-on agents are the futureHow transcript parsing, scene-level metadata, and semantic understanding are outperforming cookies, cohorts, and conventional targetingThe dark secret: most advertisers and publishers are complicit in keeping the adtech status quo inefficientWhy programmatic “scale” is meaningless if the signal is trash—and how Olyzon’s AI agents filter for relevance, not just reachThe hilarious tragedy of 50% viewability as a success metric (yes, we go there)Why ad fraud thrives under complexity, and how clarity is the most dangerous tool of all💡 Jules Minvielle’s thesis is simple but radical:You don’t need another platform.You need a scalpel.And that scalpel is built from AI agents that read content like analysts, plan like strategists, and optimize like machines that don’t need PTO.⚖️ Thank you to our sponsors who make this unfiltered chaos possible:🔹 Troutman Amin – The legal commandos of adtech, privacy, TCPA, and digital regulation. Whether you're fighting off a class-action lawsuit or launching a data-rich startup in the landmine field of compliance, this is the law firm that doesn’t blink. They don’t do "general counsel," they do "survival strategy."🔹 Incremental – The measurement company for brands that are done playing make-believe with attribution. They deliver true causal lift, incrementality analysis, and marketing science you can actually take to the boardroom. No more last-click worship. No more modeled delusions. Just real, testable impact.👀 Coming up next week:We go from insurgent to insider as we sit down with Jean-Marc Papin, SVP of Advanced Video and Agency Partnerships at Horizon Media. We’ll talk about why attention metrics are broken, what it actually means to reach a human being in 2025, and why agencies need to stop fetishizing scale and start worshiping context.If you’ve ever wondered why your media budget feels like it was thrown into a black hole—or if you’ve quietly suspected your DSP is gaslighting you—this episode is for you.🔔 Subscribe to the channel, hit that bell icon, and drop a comment below. We actually read them. Even the spicy ones.https://new.adotat.com/subscribe🧠 Want more behind-the-scenes insights, strategy breakdowns, and marketing truth bombs?Subscribe to ADOTAT.com – where independent adtech journalism lives, breathes, and occasionally yells.#AdTech #ProgrammaticAdvertising #CTVAds #DigitalMedia #AgenicAI #DSP #Olyzon #AdvertisingTechnology #AIinAdvertising #MediaBuying #CTVTargeting #ContextualAdvertising #AdMeasurement #Incrementality #LegalCompliance #TroutmanAmin #Incremental #HorizonMedia #JeanMarcPapin #PesachLattin #AdTechNews #MarketingInnovationStay Bold. Stay Curious. And Know More Than You Did Yesterday.

Zack Rosenberg, Founder and CEO of Cortex, is back to challenge the outdated practices in video ad targeting. He reveals how over 89% of video content is miscategorized, highlighting the need for advanced AI for accurate analysis. Zack tackles biases in brand safety tools and shares the absurdity of mislabeling content, like calling plane crash footage 'Travel Content.' With humor and insight, he discusses the necessity of moving beyond demographic-based targeting and embracing deeper audience understanding in the evolving ad landscape.

Welcome to another episode of The ADOTAT Show — where ad tech comes to get emotionally undressed and no buzzword leaves with its dignity intact.This time, we’re graced — again — by the one and only Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab and unofficial frequent flyer of our guest chair. That’s right: third time on the show. At this point, we’re contractually obligated to get him a branded mug or start issuing loyalty points. Possibly both.And what are we unpacking? Oh, just the usual carnival of chaos that is digital advertising:Google’s Cookie Resurrection Tour: Just when we were planning the eulogy, Chrome said “never mind.” Is this a smart industry save or a Groundhog Day reboot with worse privacy implications?CTV’s Glow-Up: Is Connected TV really the golden child of media innovation — or just linear TV wearing a trench coat and pretending to be digital? Spoiler: There’s more emotion than logic, and also some QR codes that know you better than your therapist.Fingerprinting — the F-word of Ad Tech: Is it a gentle handshake or a biometric tattoo you didn’t ask for? Anthony dives into the nuance while Pesach gleefully pokes the bear.Fraud: The Rash That Won’t Go Away: We talk ad fraud like it’s an STD the entire industry pretends not to have. Why is no one willing to fund the research to actually figure out how bad it is? (Spoiler: Fear of finding out. Yes, FOFO is real.)Desert Island Ad Tech: We strand Anthony Katsur on an imaginary island (again) and make him choose his survival tools. Hint: They’re nerdier than a Swiss Army knife but just as useful if your metric dashboard crashes mid-campaign.Legacy, Leadership, and Lying to Ourselves: Anthony gets personal about his journey from NetGravity to now, drops names (yes, Megan Pagliuca, we see you), and waxes philosophical about why ad tech needs to stop beating itself up — and each other — like some deranged Fight Club in a WeWork.This isn’t a fireside chat. It’s a flamethrower session. If you’re in the business of digital media, you owe it to yourself to watch two people call B.S. on the things we all pretend are working.Subscribe, argue in the comments, and maybe — just maybe — ask your DSP how it’s really feeling.Stay Bold. Stay Curious. Know More Than You Did Yesterday.

How do you rebuild your life after an unimaginable loss—and turn tragedy into a lasting legacy?In this powerful and deeply personal Season 5 premiere of The ADOTAT Show, Pesach Lattin sits down with Kevin Krim, President & CEO of EDO, but known to many New Yorkers for a profoundly different reason: the heartbreaking loss of his two young children, Lulu and Leo, in one of New York City’s most widely covered tragedies of the past decade.Rather than be defined solely by grief, Kevin and his wife Marina transformed their pain into purpose through the creation of Choose Creativity, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering children with creativity and resilience. This remarkable conversation reveals how creativity became Kevin’s lifeline, teaching him lessons about leadership, letting go, and redefining what really matters in life and business.On a lighter—but no less insightful—note, Kevin and Pesach also venture deep into the rabbit holes of adtech, from battling the industry’s obsession with vanity metrics like GRPs (seriously, let it go!) to sorting out the real innovators from the QR-code-obsessed pretenders in the CTV landscape. Think: less PowerPoint nonsense, more predictive data brilliance.Key topics covered (with trademark irreverence and wit):How genuine creative leadership can transform your team—no buzzwords required.Why outcomes and predictive metrics are finally toppling tired impression-based models (it's about time).The messy yet fascinating world of convergent TV, programmatic chaos, and who’s actually pushing adtech forward.Why should you watch?This special episode goes beyond business. It's a human conversation about resilience, grace, and how deeply personal experiences shape leadership and innovation. You’ll walk away inspired, entertained, and ready to rethink your own relationship with creativity and data.Special thanks to our sponsors:Incremental.com, because real insights matter more than pretty dashboards.Troutman Amin LLP, handling your adtech legal headaches so you can actually sleep at night.👉 Subscribe, hit like, and share your thoughts on this powerful conversation below.👉 Get the full industry scoop straight to your inbox—subscribe to the ADOTAT newsletter: http://new.adotat.com #AdTech #CTV #CreativeLeadership #ChooseCreativity #MarketingInnovation #ProgrammaticAdvertising #IndustryInsightsFor more on Choose Creativity and how to support their mission, visit: https://choosecreativity.org/Learn more about ADOTAT: https://new.adotat.com/subscribe