Ep. 101 The Reach Effect: Inside the Business of Smarter TV

Summary

Podcast Summary: AdTechGod Pod – Ep. 101 “The Reach Effect: Inside the Business of Smarter TV”

Host: AdTechGod, The AdTech God
Guests: Dan Callahan (SVP & Chief Revenue Officer, Spectrum Reach), Alex Grossman (VP, Product Development, Spectrum Reach)
Release Date: October 7, 2025
Main Theme:
A deep dive into the evolution and future of TV advertising, with a focus on Spectrum Reach’s strategy for smarter, data-driven television. The conversation explores innovations in streaming and linear TV, the role of AI and clean rooms, industry partnerships, the fragmentation of TV audiences, the importance of quality content, and the value of networking in adtech.

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Episode Overview

The AdTechGod welcomes Dan Callahan and Alex Grossman of Spectrum Reach for an in-depth conversation about how television is evolving into a “smarter” medium for both marketers and viewers. The guests share perspectives from product and revenue leadership, specifically covering:

• Growth of streaming vs. linear TV
• Innovations in data-driven advertising
• The impact and practical use of AI and clean rooms
• Quality over quantity in FAST (Free Ad-supported Streaming TV)
• Unlocking local, regional, and national advertising outcomes
• The importance of relationships and networking in adtech

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Guest Backgrounds and Collaboration at Spectrum Reach

• Alex Grossman details his experience in ad product development (Freewheel, Pubmatic, startups) and his current focus on innovating media products at Spectrum Reach, for both local and national marketers.
  Quote:

  “A lot of our technology is coming from outside commercial partners and we help evaluate, vet, explore and innovate.” (02:42)

• Dan Callahan discusses his transition from Fox’s advanced ad sales and programmatic teams to Spectrum Reach, recently moving up to CRO.
  Quote:

  “Almost closing in on two years here at Spectrum... Moved into the CRO position about 45 days ago, so overseeing all aspects of local national advertising sales.” (04:02)

• On working together: Both leaders stress a close, complementary partnership between product and revenue teams, emphasizing a collaborative approach to understanding market needs and delivering solutions.
  Quote (Dan):

  “Sales and product are a compliment here... Alex is extremely knowledgeable, plugged in, brings ideas to us, is innovating all the time. So it's an amazing partnership.” (05:08)

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2. TV Advertising: From Linear to Streaming, and Beyond

• The State of Streaming:
  Spectrum has seen exponential growth in streaming, but traditional TV remains significant.
  Quote (Host):

  “Streaming continues to grow not only with new streaming solutions in market, but also with a little bit more of a traditional world of Spectrum...” (02:04)

• AI & Machine Learning:
  Alex describes the acceleration of AI adoption across adtech, citing partnerships (e.g., TVBeat for forecasting/optimization, Beachfront for programmatic linear) and the quest to make campaign buying and measuring seamless.
  Quote (Alex):

  “Now, when you look at almost every single business, there is an AI lens and element that everyone's evaluating. How can we stay ahead, how can we innovate...” (06:16)

• Sales Approach to Local, Regional, & National:
  Dan highlights the strength in Spectrum’s first-party household data, local seller network (600 AEs across the US), and tailored approaches for clients of different sizes and geographies.
  Quote:

  “Advertising at its core… is meant to drive an action. And selling campaigns at the local, regional, national, and addressable levels, all are doing the same thing for different businesses at different scales.” (09:04–10:30)

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3. Audience Targeting: Linear vs. Connected TV (CTV)

• Holistic Reach:
  Methodologically, Spectrum tracks “only linear,” “only streaming,” and “both” consumers to show the market how connected TV complements linear, providing incremental reach and better targeting.
  Quote (Dan):

  “Streaming continues to be a compliment to linear, whether that be additional view time, incremental reach and now with the ability to target... additional eyeballs, additional viewers, oftentimes additional homes.” (10:56–12:37)

• Innovation in Linear TV:
  Ongoing efforts to make linear TV inventory more dynamic, addressable, and impression-based as demand for modernized buying grows.
  Quote (Dan):

  “TV Beat and our linear footprint is still sizable. We are innovating like crazy to try to make that inventory more dynamic, more addressable, more impression based...” (11:51–12:37)

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4. FAST: Quality Over Quantity

• Overhype in FAST:
  Alex argues that while the growth in the number of FAST channels is “overhyped,” true value is found in premium content with strong audience data (and there’s a glut of low-quality, long-tail channels). Quote (Alex):

  “There's an overhyped abundance of fast supply and advertisers really should take the opportunity to focus their attention and investment on high quality content… media dollars are starting to get pulled back there.” (13:10–14:49)

