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AdTechGod Pod
Ep. 100 The Future of Ad Tech & Agencies: AI, Giving Back, Walled Gardens & People-First Innovation
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A
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C
Foreign.
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B
Welcome to the AdTech God Pod, your window into the world of advertising technology and the people behind it. I'm your host at Tech God. This is Ech God. Welcome to my 100th episode. Hitting 100 episodes is a milestone I'm truly grateful for. And when I started this podcast, the goal was pretty simple. I wanted to create a space for conversations with people that work in ad tech, wanted to understand their background and understand a very high level of the direction of the industry in a positive light. Over the last six to 12 months, we've heard a little bit about some turbulence in the space, AI its impact on our industry, on agencies and on brands. And so for this 100th episode, I'm actually talking about all aspects of the space. So with me on part one, I have Ari Papero from Architecture and Terry Kawaja from Luma Partners. On part two, I want to give back a little bit with Heidi Browning from the NHL, Peter Naylor, former Netflix, and Tom Deerlein. And they'll be highlighting the TD foundation and what that means for our industry and giving back to an industry that's all supported us. And then on the third part, I'm going to talk about the future of agencies. I have Sam Bloom from PMG and Lauren Wetzel from Infosum Now WPP. So overall, let's hear about the future of AdTech again. Terry. Ari, welcome to the podcast.
- [02:26]
D
Great to be with you.
- [02:27]
A
Thanks AdTech God, you know, today is the first day that you don't work for me. So now all, all hell could break loose, right? You can say whatever you want.
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B
You know what? Break loose, Ari. I want to hear it. I want to hear it all. And congrats on stepping out of the role. I'm excited for Jeremy stepping in to lead the company and drive us to the next level. You've obviously been a huge contributor to all of this. And thanks again for messaging me and saying you wanted to buy a tech a year ago.
- [02:51]
A
Yeah, exactly. The deal done on Twitter, it's. The rest is history.
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B
I think it was a dm, which is pretty incredible.
- [02:59]
D
I want to claim just a little smidget of attribution on that. Having joked about it.
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A
Okay. The jokes become reality pretty fast.
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D
That's right.
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B
It's incredible from. From memes to architecture. What a ride. So I wanted. I want to start a little bit with you, Ari, if that's okay. The industry has changed a lot. You've been in the industry for quite some time. You're the founder of Beeswax, which sold the Comcast. You were involved in ad tech your entire career. But AI and automation has been huge and people are starting to get a little bit nervous about the impact of AI and what it means for the industry, especially when we talk about the impact of search of creative. But I wanted to hear from you, what does the future of ad tech look like on a technical front and what should we be looking out for and looking forward to?
- [03:50]
A
Yeah, sure, I think. And Terry will have a lot of point of view on this. There's two megatrends going on right now in ad tech. You asked me about AI, which I'll address in a moment. That's really the first one. And then the second one is the sort of reconsolidation of the value chain between DSPs and SSPs. So on AI right now, as we're sitting here in September 2025, the main impacts of AI and advertising are happening outside of what we think of as ad tec. It's happening in Google, in meta and some other closed systems where they're really bringing huge amount of firepower to making the ads more successful. Maybe you throw Applovin in that list too. While the incumbent ad tech companies, in my opinion, haven't made major progress, they're adding a little bit here. Cool demo. Oh, we'll fill in this form for you. We'll auto set this. And the startups obviously are startups. They are not having a big impact yet, so. So I'm a little disappointed in the amount of AI progress we've made thus far in this ad tech world. And there's an open question of will incumbents change or will newcomers replace them using AI and the Final judgment on that is definitely out as of yet. I don't have an answer. As for the second trend, this consolidation, we can talk about that more, but I think we've kind of beating that horse to death. DSPs becoming SSPs, SSPs becoming DSPs, blah blah, blah, blah. Interested in Terry's point of view on both those issues or anything else?
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B
Yeah, same here. Terry, how do you feel about the consolidation of the SSPS and DSPS now working on both the buy and the sell side and how that impacts the space? Because it's getting competitive.
- [05:35]
D
Yeah, I mean, and again, see above reference to memes becoming reality. Three years ago I made a parody video called Don't Stop Competing about DSP is getting into the SSP space and vice versa. So there you go. Life imitates art. But you could sort of, it was just really just a signal of the early trend that seemed inevitable. And in particular I think as you look to really a whole, you step back and look at what are the attributes that the most successful companies had. And as Ari pointed out, you know, the walled gardens and then Applovin, what has Applovin got that trade desk nor anyone else or a few others have. And they have, by virtue of the fact that they work in the mobile app space, they have more of a closed loop on their data because they have both demand side and supply side and mediation. And then they introduce some AI technologies to scale it. It turns out that's exactly what all the walled gardens have, the companies that enumerate their market cap starting with a T. And so it seems pretty clear that that approach is the winner versus the I'm only going to service the demand side or I'm only going to service the supply side. And you can just derive that from observable market cap. So I do think that plays out that if you think about how that would flush out it is a winner take most kind of scenario. So there is a. I do think that will act as yet another catalyst to drive what I call endgame consolidation, which is the eventual necessary consolidation in the programmatic ad stack as a function of the size of the industry and how many players we still have running around on the Lumascape. And I recognize that you know, when you're hammer everything looks like a nail, but I think I can objectively make the case that there's still too many players with respect to AI. I think that too will be a catalyst for consolidation. I agree with Ari that to date we've not seen that many companies really manifest the taking advantage of that technology. And by the way, there's a clear cut tell in terms of how you're using AI. Everyone claims they're using AI. That's great operating leverage. Just look at revenue per headcount. That's it. I think that's the only stat you need to look at to determine whether you truly have AI, because if you do, it'll manifest in those numbers. You're certainly seeing that with big tech. They continue to lay off people and they're revenue growth is incredible. Yeah, we're in for a whole world of change. But then again, adtech is always undergoing change. This one feels like it's the big daddy. And I think it will have ramifications not only for all the players, but all their business models are going to pretty significantly change here.
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B
Terry, you mentioned something about the walled gardens. We know AI is impacting search quite a bit. We just came out with some Google decisions last week. I wanted to ask because this is kind of happening across the board. So we have AI being used on the operational front, AI in terms of the front end simplicity for, for users to automate their buying to optimize their inventory. But AI is also siphoning a lot of traffic away from conventional search and moving more towards the ChatGPT, the LLMs out there, the perplexities. And that's causing a decline in potential traffic to websites. And that traffic is needed in order for them to fund the journal and fund the content that they're creating. What does that mean long term or even short term for the publishers in the space that are seeing declines in their traffic and in essence decline in their ad inventory.
