Lisa Utschneider (2:37)

It means cut Cutter Taylor, but sly, like sly Foxy the Utz and then

Allison Schiff (2:44)

Schneider's tailor, a Sly Taylor. Okay, that's excellent. And Schip is Schiff in German. So when I took a trip to Hamburg a bunch of years ago, my name was plastered everywhere because such a harbor town. I was like, shift this, shift that. I felt like a celebrity. But that was my kind of silly way of going from our roots into your resume because I read somewhere that you taught English with the Peace Corps in Bulgaria right after the fall of the Berlin Wall. So I would love a story from that time. Of your life, Please.

Lisa Utschneider (3:19)

Sure. You're dating me. Alison, that was a long time ago. But yes, coming out of college, I did. I want to spend some time overseas. And, and the opportunity came up to join the Peace Corps, and we were actually the first, first official American group to go into Bulgaria. And if anyone's not familiar with Bulgaria, it's right below Romania. It's a Slavic language, very similar to Russian. But it was a phenomenal experience to spend two years in a country that had been closed off for decades. And, and I taught English in a city that's about two hours south of Sofia in a math high school. And just, it was transformational from a life experience perspective.

Allison Schiff (4:18)

I mean, it really takes the cake in terms of fun facts. So. Kudos.

Lisa Utschneider (4:23)

Thank you.

Allison Schiff (4:24)

And now to focus more on your recent resume, although I'll go back kind of far just to rattle off a few roles. You were general manager of national sales at Microsoft for a decade. In 08, you went to Amazon and you helped build the global advertising business. You were CRO at Yahoo during the Verizon acquisition, which is super interesting. And then in 2019, you became the CEO of Integral AD Science. And now we're up to date. But of course, over the course of your career, you've talked to a lot, a lot, a lot of brands and publishers. And there's always this tension, I think, that's existed between buyers and sellers. Buyers want rigorous verification for every impression and sellers just need to make money. So as someone who's had conversations from different sides of the aisle over the years with buyers and sellers, but now you're a verification provider, how do you strike that really important practical balance knowing that you really can't please everyone?

Lisa Utschneider (5:28)

Great question. So, yeah, through the course of my career, and I'm so grateful to have experience working at those various companies like Microsoft and Amazon, was 16 years of building ad businesses, then went over to Yahoo, helped rebuild the ad business, which we eventually sold to Verizon, and then following that, joining IAS's CEO. And in all of my experience in the digital industry, I've always been based in New York to be next to customers and I'm customer obsessed. As a leader, I feel so strongly that we're here on behalf of our customers to innovate and build for our customers and drive value. So I never think of the industry as such sides taking sides of buy side or sell side. I think of our critical role as driving value, ensuring that wherever at I s, wherever the brands are running their ads in the ecosystem, it's adjacent to brand safe, brand suitable content. And also we're playing a critical role for the publishers to help them drive higher yield and higher monetization. So that's how I view our role. I never view it as taking sides, one or the other, but just playing that critical role as an independent third party verification provider.

Allison Schiff (7:01)

It's still pretty tricky though. It feels like the sort of thing that requires a deft touch because even though, and I admire it, right. You don't think of it as the buy side and the left side because that is kind of inherently adversarial, I think a lot of people do.

Lisa Utschneider (7:17)

I actually see our role as if we do our job well in both driving performance, helping brands maximize and get the highest return for every dollar that they invest in the digital ecosystem. Help the publishers drive higher yield, higher monetization, all boats rise. That's how I view it.

Allison Schiff (7:41)

All right. Well, I really do applaud the effort and is to go a little bit back to the company specifically. You've been on a journey, I think since 2018 because that was the year before you came on board. But IAS was acquired by Vista Equity Partners. So private equity. And then in 2021 you went public. And then if we fast forward to last year, you guys were acquired by PE again, a Canadian private equity firm called Nova Cap. And so now you're a private company once again. And being on the public market, it means constant quarterly scrutiny. Sometimes it's a tough environment. So you have to deal with stock volatility and short term demands that can clash with the long term innovation goals. Maybe there's even like some pressure from investors who are like on the activist side of things. But now that you're unshackled from all of that, how would you say the freedom is changing your priorities at ias, or if not changing them, allowing you to shift a little bit. Because now you, you can do things in a little bit more of a chill way. Not that you're going to innovate in a chill way, but you don't have so much scrutiny.