• Host’s Perspective:
  ATG agrees, noting the difference between top-tier FAST channels and poor-quality inventory that should be “remnant.” Quote (ATG):

  “For me, I'm kind of with you. There's fast and fast quality tier 1. There's fast and there's fast quality tier 78... Those should be looked at as remnant low quality inventory.” (14:49–15:48)

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5. Hot Topics: AI, Clean Rooms, Retail Media Networks

• AI in Planning & Execution:
  Spectrum Reach already leverages AI for faster plan building, presentations, and real-time creative via partners like Waymark. Quote (Dan):

  “There was some press around our planning platform Architect using solutions like that that allow us to build plans more effectively faster... building presentations with AI and plans with AI live in a client pitch is super helpful.” (16:50)

• Clean Rooms:
  Alex provides a nuanced view: clean rooms are powerful but often overkill for SMBs; direct matching (with privacy best practices) suffices for many use cases. Quote (Alex):

  “Clean rooms were broadly designed for large sophisticated participants... Not every piece of data needs to be protected by a clean room or functionally matched with a clean room...” (18:15–19:46)

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6. What Advertisers Overlook

• Spectrum’s Scale and Technology:
  Dan points to Spectrum’s oft-underappreciated reach (over 30M consumers, major footprint via Spectrum TV app) and premium inventory (including live sports programmatic insertion) as key differentiators. Quote (Dan):

  “We’ve got the scale, we’ve got the capabilities... It's the distributor position with where we insert ads. I like to say we're selling an audience. They're picking the programming... and we get to bring together the collective scale of that consumption.” (20:07)

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7. The Importance of Relationships and Networking

• Personal Reflections:
  Both guests stress that trust and personal connections made throughout their careers are foundational to success and innovation. Quote (Alex):

  “A lot of [my partnerships] are based on trust and relationships... I think if I didn't invest as much in building the relationships and partnerships along the way, it definitely wouldn't have allowed me to be as successful as I have been.” (21:56)

  Quote (Dan):

  “As much as we talk about technology and AI... this still comes down to the people. It still comes down to the connections, the trust and those relationships.” (23:06–24:53)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Dan Callahan:

  “Our differentiator is our first party data. The subscriber information we have at household level stands up nationally.” (09:04)

• Alex Grossman:

  “Independent stats will show that we're the number one most viewed streaming service in the US on an hours per household basis. I think that's a pretty significant kind of milestone...” (13:10)

• AdTechGod (on FAST):

  “For me, I'm kind of with you. There's fast and fast quality tier 1... and tier 78 which sits there and it's basically extremely poor quality content...” (14:49)

• Dan Callahan (on AI-powered creative):

  “We use AI from a creative standpoint with a company called Waymark... We can build creative to take to a meeting, build creative with a client in the room...” (16:50)

• Alex Grossman (on clean rooms):

  “It's not always the right tool to solve the problem that we're trying to solve... First party onboarding data is very effective as long as being matched against a good quality data source.” (18:15)

• Dan Callahan (on the people):

  “This still comes down to the people. It still comes down to the connections, the trust and those relationships.” (24:53)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:42] – Alex Grossman’s background & Spectrum Reach’s tech approach
• [04:02] – Dan Callahan’s journey from Fox to Spectrum, sales philosophy
• [05:08] – The product/revenue partnership in practice
• [06:16] – Evolution of TV/Adtech in the past 18 months: AI, programmatic
• [09:04] – Spectrum’s first-party data & sales approach at all levels
• [10:56] – How streaming and linear TV complement each other
• [13:10] – FAST explosion, hype vs. reality, content quality
• [16:50] – AI solutions in sales, planning, and creative
• [18:15] – Practical use (and limitations) of clean rooms, SMB focus
• [20:07] – What advertisers are missing about Spectrum’s platform
• [21:56] – Building relationships and networks in adtech

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Episode Takeaway

Spectrum Reach positions itself at the intersection of TV’s linear tradition and streaming future, leveraging data, AI, and close collaboration between sales and product teams to deliver results for advertisers—from SMBs to national brands. Both guests emphasize the value of quality (over inflated low-quality supply), measured innovation (adoption of AI and clean rooms when it truly helps), and the enduring ROI of personal industry relationships.

Closing Thought:
“In an AI-powered, data-driven ad world, the ‘smarter TV’ is only as good as the people and relationships behind it.”

Transcript

[Ad Tech God]

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[Ad Tech God]

Window into the world of advertising technology and the people behind it. I'm your host, Ad Tech God. Welcome to the Ad Tech God pod where I speak with the TV leaders of our industry. Today is a special episode as I not only have one guest from Spectrum Reach, but I have two. With me today is Dan Callahan, SVP and Chief Revenue Officer, and Alex Grossman, Vice President, Product Development. As friends of the podcast, I'm excited to chat with them to hear about the future of TV and the business of a smarter television. Dan, Alex, welcome to the pod.