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A
You want me to take that one? I'll jump in. Sure. So yeah, it's a real problem. The volume of consumer attention going to websites has been declining because of structural reasons, because consumers have moved to mobile first and then they move to social. And then as social referrals started drying up, Google and AI sort of was a kidney punch where now the search referrals are drying up and so volume is down quite a bit and it's not likely to come back. So publishers need to grab their audience in places they control. Places like podcasts, email newsletters, maybe even, you know, Apple Reader or things like that. Any alternative way they can reach those consumers, CTV retail. And that's just a change that's going to happen and there is not necessarily a solution for it. It's just a change in the landscape. I think when you think of it from the publisher's point of view, like I have a fixed amount of cost paying my journalists and I need to make it on banner ads. You know, that just doesn't work. There's no solve for that if you think of it from the advertiser's point of view. Meaning I want to spend this much money in a way I control. Well, there are a lot of options there. The so called hedge gardens thesis that I don't know if it was Terry came up with that or Hedge garden's been around for a bit and you know, I'm really bullish on that. I'm like, you know, it doesn't have to be full open HTML on a webpage, it could be Netflix ads, it could be Spotify ads, it could be on Reddit, it could be a lot of places. And if the advertiser has a good deal of control to buy those ads or measure them programmatically, then I think we've satisfied the buy sides needs within the constraints of what the publishers need.
- [11:40]
B
Terry, what are your thoughts?
- [11:42]
D
Yeah, I mean, I agree, I agree. And I think that the sort of outcomes or performance era that we've been moving towards and are certainly in now that have driven publishers to try and explore maybe different ways to approach affiliate I think will be good training for this new world where they get less traffic or the traffic may look different coming from AI. I think they're going to need to have those kind of skills to connect to commerce because that may well be one of the more viable monetization schemes to replace the traditional advertising going forward.
- [12:27]
A
I think one of the most interesting data points we have here is what Microsoft did with Xander. So Microsoft a couple months ago shut down the buy side of Xander, not the sell side. And the reason I think that's interesting is because they said more or less there was a convoluted press release, but basically they said they think they could use AI to place the ads better than a DSP can. And you can still buy ads in Microsoft and LinkedIn and all those Microsoft properties using the Microsoft ad tools, not the DSP that Microsoft bought. And so if that's a trend, then that's not great for DSPs. Right? You could have a hedge garden where you just give them the money and they figure out where to put it. Maybe that's more like a walled garden, I don't know. But that is just one data point that shines pretty bright in this whole conversation.
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B
And I have heard that there are DSPs doing fully automated media buying and building those tools out to where the requirement of staff and headcount needed to traffic a campaign will be reduced significantly. And this isn't just, you know, type in a prompt and it'll create the targeting for you. This is purely like a very, very simplified UI that no longer requires a lot of the hand holding for ad spend through a dsp. So it'll be interesting to see as those start to roll out over the next 12 to 18 months, what that means for, for the industry overall and what it means for traffickers overall.
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A
TTD Max? Is that what it's called?
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B
Is that. I mean, I'm not dropping names. This is what I've heard rumor.
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A
It's either TTD Max or TTD Plus. Those are the only options for the name.
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B
Yeah, it's gotta be TTD Max. But they'll rebrand to Max and then they'll just rebrand back to tdd.
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D
I think there has been a shift of sort of power leverage from the demand side to the supply side in the sense that it's a culmination of this journey we've been on for years around SPO and curation to drive something that we're going to be talking a lot about this fall. We call it supply side decisioning where you're not, you know, QPS throttled so you actually get to see all of the inventory and the signal and it's, it's a lot to process. But AI actually enables supply side decisioning to be a substitute or competitor to what is traditionally been the DSPS sort of approach to the market to provide that kind of intelligence.
- [15:08]
B
Terry, when you talk about the importance of the supply side and how things are changing in the future, what does excite you? For me, I feel like I've heard it all and I keep hearing the same things over and over again. The impact of AI, spo, demand, supply side platforms and what that means, growth of connected television. And for me, I feel like I keep hearing the same things over and over again and it seems to be a recycling of buzzwords over the last couple of years. But what is truly hot, like what is, what is something that people should be working on and if they haven't founded a company, what kind of company would you found if you had the opportunity to do so?
- [15:46]
D
So I think one of the most interesting areas in ad tech that's not really getting a lot of attention is the idea of live. If you look at the top 100 linear TV shows, I believe a hundred out of the hundred are live, 94 of them are sports, 92 of that is NFL. And the rest are sort of award shows or other sort of live shows. So live is the only format and media that still garners a water cooler event kind of situation, you know. And so it turns out the technical aspects, and this is a topic that Ari can speak with far greater clarity than a banker. But, but the technical aspects of delivering and potting sort of advertising for live, especially if you're doing it on a, some, any kind of a targeted basis, is like orders of magnitude more challenging than just on demand. And I think with sports now and other live events moving to streaming from linear TV, you're seeing that with, you know, YouTube and what they're doing with live sports and, and others, I think this is going to become a really, really big thing which is technology that enables a smoother ad delivery on a targeted basis for live broadcasts.
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B
Ari, what do you think?
- [17:24]
A
That's a cool one. I like Terry's suggestion. Yeah, I think that using AI to reimagine things that are hard to do in the old way of doing things is an area I'm interested in, like market research being one example where you can potentially collect data that previously would be too expensive to collect because we have people's phones and we can analyze it very quickly or satellite imagery or other things like that might be interesting. Although some people are obviously doing stuff already in that area. I like the idea of live, although it sounds really hard. It used to be kind of one of my interview questions that would stump people like how would you broadcast the Super Bowl? How would you insert ads? And based on that I think I don't want to do. For a while I was really interested in cookie less DSPs, like DSPs that use location and other signals more than without using cookies. And there are some, I think bliss is one of them. But I think that opportunity still exists to some extent, although you'd have to sort of navigate to see where the opportunities still live in a post sandbox world.
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D
Another area that I think is ripe for opportunity in adtech is creator. So you know, if you think of. And let's step back. Generally speaking, the business model of an intermediary does best when you've got fragmentation on either side of the principles they serve. The opposite of that is, let's say intermediating ads in social media that has a take rate of 0.001% because one side of your principles are very consolidated and very powerful. So it kind of doesn't work. Now you go to TV and it's not quite as consolidated as social, but there are, you know, 10 company, 10 supply sources that matter. And because all you got to do is, you know, look at the Nielsen Gage report and that shows you sort of who, who matters in, in, in streaming. And even in that context, you can make sort of like an average living as an intermediary. However, with more and more content coming from creators, we are likely to see a fragmentation of the, of the supply source. So you now would have a world where you would have fragmented supply and fragmented demand. Those scenarios tend to tremendously benefit the intermediary from a business model standpoint.