Lisa Utschneider (8:59)

Yeah. So we. So I've had such the great fortune of being at IAS for so many years and as you mentioned, joined IAS years ago. January of 2019, shortly after Vista Equity acquired the company, led the company as a private company for two and a half years. We took it public for four and a half years and then at December announced we closed the transaction with Nova Cap, who is a leading private equity firm based in Montreal. And starting 2026 as a private company. So it's been an incredible journey. So proud of the value that we're driving across our customer base. And now as a private company, I won't use the word unshackled. But what I will say, that's okay, I did your language. But what I will say, it definitely gives us room to run. It gives us room to run in terms of no longer having the quarter in, quarter out, having to report to the street, having the scrutiny of guidance every quarter, also having public compliance that we have to adhere to. And now we're able to really run in terms of how we think about innovation. Innovation both for the short term and the long term. We actually had Sam Nasso who's a partner at Nova Cap. He was the lead on the deal. He came to our New York office last week. We did a fireside chat in a live global town hall and we talked a lot about our go forward strategy. And when you take a look at our go forward strategy, the way to think about it is continuing to provide that visibility into media quality, ensuring brands are running Jason to brand safe and brand suitable content, but also unleashing the performance. Because we view media quality as an engine for growth. And what we consistently hear from the brands is prove to us that media quality drives higher ROI and higher efficiency. So we're really double down on the performance space. We're feeling very bullish about our product tech roadmap for 2026, but also being private enables us to invest for the future, meaning 2027 and beyond. So we have really interesting areas where we're investing for growth and future growth and all of it fueled by AI.

Allison Schiff (11:49)

So I have a couple of threads to pull from what you were just saying. Sure. But before I pull them, why Nova Cap, like what's interesting about them and are they going to let you be hands off and thing Because PE does have a reputation.

Lisa Utschneider (12:03)

Yeah. So again, I'm just thrilled it's Nova Cap. And during the diligence, what was interesting about meeting with Nova Cap and spending time with them? There are a few things. They're very bullish on our differentiated technology and product roadmap. They're bullish about our tech stack, the infrastructure that we built, the caliber and quality of our leadership team, the caliber of our engineering team. And even when they were doing diligence, the way to think about, I don't know if you've been in meetings where private equity is doing diligence. I would love to actually. Yeah. They open up the hood of the engine and what Was interesting is when they start assessing IAS engine, they went to product tech first. Then obviously they did all the financial diligence that they need to do. But they cared deeply about the caliber, quality and Runway of the technology. It was part of their investment thesis at IAS is just to really pressure test and make sure that that tech infrastructure is there. And then one other sound bite, they actually brought in a third party company to do deep, deep tech diligence. This company does diligence across thousands and thousands of companies and IS's tech, we got an A plus not just in ad tech, across their entire tech diligence that this company has done for, for years. So that's what really excites me about Nova Cap is they appreciate and they see the long term potential of our product and tech. They love to invest for the future. And then also when you take a look at Nova Cap's track record, they're bullish on M and A. You're probably familiar that Nova Cap acquired Kaden in 2023 and then in short order they acquired at the Air and put it right on top of Kaden. So they see the importance both of innovating and investing, both from an M and A perspect, whether it's bringing in and acquiring tech tuck ins that are additive to our existing technology or just investing directly in the tech.

Allison Schiff (14:28)

If there is a tech tuck in, please give us a heads up because we will write about it. But talking about the tech and innovation, I want to go one layer a little bit deeper because and you mentioned quality. You need a really good understanding of quality for any of the wheels to turn properly. So I'm curious how you define quality now that an increasing amount of video and social inventory is being shaped by AI. Like what signals quality? Because engagement is a great signal, but it's a tricky one because some AI like slop for, I don't know, like lack of a better way to describe it, like it gets a lot of engagement, it gets shared, sometimes it gets hate shared. But do brands like really want to be around that? I mean that's just one example.