[Dan Callahan]

Thank you.

[Alex Grossman]

Good to be here. Thanks for having us.

[Ad Tech God]

Thank you both for joining. I'm excited. I've heard a lot in the news about what you guys are doing with streaming. I've seen some stats that have been released as of late that streaming continues to grow not only with the new streaming solutions in market, but also with a little bit more of a traditional world of, you know, Spectrum and the charter parent company. So I'm, I'm really excited to talk to you guys and see how you're growing, how you're seeing the growth there and what the future of a smarter television is for you. I'll take it to the beginning. Alex, I would love to hear about you. I start every podcast just understanding about your background, where you come from. You like to tell the audience a little bit about yourself.

[Alex Grossman]

Sure. First off, thanks for having me. It's a longtime listener first time caller. So right now I'm the VP of Ad Product Development at Spectrum Reach. I lead a group focused on innovating and developing our media products for marketers, local marketers, national marketers. We have a fairly diversified business at Spectrum Reach and we do everything from making sure that we're delivering the right media to measuring it the right way, building the right tools for customers and partners to measure and evaluate how their campaigns are running. And we also manage a lot of the partnerships that help make it possible. Some of our tech is built in house. A lot of our technology is coming from outside commercial partners and we help evaluate, vet, explore and innovate. Prior to Spectrum Reach, I had a stint at Freewheel where I helped develop their programmatic Marketplace business in the North America region. And I had a couple of different roles before that, Pubmatic at my own startup, Marchex. Buy side, sell side. I hopped around quite a bit in the industry. Been in advertising for pretty much my entire career. Love it. Always inspired by all the new things that are coming around the corner.

[Ad Tech God]

Amazing. Incredible. Dan, how about you? Where were you prior to Spectrum? Would love to hear your experience and then we can dive into some questions about the state of the industry.

[Dan Callahan]

Yeah, absolutely. Almost closing in on two years here at Spectrum. Moved into the CRO position about 45 days ago, so overseeing all aspects of local national advertising sales. And before Spectrum was at Fox variety of roles. 15 years. Started on the news side in digital for Fox News and business. Moved into Fox Sports and sort of got my feet wet in the advanced programmatic space and then closed out the final few years there within Fox Networks Group, Fox Corporation, you know, on the corporate side leading advanced ad sales and innovation for Fox. So good run there, learn the business. And happy to be here. Continuing to learn, but applying a lot of that experience to what we're doing and how we're selling today.

[Ad Tech God]

I love the fact that one is so product focused and the other one is revenue focused. Just general question, how closely do you guys work together and communicate together on a daily basis? It must be that, you know, you're tapping into the market and understanding what the market wants. And are you communicating that to Alex? Is Alex also suggesting how things are being built and created? Maybe I'll ask Dan on that one.

[Dan Callahan]

Yeah, look, it's, it's very collaborative, right? I mean, I think we sit on the same floor, we're right around the corner from one another. You know, sales and product are a compliment here. We know we need product to be successful. We need the solutions the integrations to go and sell. And Alex is extremely knowledgeable, plugged in, know brings ideas to us, is innovating all the time. So it's, it's an amazing partnership that, you know, has worked really well and continues to grow through the streaming and through the, the new ad products that we're taking to market.

[Ad Tech God]

It's funny because I've, I've heard Alex was ad tech God, but I'm not sure how that's being done. If, if that's true or not, the.

[Alex Grossman]

Rumors will finally put to rest here.

[Ad Tech God]

Well, I don't know. Technology has really advanced over the last couple years, so. Nice prompt you wrote in ChatGPT this morning. This recording. Alex, question for you. You've been so ingrained in the tech side, having worked at free will, now working at Spectrum, running the product side of things. How has the industry evolved, let's say over the last 12 to 18 months? But more importantly, what's next? Like, what is going to happen in the streaming industry? And how do you see AI and machine learning playing a role in that?