- [20:11]
A
Yeah, I think Influencer is really interesting. It's a little resistant to business models because it's not liquid, but there are definitely opportunities. I was thinking the other day, why isn't there a LinkedIn bio, a link in bio company for LinkedIn? There's all the Instagram LinkedIn bio companies in general. B2B, which is where I've spent my career, has a lot of opportunity. There's no real Patreon for B2B. There's no only founds for B2B, which is a joke I've said on my podcast a bunch of times, but it's true. Like, you know, how much would people pay for an hour of my consulting a week in an open forum that, you know, I could do it, but I'd probably have to like, figure it out, do billing and blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, there's, there's a lot of weird B2B opportunities that I think are not really being exploited.
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D
Well, you know what, the ecosystem needs help both on the operating side and on the strategy and finance side. Ari, I'm suggesting we launch a new company. Let's do it.
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A
Only fans for B2B will be the first two models.
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B
On the, on the creator front, do you think that the, the growth and creator economy was sparked by social media or. Because obviously the creator economy was sparked by social media. But as, as you're looking over the last year or so, even just in the advertising space, we've seen this rise of, of the creator economy. And I think what's starting to happen from my perspective is the ChatGPT and the ease of creating content has become so simple that the, the creator economy, I think is at risk to some degree. A lot of the content that is coming out into the market is unauthentic and you can see it and you can read it. So I think the authenticity piece is the surviving piece of, of the creator economy. And I've seen many who have tried to use ChatGPT prompts to create social posts to drive engagement. But there has to be this touch of personality and authenticity or else it just falls flat. And what worries me is that is my feed going to get flooded with creators that are utilizing ChatGPT and LLMs a little too much, rather than highlighting those that actually have the knowledge and the skill set and know the right formats to post and when to post?
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A
Yeah, I mean, I. Historically, you know, creator economy kind of started in the mid 2000s or early 2000s with blogging and with YouTube, more or less. I'm sort of simplifying things. But, you know, with blogging, people, including myself, put out their own website, started writing articles, and then there was all these technologies to share the articles, and you'd get followings and bookmarks and you'd be on feed readers. And some people started making money on that. And there were niches like music discovery that got really popular, or, you know, tv, excuse me, movie reviews. And then that moved into social. Kind of naturally. People stopped blogging, started tweeting and started and having Instagram. And it didn't change that much, except the visual element obviously brought attractiveness and youth more to the forefront. But then what happened was the algorithms changed at all. Where instead of your main vector for finding audience being like, smash that subscribe button where quality matters the most, it was just attention. And so the amount of time you spent on a given post or scrolled or hit the comments got used by the algorithm. And that's just really subject to abuse because not all attention is good attention. And that's where, like Mark Zuckerberg, I think it's either Zuckerberg or Elon, he always talks about unregretted time spent or something like that, which is a pretty tough metric to figure out. But we're now in a situation where you have. Algorithms are the most important thing for attention. And being young and attractive or saying something controversial or having something that's eye candy in some other way immediately will garner attention. That's not a great thing for the quality. Or maybe I'm just an old man and I think quality means something other than just an attractive person talking.
- [24:14]
B
But I mean, I agree. I think the more controversial you are on social media, the more traction you get. I think the problem is that the right type of attention that you're looking for, I think some enjoy that and want that and that's the whole purpose. And I think others don't. They just want to share their thoughts. And I think the boundary comes to what is truthful. And what is not. And I like to think of it as there are creators that have good intentions and creators have bad intentions. And I think you need to decipher what you're reading to take a look at what the reasoning behind it is. Is it just to drive likes and follows, or is it truly to deliver something of value? And that's where I think there's a very thin line between the creator economy is you find some that provide true insights, thoughtfulness, or just want to drive engagement in conversation and then others that are trying to look for controversy because that's what drives so much engagement through the algorithm. Because people are, are mad and want to comment. This is across all social, this is X LinkedIn everywhere.
- [25:10]
D
Yeah, look, I think you're right to point out that authenticity is a necessary ingredient for, you know, no one that's purely just doing some kind of AI answers thing is really going to get any followers of any scale. But I do think there are two things that are real positives for the creator opportunity. One is the technology that you indicated, you know, could be abused. But largely I think it'll serve all these creators to leverage that, leverage their sort of media, sort of scale of broadcast and reach. And then the second is, I think there's just generally been a zeitgeist shift away from mainstream media main, away from institutional media, to more kind of fresh new names. Whether it's architecture media at the company level or an individual level. Look at, you know, Barry Weiss being acquired for between 100 and $200 million by Paramount, or the success of Joe Rogan, or, you know, any one of these media personalities that found new life and probably more fun and more remunerative opportunities post their big media company career. So I think that all accrues to the benefit of creators.
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B
Yeah, I agree. I think, I think the authenticity is a big part. I also think that at some point you're oversaturated with voices and narratives. I think when you have hundreds, thousands, if not millions of creators on the market with different views and perspectives and opinions, I think it just creates a lot of interest for people. The traditional media companies that exist even in our space are fantastic and they do a great job reporting on the news, they do a great job researching and understanding what's happening in the space. But the voices are very different when it comes from like a market, there's, there's no competition feeling. From my aspect at least, maybe Arie feels the same way. I don't, I don't look at the ad exchangers, the Adweeks as competitors, I actually look at them as enablers for us to get the right accurate content and for us to help deliver it in a different way. Away with personality and our own opinions. And I think if anything, the, the new media and the new industry, advertising industry news is actually benefiting from the influencer networks that we have at architecture because this actually pushes additional conversations around these professionally written articles as well as gives us an opportunity to voice our opinions through our journalists as well. So I think that we all are additive to each other.
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A
Yeah, I have to agree with that. I would say that in, in many media spheres, the influencers are rarely breaking news or finding facts, new facts. You know, a lot of times when they do, they're wrong. You know, there's so many instances of influencers just saying, oh, I went down a rat hole and I found this image and I means this and they always, almost always are just wrong. So as an analyst, as a color commentator, I think someone like you or me have a lot to add to the conversation. But it's pretty rare that we're firsthand delivering news or doing investigative journalism. And there's a really important role for people who do that and companies that pay for it.
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B
I talk to those journalists and I message those journalists and we exchange messages constantly. I look at myself as an amplifier of news and a way to drive conversation and not necessarily a journalist. More of this is a hot topic and I'd love to share it because I think people want to learn about it. Terry, what are your thoughts on traditional versus the new social focused type of delivery for content?
- [28:58]
D
I think that whether it is content or an advertising message, I think the.
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B
Proof.