Lisa Utschneider (15:19)

Yeah. So great question. If you get under the hood of our technology and you see how sophisticated the tech is, we built our models from the ground up. We've built our models from a classification perspective. Whether we're classifying video, image, audio in tech within the live feeds of the social platforms and the other thing to call out, it's not just the in addition to the technology, it's how much data we're actually Processing. So if you take a look at if you got under the hood of our tech and how we're processing live data within a meta or within a YouTube, it's up to 70 years of digital video content a day. I know it's tremendous volumes of content. It's high quality media content. And because we're classifying so much content at high velocity and high accuracy, what it means is we can feed that vast amount of data back into our models to train our models to more accurately be able to detect high quality media and, and low quality media. So having such a robust foundation for technology again enables us to be more accurate and high velocity over time.

Allison Schiff (16:53)

And one more quick question before we hit our break, although I don't know if the answer to this is a quick one, you mentioned it, but one of your big focus areas has been tying verification to performance metrics. So not just avoiding bad placements, which you have to do, but also proving lift related to attention and quality like we were just talking about. So what would you say is the clearest evidence that you can show a brand that verification acts as a performance lever and isn't just like a protective layer, isn't just something to be sort of, I don't know, doing because you're afraid?

Lisa Utschneider (17:29)

Sure. We have a product where we can show to brands that based on you're running in higher quality media and IAS is helping you do just that. And the brands provide us with their outcome data. So we're able to see that direct correlation of. Okay, by showing you where to run your ads in higher quality media, understanding the cost of that media and seeing the outcome data and the lifts that we see, there's a direct correlation to it. It's a differentiated product. For ias, we've seen tremendous adoption. And again, as that flywheel improves and strengthens over time, performance is absolutely the area we are focused on to drive higher efficiency and higher roi.

Allison Schiff (18:24)

It's only logical that performance would be tied to really everything. I mean, that's the goal. Everybody wants outcomes however they define them. Okay, well, we're going to take a quick break and when we're back, we'll talk a little bit about AI some more because of course we will. And the walled gardens. We'll talk a little bit about this agentic world we live in. I always feel like I should use the movie trailer guy's voice when I do that in an agentic world. But anyway, stick with us.

Adrienne Beck (19:03)

Foreign.

Allison Schiff (19:09)

Hey there. I'm Alison Schiff, managing editor of Ad Exchanger, and I Have with me here Adrienne Beck, head of marketing insights and analytics at the Weather Company, where she focuses on the development and application of consumer and customer insights for marketing and advertising, as well as understanding weather's impact on consumer behaviors. So Adrian, your team at the Weather Company, which includes the Weather Channel digital platforms, recently completed some first of its kind research called Wired for Weather. What can you tell us about it?

Adrienne Beck (19:40)

We've long known that weather is the biggest external factor influencing daily life. How we feel, what we do, what we buy. We wanted to dig into that and uncover how marketers can use weather data more effectively. So we partnered with the neuroscience firm NeuroInsight to prove how does weather impact our subconscious, which is where 90% of decisions are made? And then what does that mean for marketers? We found that weather literally rewires our brains, changing how we process emotion and memory, which are two of the biggest drivers of purchase decisions. Basically you have to feel it and remember it if you're going to buy it. But maybe most interesting for marketers is because of that rewiring power. When brands use weather as a contextual signal, they can improve ROI by 10 to even 20%.

Allison Schiff (20:35)

Well, how does weather change our emotion and our memory?

Adrienne Beck (20:39)

We've uncovered that weather creates distinct but universal mindsets based on brain activity. And that feels like set of weather conditions. So in other words, when it feels cold, regardless of who you are or where you are, our subconscious response is really similar. And because we can predict the weather, we can help predict those mindsets. So an example would be when it feels like the start of a new season. So think about that first spring like day coming out of this winter weather we're experiencing now. The memory and engagement parts of our brain are really active. That makes us open to trying new brands and trying new products. We're ready to engage with the world. We're optimistic and social and creative. We're more likely to start a new health routine and to make impulse purchases. But on the other hand, when it's rainy or snowy, our brains activate in a way that means we're more emotional and sensitive and pragmatic. Still high energy, but in a problem solving mode. So we seek out things that comfort us and remind us of happy memories. That creates a really important role for marketers.