[Alex Grossman]

I think the ad tech industry is really fueling growth for many of our peer industries and they're powering every enterprise on and off the Internet. When we think about the things that are evolving in adtech, they're really in parallel to everything we're seeing in the broader ecosystem. Things like AI, machine learning, new technologies, new capabilities that are coming to market. AdTech is using them just like every other industry and they're all reinventing themselves. You know, 12 to 18 months is a generation of technology innovation. So, you know, 18 months ago, ChatGPT was not at the forefronts of enterprise development. Now, when you look at almost every single business, there is an AI lens and element that everyone's evaluating. How can we stay ahead, how can we innovate and produce new things? But those things are happening on a regular basis and it's happening right here in front of us. You know, we just recently announced a partnership with TV Beat, their leader in executing linear TV campaign forecasting, planning and optimization. And on the programmatic side, a few years ago, we had a similar relationship that we announced with Beachfront to take the old school linear TV inventory and bring it into the new age of programmatic execution. I think from a streaming perspective, we're constantly looking at unifying experiences for customers, making it easier to buy, easier to sell, easier to measure. And the technologies that are constantly changing around this just make it more seamless and frictionless of a process that's really been the Focus. Instead of relying on traditional methods of manually negotiating and planning TV spots, our systems use data to automatically place the ads, to automatically understand what inventory hasn't been sold or has been sold, and making sure that we're creating the best opportunities for advertisers.

[Ari from Marketecture]

Hey, this is Ari with Market, and unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard that Market Live is coming up October 27th in New York City. The last Marketecture Live was sold out, and this one will surely be as well, with speakers like Mark Grether of PayPal, Eric Seuford of Mobile Dev Memo, and Jenny Wall from videoamp Plus, I'll be recording my podcast live with the one and only Antonio Garcia Martinez, author of Chaos Monkeys and now part of the team building at Coinbase. It's a stacked agenda and we hope to see you there. Go to marketlive.com and grab your ticket while, well, they're still available. That's marketexturelive.com.

[Ad Tech God]

Incredible. Dan, how have you seen the market react to the solutions you have in market? And I know that on the sales front and leading a sizable sales division, I'm assuming they're like regional based.

[Dan Callahan]

Yeah, it's a bit of both, I thought you were going to say. And that's all the time we have. That's the podcast, folks.

[Ad Tech God]

We're done. We're going to shut it down now.

[Dan Callahan]

Dan, no, look, it's been fun to come over here. A lot of what I was leading the charge with was addressable advanced sales. And that's our core bread and butter, right? Our differentiator is our first party data. The subscriber information we have at household level stands up nationally. So that's a big piece of what we do, what we take to market regionally, you know, again, where we have a significant number of our subscribers, our bigger markets, Dallas, Louisiana, New York, Orlando, Tampa, you know, it sort of comes down to time spent again, the number of subscribers, the amount of time people are spending with the spectrum TV environment, both linearly and from a streaming standpoint. And our local sellers and the feet on the street, right, our 600 AES that are deployed across the country that are in market, you know, from those areas, you know, know the local small business owners frequent them, shop there, you know, help them drive sales and grow their business. So it's really, you know, three approaches, all slightly different in the way we market and message to them, but all with the same outcome of we're going to advertise to your consumer and we're going to drive those consumers to your stores, to your sites to purchase your products. So, you know, advertising at its core, you know, as we all know, is meant to drive an action. And selling campaigns at the local, regional, national and addressable levels, all are doing the same thing for different businesses at different scales.

[Ad Tech God]

This question is for either one of you, Dan or Alex, but when you look at the the difference between targeting audiences across connected television versus traditional tv, I'm assuming there are differences. Well, there are differences, but there's also complements to each. And utilizing both, how is that being pitched to these clients, pitched to these advertisers and how do they both benefit each other to improve performance for any brand or advertiser on market?

[Dan Callahan]

Yeah, I'm happy to take that from a sales standpoint first. Right. I mean we track. It's a great slide we present. It's called the only only bolt slide. So tracking spectrum consumers that are only linear subscribers or viewers, only streaming subscribers or you know, the number and the growing portion that does both. But I think everywhere we've looked at it, you know, streaming continues to be a compliment to linear, whether that be additional view time, incremental reach and now with the ability to target. Right. You've done DAI programmatic addressability and streaming for years.

[Ad Tech God]

Tonight on NBC, Jimmy Fallon and Bozma St. John host the incredible new competition show.

[Dan Callahan]

I hired 10 creatives from all walks of life. They will be battling it out to see who can impress the world's biggest brands.

[Alex Grossman]

This is a huge opportunity.

[Kate from Marketecture]

This is the battle for the next big idea.

[Alex Grossman]

This is not play play. We're spending millions of dollars.

[Dan Callahan]

I'm so excited to embark on this.

[Ad Tech God]

Adventure with all of you.

[Dan Callahan]

Maybe the best idea on Brand with Jimmy Fallon tonight on NBC Years. Alex touched on it. TV beat and our linear footprint still sizable. Right. We are innovating like crazy to try to make that inventory more dynamic, more addressable, more impression based, just as we see the marketplace and advertisers seek that type of transaction. So across the board, it's looked at from a sales perspective as incremental. Additional eyeballs, additional viewers, oftentimes additional homes. You know, it's, it's great to live in both, but we sit squarely at that access point of fragmentation with sort of half the consumption still linear and half squarely streaming.