- [29:11]
D
Has come to the fore. Historically, websites, the whole model of navigation on the web was I'm going to find you by way of email or social or, or, you know, whatever find you. And with a link, with a blue link, I'm going to bring you to my website. So, so the navigation was and find you wherever you are, wherever you're spending time, wherever you're enjoying your time spent, and I'm going to pull you to my website. That was basically the navigation of choice for the first 25 years of the web. I think the evidence is clear now that we're in a different realm where you've got to put your content and your marketing message and by the way, your ability to complete a transaction to where the people are. So whether they're in a chat, in a messaging app, or they're on social or whatever, they're doing whatever environment they're in and choosing to spend time in, that's where you need to be. So it's the opposite of what we've been doing. We want everyone to come to us that's centralized. We need to go federated. You need to send your message to people where they are because people are not going to move. And we see the above discussion about website traffic. This is one of the solutions is don't rely on traffic coming to a www.URL. instead, get your message, go to them.
- [30:47]
B
Terry, Ari, I want to thank you both for being here. Thank you, Terry, for being my first guest. And Ari, thank you again for having me as a guest on your pod a couple of years ago now. So I appreciate you both. Thank you for joining me.
- [30:58]
A
Yeah, thank you. And congratulations on 100 episodes. That's a really big accomplishment.
- [31:03]
B
Thank you. It's a lot of recordings. It's been fun.
- [31:05]
C
Awesome.
- [31:05]
B
Appreciate you guys. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed my chat with Ari Papero and Terrence Kawaja on the first segment of this pod. For the 100th episode of the Ad Tech God Pod, I really wanted to do something different. The milestone isn't just about the future of advertising. It's about giving back to an industry that's given so much back to me. That's why I'm joined by Heidi Browning, the CMO of the NHL, Peter Naylor, senior advisor to McKinsey and advisor to Cadent Kochava and more. And of course, Tom Deerlein, founder of the TD Foundation. What began in 2006 as a grassroots effort to help kids in Iraq has grown into US Missions, supporting families of wounded warriors and fallen heroes. The foundation provides direct aid from school supplies to mortgage payments, and it's often done within 24 hours. TD foundation is now helping over 100 families a year and has raised over 3 million to date. I truly love that you all join me today again. Heidi, Tom, Peter, thank you for joining me on the ad tech godpod.
- [32:07]
E
I appreciate you highlighting our work.
- [32:09]
B
Of course. I. I love it. And I'm going to do a quick shout out. So, Molly, thank you for the introduction and thank you for recommending this. This really is something that I immediately jumped on once we chatted about it. Nothing makes me happier than helping out a good cause. So thank you again for being here. Tom, I. I gave a really quick introduction, but I'd love to hear it from you directly. What was the spark behind starting the TD foundation? And what did those very first days look like when coming up and starting this nonprofit yeah, but I think I.
- [32:41]
E
Would say it starts out of frustration. I think a lot of nonprofits start with somebody being frustrated with current conditions. I got my start in the ad tech and media world back in 96, but in 2005, I was called back into the military after being out for 12 years. And when I deployed to Iraq in 2006, I was actually a civil affairs officer. And one of the key missions there is humanitarian aid, but I couldn't get access to any humanitarian aid. So I was very frustrated with the military system. And at the time, Tom Espos had started an email list that had 10,000 people on it called the old timers List. And you had to have been in the industry as early as whatever to get on the list. So I sent a note out to this group and I said, here's my address. You know, I need children's vitamins. I need school supplies, plushies and soccer balls. And then the humanitarian aid started flowing. You know, I was operating every day in the slums of Sadr City and East Baghdad. It was a really war torn area. And the people that were being impacted the most were these innocent children.
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A
Right?
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E
All the wealthy folks left, right? They went, they left the country. You know, all the middle class, you know, they left the people or the wealthy stayed. The middle class left it, and the poor were left dealing with whatever's going on. And they're just trying to put food on the, on the table for their kids like any mother or father would across the world. So that's how it started. It actually started within the media industry and, and folks just shipping stuff. And then when I was out on missions, we would stop and distribute it. Anything from shoes to Flintstones chewables.
- [34:29]
B
It's incredible. It's a, it's a, it's a nice story to hear that you, you saw a gap. You saw the ability to, to give back and help and contribute. I don't think war in any case, is, is a good thing. And you're right. I think many times it is the poor and the unable to leave that are the most impacted. So thank you for doing that, and thank you for starting it. Peter, you first learned about the foundation many years ago. I know you've been involved for quite some time, but what stood out about Tom, what stood out about the foundation overall and what motivated you to get involved?
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F
Well, Tom is very humble when he tells his story. I mean, he's nothing short of a war hero. And he'll never say it, so I will. You know, as he said, A lot of us got together recognizing that there's a need. And what Tom left out was when he was overseas, he was shot by a sniper. And you can.
- [35:20]
B
Oh, I did not know that.
- [35:21]
F
As evidenced by his presence here today, he survived that horrible ordeal, and that really caused us all to sit up and pay even more attention to our friend and to the cause of helping innocent kids. The foundation was started by the late Bill Flatley, the late Sean Finnegan, and Paul Bremer, and they recruited many of us who knew and loved Tom and thought the cause was more than worthy. And so it was as simple as that. And the nice thing, you know, as you're doing this big episode, looking at the future of ad tech and the future of agencies and all that, the nice thing about our entire business is that we all tend to turn out for really important causes, and this is one of them. I mean, I'm involved with not only the Tom Beerlein foundation, but also things like the National Kidney foundation and Sandy Hug Promise. But this one is really close to my heart because we do help so many people who are in desperate need. These case studies of where and how we help people are just. They're. They're heartbreaking. And the nice thing is that Tom Vierland foundation swoops in, comes to the rescue for these people.
- [36:39]
B
Well, Tom, first of all, thank you for what you've done and for your service, number one. And I did not know that, Peter, so thank you for sharing that. You sure you should have started with that, Tom?
- [36:50]
E
No. Maybe for. Maybe for another podcast. Getting shot was. Getting shot was the best thing that ever happened to me. But maybe that's for another podcast. It's now you hear it a lot from cancer survivors and other folks. You just. You have a different perspective. Not that I was an ogre beforehand, but I'm living a better life now, for sure.
- [37:09]
B
Heidi, from. From your perspective, as the CMO of the NHL and as such a powerful woman in the space, what from your end really attracted you to this foundation and what have you seen from up close that. That you feel has really kind of hit those heartstrings of yours that you love and you love to help them get back?