Allison Schiff (21:50)

Well, tell me what it actually means for marketers.

Adrienne Beck (21:53)

Ultimately, brands can use weather data to anticipate these mindsets and deliver more effective campaigns. Our weather targeting solution enables brands to dynamically connect with and influence these weather driven consumer mindsets throughout the digital ecosystem at any given time. Any or all of the four weather driven mindsets that we've identified through the study could be happening across the country. But weather targeting takes into account that relative nature of weather. At a zip code level, a 40 degree day in Chicago means something very different than it does in Miami. These signals can be always on and that reduces media waste and can boost performance for all marketing channels, whether that's ctv, display, search, audio or others. And that means that brands can easily get their message in front of the right mindset at the right time. If you're curious, check out weathercompany.com thank you, Adrian.

Allison Schiff (22:53)

I wish I was in Miami.

Adrienne Beck (22:56)

Me too.

Allison Schiff (22:57)

Great insights.

Adrienne Beck (22:59)

Thank you so much.

Allison Schiff (23:17)

All right, welcome back. And I'm going to use like a bad word now, a word that maybe shouldn't be considered safe for work, at least not like in our industry, which is blocklist. So when I talk to publishers, they tell me that a lot of buyers still rely on blunt keyword block lists, which just, it feels like lunacy by this point. Like it's just such a retrograde way of doing things and there is a better way to do things. So talk to me a little bit about that. I mean, is that something that you're still seeing? Because it does come up for me when I talk to pubs and where does AI powered contextual understanding come in here to like save us from ourselves?

Lisa Utschneider (24:01)

Yeah. So it's interesting that that's even coming up for you blockless, because I see that term blockless as so rearview mirror and sort of historical. And it's something I don't hear at all anymore in terms of good blockless. We're so focused on just leveraging AI. As I mentioned before, the majority of our products, our technology is powered by AI. I mentioned before everything we're doing in multimedia classification. But the other thing that I think is important to call out is at ces, we rolled out IAS Agent, which is an actual agentic solution. It's real, it's not sort of over here theoretical. And what was interesting about it is we are so focused on helping businesses accelerate their ROI, their KPIs. We launched a beta, it was oversubscribed. And I have to say the brands are thrilled with our IAS Agent solution, which is basically accelerating the ability to get key insights that they need to drive greater efficiency and greater roi. So for example, with IS Agent, with the automation, we're able to get the insights directly into the hands of the brands from five times faster because of the automation and the brands are seeing operational efficiencies of 50% or higher. And this is even just in beta phase. So the brands are completely leaning into our Agentix solution. There's no other Agentix solution like this in the market. And we'll just continue to fuel our agentic solutions and investments again to drive efficiency and ROI for the brands.

Allison Schiff (26:06)

Do you feel like though we're going to go from AI powered assistants and AI agents being the sort of thing that I don't know, feels like a shiny object and also like woohoo rah rah to just table stakes? Right. Like I think everyone is going to need some kind of AI powered agent slash assistant going forward or I don't know, like their clients are going to wonder why they don't have it.

Lisa Utschneider (26:31)

Yeah, I do think it will be table stakes moving forward. But the one but to add is what's interesting about the evolution of AI and I don't know if you've noticed this Alison, even over the last few weeks, I'm not even talking months, but the few weeks and months of how AI the AI evolution has accelerated just seeing the velocity of innovation, the velocity of capability, the velocity of the LLMs at IES. What is so important to reinforce is the fact that we've been so deep in AI for years from our tech stack, our tech infrastructure, our engineering and data science team, the differentiated tech that we're using every day in our classifications that as AI continues to expand and grow, we're able to ride that AI wave and leverage AI again to drive greater accuracy and greater velocity and to help fuel our Agentix solution. And there are a lot of companies out there that I don't think they're fully equipped to ride this wave and how fast it's moving. And that's just something we're really double down as AI continues to evolve, that we are invested, we are committed and will continue to drive value.