[Ad Tech God]

Both massive markets, even just independently, they're both massive markets. Like it's such a huge audience across either one. So being able to address both is pretty incredible. Alex, there's a lot of buzz that happens in ad tech. You come from the supply side, platform side, you're focused on the product and there's a lot of things that are overhyped and there's a lot of things that might be underhyped. But what are you most excited about that's happening in the market and the technological changes and advancements that are happening specifically in ctv. But I mean, if you want, you can go outside of that, those walls too.

[Alex Grossman]

There's definitely no shortage of, of hype in our industry in terms of what's, what's overhyped and underhyped. You know, selfishly, I think some buyers still don't think Spectrum is a major streaming player. You know, independent stats will show that we're the number one most viewed streaming service in the US on an hours per household basis. I think that's a pretty significant kind of milestone when, when media buyers often see those stats there shocked, they're impressed. Fast was a very exciting ecosystem that developed really quickly, really fast. And fast channels had a growth curve that was grown exponentially based on number of unique fast channels that quickly popped up in existence. It didn't take a lot of investment necessarily or technological capability to launch more channels. But there's a much more modest curve of consumption of fast content. And what we're seeing is this mass disparity between the quantity versus the quality and how much is out there versus what consumers are actually consuming in the streaming ecosystem. So there's an overhyped abundance of fast supply and advertisers really should take the opportunity to focus their attention and investment on high quality content. Some of that does exist in the fast ecosystem. We see fast channels like Xenoplay that are creating really good live content and have lots of odd titles available for demand. But by and large I think that that area of the ecosystem is a little overhyped at the moment and media dollars are starting to get pulled back there.

[Ad Tech God]

I agree with you on the quality over quantity. I think the volumes might be there, but the quality of the audience and the data that you have available on the audience in a privacy compliant way improves all measurement and all, all KPIs that you're looking for, for, for your advertisers. And I've been a vocal person about this too. I don't love fast. I love the top 5 or 10 fast solutions in market. I don't love the long tail 3000 which there's a big difference in terms of the quality of the content and the quality of the potential audience data that you're able to, to address and target with. So for me, I'm, I'm kind of with you. There's fast and fast quality tier 1. There's fast and there's fast quality tier 78 which sits there and it's basically extremely poor quality content. And those are and have been taking budgets from advertisers. And I'm a firm believer that it should not that those should be looked at as remnant low quality inventory. That's how I view it.

[Dan Callahan]

Have you released your top five? You got the ATG500 sort of what the trade desk did there?

[Ad Tech God]

Yeah, I got the ATG TV is my streaming channel. No, just kidding. So yeah, I got the. What the, what is it called? The trade desk. SP 500. I think I bought that domain by the way, and it says, Jeff, will you be on my podcast when you go to it? SP500plus.com I think is the domain. But if you go to it, it literally has a picture and says, jeff, will you come on my podcast? Which he is, he's going on Aries next month. A couple more questions for you guys and then we'll, we'll kind of wrap it up as we're getting into the convo. There's AI, there's clean rooms, there's ctv, there's a bunch of great solutions coming out in market. I've heard everything from bidding capabilities with AI to operational capabilities and efficiencies for AI. Where do you guys see or what do you feel is bullish with the solutions that you're hearing about constantly on social media and in the trades that you guys would love to lean into? Is it clean rooms, AI? Anything else?

[Dan Callahan]

Yeah, look, I think we're leaning into both, right? We do a lot of AI work today. There was some press around our planning platform architect using solutions like that that allow us to build plans more effectively faster. You know, getting those in our sellers hands. Building presentations with AI and plans with AI live in a, in a client pitch or a client meeting is super helpful. It's educational. We use AI from a creative standpoint with a company called Waymark. You know, similarly, we can build creative to take to a meeting, build creative with a client in the room. A lot of exciting breakthroughs there that again are thought starters but oftentimes lead to a piece of closed business. You know, the data collaboration stuff for us is super important. You know, we do a lot of different data partnerships and you know, it's one where, where I have, you know, admittedly gone sort of full circle right on, on retail media networks, you know, the data matching, what we can provide there, not just from an inventory standpoint, from a first party data matching standpoint, you know, we're, we're all in on those things. And I think again with, with everything going on, you know, keeping the sales team selling, keeping everybody out on the street, trying to take some of the, the back end systematic manual process away is, is top of mind and there's some technology that Alex and team have built that's been very helpful.

[Ad Tech God]

Alex, I'd love to hear about it. If you're able to share, you can say no and that's okay.