- [37:29]
G
Absolutely. Well, I, too, was on the old timer list. I like to call it the OG list, not the old timers, but I was on the old timer list, so. And, you know, we were all trying to stand up the digital business at that time. We were a pretty tight community. We all knew Tom. He worked at Dynamic Logic at the. Trying to help us justify investment in digital media and show that it could move the needle on brand metrics, which was a huge hill to climb at those times. And so I think as a collective media community, we were all stunned when Tom went to Iraq and then got shot, was told he would never walk again. And then here he is walking, talking family. Everything that everyone said he couldn't do, he is doing and turning his life around. So that is compelling story number one. But as we talked with Tom and learned more about these case studies and these personal stories, they are, as Peter said, gut wrenching stories. These cases range from people trying to maintain, pay their mortgages and not get evicted. They've got a lot of medical problems or have everyday medical issues like cancer that they can't afford to pay the bills, or they choose to pay for their cancer treatment instead of a mortgage. Their kids can't afford school supplies or they afford electricity in their homes. I mean, every single day you get these real stories from real people who are in real despair. And the case story is part of it, but the other part, the other side of it, like the, the ability to, to quickly Venmo money to them and to have a life changing impact on each and every one of these people is what really drives us and drives us to continue and want to share this. But the, the thank you notes that you get back is what they what's most rewarding because that's where you truly feel the impact in these individuals lives. And it's like I've been, I'm sorry, I've been involved in it for a number of years and you start to see the patterns that are out there. It's about health, whether it's physical and mental, it's about home, it's about family. And that's the thing. For us to be able to mobilize and provide support on those three basic and important needs on life is so important. But the thing that really bothers me about all of this, when we talk about how being frustrated with the system drives us, the fact that these brave men and women and their families are living at or below poverty level should anger all of us in this thing. And that's why we need to mobilize and be there for them so that they can live their lives with dignity and respect and get through some of these tough times.
- [40:17]
B
I wish foundations like this weren't needed and that veterans and the people that need the help just got what they needed. But at the same time, the work that you are doing is being seen and being felt by Over a hundred families a year. I mean, that's no joke. And that's a huge, huge accomplishment. So to all three of you and everyone else, that's a great thing to do.
- [40:37]
F
I can give a crisp story, a case study of one. I live in New Jersey, and a story of an army veteran. A post 911 army veteran with 100% disability rating for PTSD. He has two kids under the age of 8. He has a wife with recurring cancer. And while she's out, you know, because of that leave of absence, she lost her income. And they reach out to the Tom Tierling foundation, and they said, we're behind on mortgage. We're about to lose the house. We need $749. And without any red tape or bureaucracy, we make it happen and give them a break. These people just need a break. And that's what Tom Gearline foundation does. It helps people as fast as they can, as fast as we can, when they need it the most, without any red tape. And it's, it's, you know, it's everything to these people. It's everything.
- [41:39]
B
It's.
- [41:39]
E
It's a bit of a unique model from that perspective. The direct payment angle, the speed. 90% of our payments are made within 24 hours. Again, we specialize in crisis. We usually work with a network. But to Heidi's point about some of these thank you letters, with your permission, I'd like to read a couple at the end of June. My phone is from 96, so I do not pick up, but I saw this. Augusta, Georgia. I'm like, well, no, that's where one of our partners is. So I picked up, but it wasn't our partner. It was a woman sitting inside a VA in the Intimate Partner Violence Assistance Program. She was a victim of domestic abuse. She has two little kids, and she was still just waiting it out, waiting it out until she could save enough money to escape. And her plan was to escape at the end of July. And she just couldn't take it anymore and shows up at the va. She's, I'm on the phone, I'm getting goosebumps. I'm on the phone with her and she's asking for, I need $178 for this, and I need to do the storage. And I need, like, we venmoed her $2,000 within an hour to get her out of that house that she was planning to be in for another six weeks. And here's what she wrote later that day. You don't even know what this means. Thank you so much. I don't even know how I made it this far. My body is starting to get physically sick being so strong for my boys. We get to be free way sooner than July 21st. I'm going to read a second one, then I'll turn it back over, which is a really sad thing that's happened. Hadn't happened much, but it's happened four times in the last 18 months, which is people don't have food and water. We're used to utilities, schools, a lot of medical bills, a lot of utilities, mortgages, we do a ton of car repairs. In fact, the number one factor creating hopelessness in a veteran, not health issues, not money issues, not even being homeless without a car when you don't have transportation. It's the number one factor leading to suicidal ideations. Well, here's this woman, single mother, she has a six year old daughter. She couldn't she car repair so she had to get that repair because that's how she gets out and about but now doesn't have food or fuel for the, for the vehicle. She asked for 250 bucks like we sent her 500. But here's a note I get the next day. Dear Mr. Deerline, I'm writing to express my deepest gratitude for the financial assistance you provided me. As a veteran and single mother, I was facing a difficult time and your generosity brought much needed relief just when it was needed most. Your support has made a meaningful difference to both me and my daughter and I cannot thank you enough. It is truly humbling to know that there are organizations and individuals like you who dedicate their time and resources supporting veterans in need. Your kindness and commitment to serving others embody the very best of what it means to give back to those who served. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for your compassion, generosity and the incredible work that you do. I will always be deeply grateful.
- [44:58]
B
I mean this really puts everything into perspective. $175. $500. Fix my car. Just being able to get around. It's pretty incredible to think that even smaller donations of a hundred or two hundred or five hundred can change and impact somebody's life so positively. From where you sit, Tom, Peter, Heidi. And maybe I'll direct this towards Tom. What is the biggest challenge for you with the foundation? And how do you, how do you navigate it and how do you work around some of the challenges you may have trying to raise money to help all these people?
- [45:31]
E
I mean, well, we're all volunteers, right? And we're all busy as you pointed out. Heidi's the cmo. Peter's working hard and a couple of different roles. I have a real job. I have three little kids. We don't have a formal infrastructure. So the last two years we've actually run out of money. We raised between, let's call it 200 and 350 a year, but the demand is twice that, 2x. So each of the last two years we've run out of money. So the challenge is that we're not really like someone will call us. Who do we talk to? What do we do? There is no TD Foundation. It's us. It's an email, it's a request. We filter cases from a network. So that's the first challenge. We don't have real operations. We really serve as a financial arm. The second challenge, as you point out, is the fundraising. Our demand just from our current network easily exceeds $500,000 a year. So really three out of four, maybe even four out of five people that donate these days. And to Your point, it's $25 here, $50 here. It adds up. But it's all people within the media industry. We were born from the digital media mafia. And so the challenge right now is we're looking for that next generation of folks. And in fact that would be my call to action for folks to your podcast if you would like to get involved here just to either raise awareness or maybe do a fun little fundraiser. We're looking for 20 somethings and 30 somethings. Nothing against old guys like me, 58. I'll be 58 in a few weeks. But we're looking for that next generation to step up that are looking for a cause. And as you've heard Peter and Heidi say, we think this is a worthy cause, taking care of the children of our wounded veterans and gold star families that are dealing with difficulties and they just need that bridge to go from crisis and surviving to thriving. So if you are listening and you know you're 20 something, 30 something and been looking for a cause, maybe TD foundation is it, just send me a text 917-287-5961. I'll say that again, 917-287-5961. That's the same phone number you'll see on the website tdfoundation.org or I would tell you to send me an email but my last name is D E I E R L E I N. But you can look for the Tom Dearline foundation on X, LinkedIn or Facebook and reach out that way as well.