Allison Schiff (28:05)

I don't know if I should admit this, but I don't feel personally capable of just staying abreast of what's happening with this wave. It's really an incredible amount of news, innovation cycles and, and I don't know, I, I feel not like totally on top of things actually. It's a strange feeling. It's my job to know things.

Lisa Utschneider (28:26)

Well, that's a great example of why we're thrilled to be a private company is because we have a team dedicated to investing both for today and in the future. We're able, we have. Bias for action is a core area for the company that we are so invested in leveraging AI, leveraging the LLMs and driving value for customers and doing it at speed. And because we're private, we're able to sprint at this and experiment and invest in areas and see what sticks for the future.

Allison Schiff (29:04)

There was something else that I really wanted to ask you, even though it's very early and maybe too early to ask, but how are you thinking about how you're going to measure and do ad verification for ads in AI chatbots like ChatGPT and what an impression even means in this agentic world?

Lisa Utschneider (29:25)

Yeah, that's what I call a million dollar question.

Allison Schiff (29:28)

So

Lisa Utschneider (29:31)

I would say it's too early to pull out the crystal ball and predict what ads will look like in chat GPT.

Allison Schiff (29:42)

Right. Like eventually. Now they're so basic, like it's.

Lisa Utschneider (29:44)

Yeah, I, I would say what's more important is that we stayed nimble and flexible, that we continue to listen to what the brands are looking for. Also in a chat GPT environment, it's very different from a privacy perspective, from the one to one interaction with ChatGPT, that at the end of the day, we are here to support the brands. We're here to support the brands so that they can connect with consumers wherever consumers are spending their time globally. And we'll stand by the accuracy and quality of our technology any day of the week. And again, just stay really nimble and leaning into these technologies and making sure we have that tech infrastructure in place that we can pivot accordingly based on what the brands are asking for.

Allison Schiff (30:49)

I haven't yet, but have you been served an ad on ChatGPT? I don't know if you use it or a different one.

Lisa Utschneider (30:56)

I haven't yet.

Allison Schiff (30:58)

I kind of feel a little offended. I'm like, I should be part of that group. Like, come on. So should you serve us an ad? Sam Altman. So, just changing topics slightly. I want to talk a bit about the walled gardens and just given how much ad spend flows there and they have really, what is their own closed measurement? Even though they've opened up somewhat more than somewhat over the years, it's still pretty closed. What role should an independent like you guys play in creating like a common third party yardstick so that marketers have an easier time comparing their buys against each other in the walled gardens, comparing those to the open web, because that feels like the eternal ask. I've been at Ad exchanger for almost 12 years and that's been something people have been talking about that whole time.

Lisa Utschneider (31:50)

So with that. So we have Deep integrations with all the major social platforms. It's an area where I personally spend a lot of time with the metas and Googles and TikToks and Reddit's of the world and even of the last few years since launching brand safety and suitability in the live feeds. I have to say I've been so impressed with how committed and leaned in the social platforms are to ensuring that the brands, based on their requests of, have the third party verification companies deeply embedded in the tech, enable us to be able to extend our solutions as the social platforms expand their volumes of inventory. So think of a meta with threads. I mean, there are so many examples that we can extend our solutions, ensure it happens globally. Right. So we're in dozens and dozens and dozens of markets and languages and again, just have an enterprise like strategic partnership with IAS so that we build for scale for the brands. And again, the social platforms, they're totally leaned in. It's a matter of will the social platforms be open to having one common metric across the platforms? That's up to them. But I will say with all the time I spend with the platforms, they are very open to the feedback from the brands. And a lot of the great technology and products that we built is based on what brands are looking for. So we'll just keep giving the feedback and continuing to drive value for the brands.

Allison Schiff (33:42)

So we're running out of time somehow. So I want to jump around a little bit and ask you a few, I don't know, random questions.

Adrienne Beck (33:51)

Sure.