[Alex Grossman]

Yeah, happy to. You know, specifically on topics of clean rooms, we've seen a lot of very successful use cases with them. But clean rooms were broadly designed for large sophisticated participants, advertisers with large first party data sets that are used for activation and measurement. Not every piece of data needs to be protected by a clean room or functionally matched with a clean room. It's an extra step in the process and particularly in our world where we work with a lot of SMBs, small medium businesses, small regional agencies, it's not always the right tool to solve the problem that we're trying to solve. First party onboarding data is very effective as long as being matched against a good quality data source. And Dan kind of touched on this earlier, but we have a direct relationship with over 30 million consumers in Spectrum Reach. We leverage our privacy focused first party data for media targeting, activation and measurement. If an advertiser has a list of addresses for who they want to target, we can match that against their first party data or produce aggregate addressable audiences. It doesn't necessarily have to require the use of a clean room to accurately execute. We work with privacy compliant identifiers like block graph IDs to target those campaigns and pass them for measurement. And those have been very successful and effective. As we look forward to how technology becomes more streamlined, we're going to see that where it makes sense. Clean rooms are going to get broader adoption and in other areas where it might be a little overkill, we're going to see more streamlined processes for direct matches as well.

[Ad Tech God]

What do you think advertisers are overlooking? So as a supplier in the market and as a streaming supplier in the market, with unique data points and data available to those advertisers, what's something that you feel advertisers may be overlooking when it comes to Spectrum as a potential supply partner, but also overall, while they're planning and creating these media plans for their, their brands.

[Dan Callahan]

Yeah, look, I think we've, we've got the scale, we've got the capabilities. You know, some of it is, is an education around who we are and where we sit. You know, right or wrong, different advertisers need to put publishers and media companies and distributors into buckets. Right. And we are a, a legacy cable company. Right. And we are evolving. So it's more so educating and communicating. The value of streaming, the time and streaming a lot of the stuff that Alex talked about. But the, the size of the Spectrum TV app, right, being neck and neck with YouTube TV probably right now is the second largest. VMBPD is, is something we need to continue to promote. So, you know, it's, it's that story, it's that opportunity, it's the distributor position with, you know, where we insert ads. Right. I like to say we're selling an audience. They're picking the programming, they're picking what's premium to them, what they want to watch. And we get to bring together the collective scale of that consumption. So it's a really unique and differentiated sell compared to buying day, date and time or program specific. You know, we have a ton of insertion in the live sports. We've been doing programmatic insertion in the live sports. So it's again, you peel back the curtain and you look at what people are consuming when they are watching via a Spectrum device and subscription. It's all the same premium stuff that brands want to be in anyway. You know, I would say take a look at what we have to offer because, you know, we can access that content with data, with transparency, with other signals that are oftentimes superior to maybe what they're getting, you know, directly or through another third party.

[Ad Tech God]

So Alex, Dan, you know this. I am all about the people. I'm all about networking. I'm a supporter of the industry and those who work in it. But how important from your perspective, Dan and Alex is networking is creating a sense of community and building those relationships with people in the space.

[Alex Grossman]

I think it's incredibly important. As I look back on my career and some of the roles that I've had and some of the partnerships that I've built, a lot of them are based on trust and relationships. I met Dan for the first time when I was relatively new to Freewheel after they, they acquired the, the sticky ad startup business. And I was asked to do a programmatic one on one sales pitch presentation for a group of sales leaders from Fox. And they put me in front of a room of like, I don't know. 40 different sales leaders, most of them probably couldn't spell the word programmatic. Dan, of course, was like the programmatic chief, so, so he knew everything I was talking about. And I remember, I remember coming up to him afterwards and we, you know, introduced ourselves and this was probably, gosh, like a decade ago now. And you know, we kept in touch a little bit throughout the years as, as Fox's business grew, as Friel's business grew. And you know, that obviously translated to the partnership we have now. I think if I didn't invest as much in building the relationships and partnerships along the way, it definitely wouldn't have allowed me to be as successful as I have been.

[Ad Tech God]

Awesome. Dan, how about you feel the same way or do you regret meeting Alex over a decade ago?