- [48:13]
B
I'll put a link to the website and to the contact information in the description of the podcast and in the post, probably in comments. I, I did want to ask like there's a lot of individuals that are donating from the kindness of their own hearts and wanting to help contribute to, to this cause. Everybody here works in the media industry. How can the broader media industry and community play a role in helping out? Do you accept corporate donations? Do you work with any of the big media companies out there that may be listening where, where my listeners can reach out to their team and say I know you do donation matches because I know companies do that. I'd like to donate 200 and can you match my 200 and send this off to TD?
- [48:54]
E
Yeah, no. In fact again we do golf outings and those usually corporate sponsored. We do the gala and we do accept larger corporate donations. But yeah, like some of our gala hosts, you know, have been some of the biggest names out there including wpp, including Google and Reuters and different folks have hosted us Simul Media. Dave Morgan's a big supporter. We mentioned Tara Terry's done a great job supporting our events for many, many years. So yes, the biggest push is going to be five and $10,000 checks. And that tends to come from corporations around our different events. But certainly if your company has a corporate match and you make a donation, please put in for that match as well. In terms of media, yeah, if you want to help us run some media, we've had donated media before. People helped us with some creative elements. So again, was it time, treasure or talent? Maybe you're young in your career and you don't have the treasure yet, but you do have some time and maybe some talent and we're open to taking those that help as well.
- [50:04]
B
Well from, from a personal side, I will be donating after this. I'll talk to Peter as well. I spoke to him prior. But also what we can do at marketecture is we can donate some pre roll audio ads for you guys. So quick, 15, 22nd AD that we can run. We can run it as mid rolls pre rolls for our podcast. So that's a donation from Architecture Media to you and then also make a personal donation to help the cause.
- [50:28]
E
Thank you so much.
- [50:29]
B
Of course. And then Heidi, anything else you'd like to say before we kind of sign off regarding TD Foundation? Anything that you think the audience would like to hear?
- [50:38]
G
Well, one of our campaigns of awareness that we conducted last year was called 50 families and you can read all those cases on our LinkedIn account as well as our Instagram account. But I highly encourage you to go look at those case studies and see exactly what TD foundation is about. There's nothing more compelling to move you to participate again with your time or your talent or your treasure. I like that. But that, I think will really, really compel action from all the listeners that we have here.
- [51:10]
F
Perfectly said. And if you're even a little bit motivated, act today. Act now.
- [51:16]
B
That's right. Love it. Thank you. Thank you.
- [51:20]
G
I mean, the other thing I would say is that this has brought us all really close together within the industry. And in a world in which everyone's in disparate places and working remotely and IRL events don't happen so much, these are IRL events that we have. And all the relationships that we've built with each other over time have paid off in terms of referrals to new jobs, supporting each other, hiring each other. So if you're young and you're looking for that sense of community, this is also exactly the place to create it with your own generation and keep this program thriving for generations to come.
- [51:57]
E
Great point, great point.
- [51:59]
B
Incredible. Tom, Heidi, Peter, thank you again for joining me. And thank you for the trust and for the support as well.
- [52:06]
G
Thank you.
- [52:07]
E
Thanks, guys.
- [52:08]
B
And then moving into the third segment, I have Sam Bloom from PMG and Lauren Woetzel from Infosum. WPP will be covering the future of agencies. Heidi. Tom, Peter, again, thank you so much for your time. Okay, we're back and we just wrapped up with Tom Deerlein, Peter Naylor and Heidi Browning chatting about giving back with TD Foundation. We're moving into the third segment, which is the future of agencies. With me today are two very well known agency leaders, starting with Lauren Wetzel of Infosum, which was acquired by wpp, and of course, Sam Bloom from pmg. Lauren, Sam, welcome to the podcast.
- [52:47]
H
Thank you. Ad Tech Valve.
- [52:49]
C
Thanks. Atg.
- [52:50]
B
Thank you and thanks for your support. I think you've both been on the podcast in some capacity. Lauren, you were a very early guest. Sam, I think I had you on a special segment, I think earlier last year. So thank you both for coming back on and trusting me once again.
- [53:02]
C
Kidding. We get a moment with the God. It's all good.
- [53:05]
H
All is absolved.
- [53:06]
B
Hashtag blessed. Sam, Hashtag blessed. I did want to ask you. So I ran through a little bit of the the future of ad tech, what that looks like, all of the changes, the technological advancements, the way things are changing in the way media buying is being done. Talked a little bit about the creator economy and the growth and opportunity there and what that looks like for buyers and what that looks like for advertising overall. But I did want to understand a little bit more on the agency perspective, which is often not talked about as much as I would like. I think there's a lot of ad tech in the market, talking ad tech all the time, and I hear a lot of it. But as things are changing, and maybe I'll point this towards you, Sam, as things are changing and brands are starting to change, the way they look at their marketing budgets, the way they're looking at performance, and especially the fact that they're bringing a lot more of the capabilities in house because they can. Where does an agency sit it and what's that unique value that you bring to these brands? In order for them to find you in a position where they can't get rid of you, they have to use you?
- [54:08]
C
Well, look, I mean, I, I don't see agencies really ever going away, to be honest with you. And mostly because I think there, there's a craft here around, you know, and craft is marketing. And so I think the first piece is, you know, many agencies, every agency I've ever met, for the most part, there's an A team and they can, you know, they know a lot about the business, they know a lot about the craft, and they can provide great counsel to clients. And I think that's the first piece is whether it's, you know, marketing, business transformation, you know, you know, it's nice having an alter ego. And I think that that's one piece, I think that we provide to clients. I think the second piece is, and I think Lauren will probably nod our head at this, but I mean, you know, there's a lot of data that has to be integrated and has to be, you know, standardized, clean, structured and orchestrated. And, you know, that's not a small task. I think for, for clients. It's one thing to bring Google in house, it's another thing to bring meta in house. But once you start talking about out, you know, multiple channels, particularly World Gardens and other things, I mean, those things are, are not easy. And the other piece is the pace of change is rapid. And so I think again, once, once again, having someone with one foot in the business and one foot out of the business, to be able to see the market and have a purview of the market, to be able to have their farm on, you know, the pace of change and to be able to integrate those things quickly and move quickly, I think that will be important. And I see a lot of in house teams struggling frankly with that last piece a lot.
- [55:56]
B
So that would be Lauren, what are your thoughts?