Allison Schiff (33:52)

What do you think is the single toughest verification challenge right now? Is it bots? Synthetic content, CTV ad fraud, some kind of unholy combination of those things? Maybe it's a threat that we're not even fully appreciating it.

Lisa Utschneider (34:08)

It's funny, your threat is our opportunity. So we see. I can't stress enough how fast AI is moving, how fast it's evolving. And it's just so important at IES that we remain nimble, that we invest in differentiated tech, that we're invested for today and the future, and we're able to pivot as AI continues to pivot. And your question earlier about, well, what will ads look like in the future? None of us know. I really don't think any of us know. But what's important is that we're flexible and nimble enough and moving fast enough that we're able to innovate and build on behalf of the brands.

Allison Schiff (35:02)

And penultimate question, I know you can't really talk about these things like active Litigation, the FTC probe about alleged brand safety related boycotts. I'm not going to ask you whether IAS is thinking about suing analytics. I double verify. But I do want to get your honest perspective on what are like valid criticisms of the verification space. Things like brand safety sometimes feeling like a fig leaf or over blocking safe content and then some adjacency risks slip through. Questions about whether viewability metrics always tie to business outcomes or if the fees match value. These are just things that come up. So from your seat, how much of it rings true? And of course we could all do better, right? I could go to the gym. I don't go to the gym, but I could go to the gym. We can all improve. And where do you think the industry needs to just evolve?

Lisa Utschneider (35:54)

It's funny, those questions. We're a private company now, right? Very different from a public company. But I would say that again. I stand by the quality and sophistication of our technology. We're making a concerted effort to educate more broadly, like how differentiated our tech is, especially in this rapidly evolving AI landscape. And a lot of what you just described it, I think that it just motivates us to continue to tell our story of differentiation and our overall value that we offer to the brands.

Allison Schiff (36:41)

Fair enough. And I apologize for my cat who just hopped.

Adrienne Beck (36:44)

No problem.

Allison Schiff (36:44)

I don't know if you saw her, she was maing for people who are only listening via audio. It's a very naughty cat who's trying to make an appearance on this podcast, but she's not invited. All right, so last question, lay it on me. What is a really bold prediction that you say will be true 18 months from now? And it could be anything. It doesn't have to just be related to verification. Just draw a line in the sand. Some bold ad tech prediction.

Lisa Utschneider (37:15)

18 months is a long time, maybe 18 weeks. I think that companies that are not truly investing in AI, both from a product, a technology and a corporate company perspective, and not investing today to drive value, to drive efficiencies, that they'll be left in the dust like I have no doubt in my mind, especially the smaller companies, and that it's disrupt or be disrupted. And AI right now in this landscape we're all living in, it's a moment of tremendous disruption I think none of us have probably ever witnessed in our careers. And the ones who are truly leaned in and leveraging AI in everything that they do, they will have a leg up.

Allison Schiff (38:21)

I totally agree with you. And one really quick anecdote actually before we wrap, I associate you very strongly with Taylor Swift,

Lisa Utschneider (38:33)

because I'll take that.

Allison Schiff (38:35)

You and I were standing next to each other in the audience in tan at a concert. It was the Amazon port and the national was performing.

Lisa Utschneider (38:43)

It was a couple years ago.

Allison Schiff (38:45)

It was a couple years ago, and there was a big rumor going around that Taylor Swift was going to come by because I think Travis Kelsey was at Stagwell beach or something.

Lisa Utschneider (38:51)

Kelsey brothers were there, remember?

Allison Schiff (38:53)

Yeah, yeah. The Kelsey brothers were there.

Lisa Utschneider (38:55)

Not at the party, but with Taylor on some yacht. Yeah.

Allison Schiff (38:58)

And we were talking about it and then she didn't come, so.

Lisa Utschneider (39:02)

But I'll take a little Taylor sweat on the day of the blizzard and your cat making an entrance.

Allison Schiff (39:22)

This episode was sponsored by the weather company. From the number one most downloaded weather app to sophisticated enterprise data, they're helping people and businesses build a more resilient privacy. First Future, head over to WeatherCompany.com to learn how their insights can weatherproof your marketing strategy.