[Dan Callahan]

I, I've got to agree. That was a, a great meeting. I've never seen somebody work a whiteboard or maybe use up all the ink on one of those dry erase pens like Alex did that day with charts and graphs on what was happening and how a bid request was being rendered and responses were coming in. But look, I, I, I love this business. I love this industry. It's fun to have, you know, friends that were colleagues at Fox that have gone on to do other great things and know, got to see some of them on Monday. Selfishly, you know, friends on the buy side, their success is my success. It's fun to see them continue to, to rise the ranks. It only helps increase the, the value of my network and the connections I have as they continue to get promoted on the, on the buy side within the agency walls. But, you know, look, as a young individual growing up in the business, you know, the first rite of passage is getting to go to a, a conference or an event. You know, I remember early days of going to the IAB annual leadership meeting, right? And sort of having a targeted list of folks that I wanted to meet and still do that, right? Still look at the attendee list, still look at those rosters, still go with a game plan of who do I want to meet that maybe I don't know, who have I, you know, connected with that I can get closer to or, you know, certainly what, what friends are there and who can we go to dinner or get out and have a little bit fun with around the event. So I think all of that stuff is extremely important. And yes, as much as we talk about technology and AI and you know, what that does to the workflow, right? This still comes down to the people. It still comes down to the connections, the trust and those relationships. And I will say you've picked up a friend of mine from the industry along the way. A guy named Sam Corey is coming over I think as your Chief Growth Officer, Chief Strategy Officer. So if you see him over on the always at marketecture, keep an eye out for him. Absolutely.

[Ad Tech God]

I think Gary mentioned that he was looking for snacks, but yeah, great guy. Thank you Dan. I I really appreciate you. I really appreciate Spectrum Reach for for having you on the podcast. It's been way past due, but I really enjoyed this combo with you both.

[Alex Grossman]

Our pleasure.

[Dan Callahan]

Thank you.

[Ad Tech God]

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.

[Kate from Marketecture]

Hello and welcome back to the the Refresh, your weekly download on what went down in advertising. I'm Kate with Marketexture and today is Tuesday, October 7th. This week we're talking product updates and partnerships because there were a lot of them. MasterCard is getting into the commerce media game. AppsFlyer and Roku are releasing an enhanced measurement integration. Spotify announced new partnerships with Amazon and Yahoo dsps and Amazon is launching new devices to support Alexa. So let's get into it, starting things off with MasterCard and their more formal entrance into the ads game. The company just announced MasterCard Commerce Media, which will launch across both on site and off site media inventory, including its owned properties and publisher partners. And I say a more formal or official entrance because MasterCard isn't totally new to the advertising game. They've had an offers and promotions business that allows advertisers to promote card link incentives for a while now, but this move expands them well beyond coupon codes. Maybe most importantly, it allows them to tap into the serious stockpile of data they have to work with through thanks to their breadth and depth as a payments provider, including 500 million cardholders, 25,000 advertisers, and insights from 159 billion transactions a year. As a comparison point, PayPal, who's also been making improvements to their commerce media offering, reports that they have access to 400 million shoppers and 30 million merchants. When it comes to creating a leading commerce network, biz scale is a winning ingredient with MasterCard's SVP of Commerce Media Jill Moser putting it succinctly, the biggest differentiator is scale in this environment. It's this scale that could be particularly appealing to businesses, especially those that don't have great first party data collection or access. Imagine a restaurant who's able to use MasterCard Insights to identify previous customers who haven't visited in six months who are then retargeted with promotional messaging to get them back in the doors. And while this isn't a perfect scenario, ideally you have your own first party dataset to work with and activate on. It does give you a better idea of the potential opportunity. My big question though, centers around distribution. What exactly will that offsite publisher network look like? Are these environments relevant to or frequently visited by advertisers ideal customers? For example, MasterCard's publisher network includes businesses that have a MasterCard stored on file, including banks, airlines and retailers. But how often are you as a consumer going to these sites or apps? I personally don't visit my banking website or app that often and only visit travel websites when I need to book a flight or hotel stay. And these scenarios do present an element of timeliness and relevance, but they wouldn't necessarily support campaign goals or strategy beyond lower funnel conversion activity. That said, I do believe that off site media, both across the open web and alternative channels like CTV and Digital out of home will be a primary growth engine for commerce media networks, given they present a larger, more impactful opportunity for both retailers and advertisers. Another factor that warrants consideration is financial data's status as a more protected category of data that comes with more rigid guardrails in terms of what data can be used used and how, advertisers will need to ask pointed questions about what data is actually available to them and how that data can be tied back to performance. One trend in retail and commerce media that I was hoping wouldn't come true Naming every media network by vertical retail media, Travel media, financial media Isn't life complicated enough already moving over to streaming TV? With an update from AppsFlyer and Roku, who are expanding their partnership with a new Self Reporting network or SRN integration, it's essentially helping them to create an even stronger and smarter bridge between mobile and streaming TV measurement. On the Apps Flyer end, they've evolved their SRN to move beyond relying on shaky identifiers like Apple's Identifier for advertisers or Google's Google Advertising ID toward probabilistic signals like IP matching. The system also supports a two way API connection which allows for signals to be sent and received, Whereas most conversion APIs are just a one way connection. This allows their platforms to share data insights back and forth that support campaign targeting, optimization and of course, measurement. The updates also build on their existing relationship, giving AppsFlyer customers direct access to inventory in Roku Ads Manager Roku self serve platform that launched last fall. This means AppsFlyer's advertisers can plan, manage and measure campaigns across Roku's streaming footprint, which covers some major players like Netflix, Prime, Video, Max and Peacock. This improved partnership integration points to yet another effort that aims to solve for one of the ad industry's biggest pain points Proving outperformance on channels like CTV Marketers would love to test and invest in streaming more, especially to better balance out over investment in channels like Social, but they need to be able to prove out the effectiveness of these investments in order to justify them, especially when it comes to how TV exposure influences mobile and or social behavior, and vice versa. With budgets tight, especially in the current economic climate, performance validation could be the difference between CTV being restricted to a future test opportunity or small experiment rather than a serious investment. Jumping over to Spotify, who also dropped a handful of ad platform updates this past week that build on their announcements from this past spring. A quick refresher on those Spotify Ad Exchange was launched to integrate into DSPs and provide programmatic access to inventory, while Spotify Ads Manager is their self serve tool tool. Last week, Spotify announced that Spotify Ad Exchange would now plug into both Amazon DSP and Yahoo dsp. This means advertisers who work with those platforms can now transact Spotify's audio and video inventory via open auction or private marketplace deals directly within those platforms. Of course, the Amazon partnership is a much bigger play than just inventory access. It's about data. Both Spotify and Amazon have access to a wealth of rich first party data, Spotify from their logged in user base, a requirement in order to use their platform, and Amazon from their spread across commerce, streaming and browsing activity across their platforms. This not only allows advertisers to target their audiences with greater sophistication, but ultimately tie campaign activity back to measurable business results, something that has been sorely lacking in the audio space in particular. Spotify's updates also include support For Alternative Identifier ID5 Big news for our European friends and Yahoo Connect ID. From a supply perspective, podcasters who are using Megaphone can now create PMP deals directly in Spotify Ad Exchange, increasing the volume of ad space available and more importantly for Spotify revenue potential, all of these updates funnel into the bigger Spotify story. They're rapidly scaling up their ad business largely out of necessity. While the majority of their subscribers are ad supported 60% as of their Q2 earnings, the the bulk of their revenue actually comes from their paid subscribers, AKA their Spotify Premium users. Until recently, Spotify has historically gatekept their advertising offerings as more of a direct IO premium service opportunity. But at this point, Spotify has figured out what their streaming TV counterparts know. If they want to keep revenue going up and to the right, they need to improve the entire suite of their advertiser offerings. This not only means creating easier inventory accessibility, but also incorporates data targeting capabilities and measurement solutions to to create an offering that entices advertisers and more effectively monetizes Spotify's users. All in all, these efforts do seem to be moving the needle. Spotify says programmatic adoption is up 142% since it's beefed up its ad tech earlier this year. The future is biddable, y'.