- [56:00]
H
I couldn't agree more with Sam, and I'm new to the agency business, but if there's any testament to the relevance of agencies, I think now more than ever, like I'm in my agency era and I couldn't be more excited. I also still love wearing the hat of technology, but I see agencies, they're not just executors, they're also connectors and accelerators, which I think, Sam, to your point, plays into not only across the marketing funnel and bringing in creative and data and technology and partnerships or, or walled gardens or commerce or growth of CTV and many other media channels. I think that that sort of ability to accelerate, that ability to be frankly, neutral ecosystem enablers, if you will, they just sit at the intersection of those media owners of those platforms, of those tech partners and are every day helping brands navigate complexity across those sort of different environments. And as it relates to, I think this notion of in house teams or sort of our agencies going away, I think they actually can be great partners also back to that connection point. So in house teams may be closer to the brand, but you have agencies that deliver the breadth of perspective across industries. They're working with multiple brands, they're working across different capabilities, across different disciplines, their spotting patterns and innovations that sometimes I think the brands can't see on their own. Something in financial services, for example, may be applicable to something in streaming and it doesn't seem like there's a perfect line to draw across them, but I've actually seen it in play. And so I think for those reasons, I think you're going to continue to see agencies evolve, but I think you're also going to continue to see the service be more relevant than ever while also addressing what Sam, reference, which gets into data and gets into technology, which agencies obviously need to embrace and be well versed in.
- [58:13]
B
And you touched upon a lot of the things that I wanted to ask you later on, which has to do with, with the building of tools, the collection and understanding of data and how, how your brands and your clients can utilize them. But as, as we're starting to see a thriving walled garden business and maybe not so thriving open web industry and web, well, it's thriving, but there's some challenges around it, especially with LLMs and AI and everything else. What can a brand in particular do with an agency like you, Sam, that's different and differentiated than what maybe they can do directly with these walled gardens?
- [58:49]
C
Well, I Mean, so one is, I mean, we work pretty closely with the, you know, the engineering teams at the walled gardens, you know, and, and, and there's a lot of back and forth about what data we need access to, you know, what tools and those kinds of things and to be able to, you know, bring insights that are actionable for clients. And what I would sort of say is a lot of clients don't have, you know, I would say most, those teams aren't used to working in that kind of stuff. I mean, and the other thing is, and, and when those partners bring you that stuff, they're not ready made there. There are things you have to, you know, forge with those teams. And so I think that's the first piece and I, and I think it's evolving. We had a conversation this week with one of the walled gardens and they were like, well, do you want an API or do you want it through mcp? You know, you choose, you know, and I, I don't know many clients today that can, can frankly have that conversation, you know, and, and start to, you know, to do some of those things. And I think they're early days and I, you know, and again, not that we're the technology experts on everything, but I think we have to anticipate, you know, a year from now or two years from now and things that scale across hundreds of clients. I mean, and Lauren has probably the same issues. I mean, so we're thinking about things, things very differently and we're having to collaborate with, with partners that are also thinking about those things. And, and so I think that's a very valuable thing that, that we can bring to the table. I think the other piece of it is, is that I think Lauren's point is when you work across a lot of pieces of business, you get a lot of learnings and what may, you know, you'd be surprising in one category, you know, you think it's exclusive to that category is not. And there's things you can, can, you know, easily bring into other things. And so I think those things really do matter. But I think it's going to be challenging with the walled guards because they, you know, when you look at just the CapEx investments they have in AI and on all these other things, I mean, the reality of it is it's going to dwarf all agencies put together for certain. And so we have to think about how we harness that in the right way and how we go at it. And you can fight it or you can work with it, and I prefer the latter to Be honest with you. Yeah.
- [61:24]
B
And I know that there's been a lot of initiatives from WPP and others and PMG focused on the data. Understanding the data and just providing better solutions as experts in the domain is how I look at it. The brands may have lots of talent, they definitely understand what they're looking for and what the final outcome they're looking for is. But that centralized information hub through an agency where they're able to provide those services in a more streamlined and can I say repetitive way based off of background and education and knowledge is key. But with all the changes, and I love to talk about this because we don't talk about it much, the money aspect of it has changed. The ability for a lot of these walled gardens who are building simplified UIs with, with basically LLM prompts that you can type in to run a campaign is starting to create this, I think semi false narrative that it's really easy to run their brand campaigns. But the reality is that there's a lot more to it than just uploading creative and clicking live. And so that brings me to my question of how does the money look and how does the business model look and the traditional retainer model look moving forward as these tools become more accessible to these brands? And at the same time you want to bring improved performance to these brands directly. And I'll maybe I'll point that at Lauren.
- [62:43]
H
Yeah, I want to touch on the last question just really quickly on sort of this balancing of data driven decision making as it relates to the Wild Gardens. And then we'll get into kind of the structure and what that looks like. If we all can agree that whether it's data driven marketing and you know, flavors of that, like addressable television advertising or advertising into walled gardens or, you know, or the use of things like LLMs, we all can recognize how important data is, which again I think is what sort of creates that dependency on certain platforms. And that's where I think agencies make the difference. I think it's helping brands move from this platform dependency to data autonomy. And obviously because I'll forever do a plug for private and secure data collaboration which really helps you to get there. And so I think it's important to acknowledge it's not just that the future is about more data, it's about better use of data. It's about diverse data which comes with combined trusted partnerships, which goes back to the agency role of being connectors. And so I think there's a huge ability for us to design those strategies on the fee structure. And this is coming from a lady who is, you know, leading a SaaS organization. And so it's interesting because I see studies all the time of like, will the agency model go from, you know, retainer fees over to, you know, will we sort of be technology enterprises? And to be honest with you, I think you're going to land somewhere very much in between. And I think, I'm sure you, Sam, we're already starting to see the lean in to this sort of evolution of really it starts with what the brands are asking for. They want more flexibility, they want more transparency, they want more accountability. And so they're asking just for more flexible models that are going to eventually and currently are hybrid. And so I think retainers can be there for stability, but I think you need to bake in performance incentives. And so, so I think it's also really important and frankly, when I was in another sort of services industry within consulting, I saw all the time innovative consulting engagements go into aligning that your client's success to your success and to your payout. And so I think aligning more to client outcomes, whether that's growth, whether that's customer engagement, whether that's innovation and so to sort of put a bow on it, I think that those financial models need to mirror that new role of the agency that we're playing, which is frankly less about time and materials, more about strategic partnerships, more about that connector, more about devising strategies so that you're not platform dependent and really trying to get to those outcomes and those business growth impacts.
- [65:51]
B
Yeah.
- [65:51]
C
And look, I mean, I, I couldn't agree with Lauren more. I, I think the, the funny thing is, you know, we just had this conversation, you know, internally. Automating through a is not AI, is not cheaper right now than, than people. And, and when you, you have to kind of look at it, I mean, I think there's this assumption that you can kind of cut 20, 30, 40% and the answer is no because you still need to, you know, people and the AI still, I don't know if it's going to get cheaper. I mean, I think that's what we all think, but that's not the case at the moment. But I think the piece that we play that's so critical is structuring data and contextualizing data to make it ready for AI. And those things is a lot of labor and you need a lot of tooling and a lot of instrumentation for that. And so, you know, which means you need really good people. So I think, you know, we're, we're always going to be a people based business, you know, because you do need strategy, you do need, you know, hands on in the business now that may, the work itself may change but you will need teams to help orchestrate these things. And so, and then the final piece that I've always thought was the single most important is someone has to understand the consumer. Right. The end consumer for our clients. And I'm not going to leave that up to an LLM to make that decision. Now we'll use an LLM to help you facilitate that decision or to facilitate insights for sure. Sure. But at the end of the day we're in such a nuanced business and we can't lose sight of the fact that it's still a human on the other end that you're trying to persuade to consume something. And so, and some of the best insights have been, you know, you know, sort of serendipitous is the word I would use because humans are involved. So you know, I, I, I think the machine may run a little bit, you know, the factory floor, we talk about that a lot. Factory floor may change. You may move from a combustion engine to an ev. Great. You still need people and you need smart people.
- [68:20]
B
It's, it's funny you mentioned that about the machine. I had a podcast interview which I think is released right before this one and it was about the automation of ad operations and what that looks like. And one of the key points that this person brought up was AI isn't going to remove the need for ad ops people, but it's going to create an output level and it's going to automate a lot of the repetitive tasks, tasks where minor mistakes create major impacts to your revenue. And I think that changed my perspective on it because I, I was kind of leaning more towards great, you don't need 10 adopts people, you need one. No, you could need 10, but you don't need to scale to 25 anymore. But it's all those minuscule tasks that are error prone that will be eliminated from the process which will help drive the business forward.
- [69:09]
C
I'll tell you, the mantra I've been using there is I want to clone the best people. And I think the tooling is going to help us true clone the best people. And I think that's the piece of it is there are some people that just have freaking kick ass processes and understand how the work needs to be done. And the AI should be learning from the human, not the other way around.
- [69:30]
B
You know, Lauren, you moved from tech to agency Most people move from agency to tech, mostly related to pay. Can I say that on, on a podcast, but mostly related to pay. Tech is kind of known to pay a little bit better than the agency side, but a big topic that comes up quite a bit and it's kind of like an ongoing joke with all the popular meme accounts and Instagram accounts are basically the culture that exists at Ad agenc agencies. What's different today and what will be different in the future about the way agencies are working with and supporting their staff considering there's this sort of bad rep for working at an agency?
- [70:08]
H
Well, I, you know this from my prior podcast which is a plug that everyone should tune into all the Legacy post 100 episode podcast because you and I talked a lot about this, like how critical people are. And so I think the need to retain and inspire talent has never been more paramount in the agency business. And again it's almost as though the agency business did sort of like an over correction where when AI and when data and when tech all needed to be this like fluent language, you know, you start to see a little bit of an identity crisis where you kind of move away from reminding yourself that like the people are the products. This is like agencies are in the services business, people in excellent service are the product. And it was really refreshing. WPP just got a new CEO, Cindy Rose. We had a town hall last week and her first like priority area was around being people first. And it's, it's logical, right for us to achieve excellence as an agency, we have to ensure that, that we have the best talent, that the experiences as an employee of an agency is world class and we have to help folks to grow as professionals. We at WPP need to be the home for the world's most exceptional talent is what she said. And I couldn't agree more. Infosum had one of our values was always people first and so we couldn't be more excited about that, that. But I do think to your point, the way to sort of balance this, sort of not making it an overcorrection as you continue to learn more things. People feel inspired when they're working on the edge of innovation. So right now that's data, AI, creativity, media channels being everywhere and everything and converging. I think it's important to talk about flexibility. Flexibility and inclusivity. I think they're non negotiables in today's workforce. And I think that's actually an intersection where I think tech for so long had a stronger reputation than services. You know, businesses like agencies, consultings, banks, et cetera. And so, and I think there's a lot to learn about that. Employees want to feel heard, valued, and obviously represented. But I think the last piece is just how you are leveling up the talent. And so don't forget sort of what's core in client service and being client obsessed and delivering excellent service. But how do you become an AI super user? How do you embrace the tools to power the daily work that you do and deliver efficiency? And so I think it's a lot of things. I think it's the fact that there is a long list of things that you're doing, which is like the starting point, point that, you know, maybe first, second and third on the list is, is enabling the people. Because the stronger the people, the stronger the service, which is getting back to being client obsessed and, and delivering the greatest value to the clients.
- [73:23]
B
No comment. Lauren. I mean, that was great. Sam, on, on your end, do you want to add anything to that?
- [73:29]
C
Well, you know, so I, I think the first piece is, you know, the, the where we sit. I mean, we're an independent agency. And so one of the things that, you know, and we, you know, I had run an agency, we were an independent agency, and we went through a process. And what I can tell you is I feel for my brethren that are and sisters that are either, you know, publicly held or private equity held and so forth, because there's a lot of financial pressure. And I think that that has led to a lot of weird things in culture. And so I see, you know, in some of the incentives there within, I think, are very difficult. So we're, we have a very different sort of playing. The way I think is we have a different deck of cards. You know, we're independently owned, we don't have any outside investors. It's still entrepreneurial led. And the other piece of it is our model. It's interesting. So, you know, every year we get a. What we call a graduate leadership pro. We have a graduate leadership program. We get a hundred new, you know, young, your early employment, early career folks coming in. And what I sort of say to you on this is I think we have to unlearn people in our industry, know what it was like 10, 15, 20 years ago. And if we rest on that legacy, we are missing the boat. And so I think to Lauren's point, we are on the bleeding edge of stuff. It's what I think of as the man on the moon kind of mission, which is where we're headed, you know, and I think that's exciting.
- [75:01]
B
Sam, Lauren, I want to thank you both for being my guests today. This actually concludes my 100th episode, which is wild to me. So thank you for, for being. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being my guest. To all of the listeners, to all the supporters, to the sponsors, thank you for all you've done. Ad Tech God has been an absolute life changing thing for me me. I really appreciate everything that everyone's done for me to help lift up me this brand and now architecture. Hope to see you guys on episode 200.
- [75:34]
C
Mazel tov, Yahweh.
- [75:36]
B
Thank you Sam.
- [75:37]
H
We're all clapping for him, of course.
- [75:40]
C
Anytime.
- [75:40]
B
Lauren, thanks for tuning in to another episode of the AdTech Godpod, a podcast for the people about the people. Stay connected with me for more insights, trends and interviews in the realm of adtech. Don't miss out on the latest updates. So follow me on X Instagram and connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't forget ATG Slack community has insights, networking opportunities and jobs. Keep the conversation going and stay at the forefront of adtech innovation.