[Ad Tech God]

All.

[Kate from Marketecture]

Finally, we'll leave off with a quick update from Amazon themselves regarding their smarter voice assistant Alexa. Last week, Amazon dropped four new Echo the Echo Dot Max, Echo Studio, Echo Show 8, and Echo Show 11, all designed specifically to support Amazon's next gen Alexa experience. Each of these devices includes early access to Alexa, so those who purchase them would get the conversational AI and smart home perks right out of the box. Device upgrades include custom designed chips, new Omnisense Sensor Fusion, better processing power, improved audio, and smarter touch screens. The Dot Max and Studio lean into Premium Audio, while the Show 8 and Show 11 push smart display utility, controlling home devices, managing family calendars, tracking shopping, and even integrating with wellness features. In other words, Alexa is getting more personalized, proactive, and woven into daily routines in a way that we haven't really seen before. Speaking of wellness, something that was more of a quiet mention was Amazon's partnership with Oura Ring as part of the larger devices launch. Users who opt into connecting their aura data with Alexa can receive wellness nudges like fitting in a quick workout based on your schedule or going to bed a little earlier. Amazon made sure to mention, though, that your data will be treated with the highest regard when it comes to security and privacy standards. At the start of the year, I predicted, or more so manifested because I've been waiting for this for forever, that voice assistants would take off in 2025. But as I'm sure you're aware, this hasn't necessarily happened. I think the fact that Amazon is releasing devices that were built with components specifically designed to support the kind of conversational, generative AI capabilities we're expected to expecting tells us a lot about the importance of needing to have the proper infrastructure in place in order to fully realize some of these expectations. With Alexa and other voice assistants powered by emergent AI companies like OpenAI and Perplexity, we're edging closer to legitimate multidimensional utility. Siri could never, or at least she can't right now. That's all we have time for this week. Thanks for joining us for the refresh, and we'll catch you next week.