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- [00:00]
A
Hey everyone, this is AdTechDot and this is a commercial message. Here at Marketecture, we know what you need more of in your life adtech podcasts. So I'm thrilled to tell you about the MediaOcean Podcast Network. Three different shows currently live and a bunch more launching soon. There's Femme Forward, a show about women in leadership, Add it up, which is Basically Ad Tech 101, and FRAP Rap with G Dog, which defies all descriptors. Check them out@mediaocean.com podcastnetwork that's mediaocean.com podcastnetwork available on Apple Podcast, Spotify and YouTube. And thank you Media Ocean for supporting Market.
- [00:43]
B
Welcome to the AdTech Godpod, your window into the world of advertising technology and the people behind it. I'm your host, Ad Tech God.
- [00:56]
A
Welcome to the ATEC God Pod, where I speak to the leaders of our industry. If you've bought, sold, optimized or built programmatic technology over the last decade, there's a good chance today's guest influenced it in some way. Adam Siroca founded NToggle, helped pioneer traffic shaping, then joined Rubicon Project after its acquisition and went on to become the Chief Product Officer at Magnite. Along the way, he played a key role in building one of the most important infrastructure companies in digital advertising. But now, after nine years at Magnite and a total of 12 years including intoggle, he's really on to his next chapter. He just got back from can. Adam is a friend of the POD and also he is an investor in Market, which is the parent company of AdTech God. So I'm really excited to having him with us today. I love having builders with us. So thanks for joining me, Adam.
- [01:48]
C
Thanks for having me. Ad Tech God. So. So this is what looks like to stare into the eyes of God.
- [01:54]
A
Yeah, it's pretty much a blank screen with the letter A on it, I believe.
- [01:58]
C
Much less intimidating than I expected.
- [01:59]
A
Wait, it's like a. It's like a confessional booth. It's like I don't know who's on the other side of this thing, but I'm just going to let it go.
- [02:05]
C
Hopefully I don't have any to have too many sins to, to confess to you, but this is the first time we've met. I feel honored to be here. I had the chance to interview you several years ago when you came and met with my product team at a, at an off site. You obviously it virtually, but I got to interview you. Now you get to interview me. So this is exciting.
- [02:24]
A
That's Right. I forgot about that. That was. That was a few years ago. That was fun. You have a great product team. I remember. I remember them asking me a lot of questions and me thinking, God, you guys are way smarter than I am. But it was. It was a great experience. And. And thank you for having me do that. So I'm really happy to have you with us today, too.
- [02:39]
C
Awesome. Well, thanks for having me, Adam.
- [02:41]
A
I. I start the podcast the same way. It's really a Meet the guest. I think it's important to know the people behind the technology that's being built. We often focus about what we're building, what changes are coming, but I do think kind of the past plays an important role in what the future will be. So I'd love for you to take us through your background, your time at ntogo, Magnite, and other, and then we can kind of lean into what happened at CAN and what came out of it.
- [03:06]
C
Oh, that sounds great. Yeah. I mean, my background is that I was born and raised to be a trader on Wall Street. I did summer internships on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and I hated every minute of it. And for me, watching numbers blip up and down the screen and making lots of money doing that just wasn't of interest. I knew then, right in the middle of college, that I wanted to build things. I wanted to build something tangible, I wanted to build products, I wanted to build companies. And so that sort of set me on a path to reach where I am today. The first chance I had to build a company was actually right after I graduated college. That January, before I graduated, I visited with my dad and said, dad, I. I'd like to go ski for a couple years after college. To which he paused. He nodded. He said, okay, son, you can go do that, but you can't be a ski bunk. We'll figure out how to get business experience. I said, cool. And so that's what I did. I built a company in the ski industry with a friend of mine from college and did that for a year, then merged it with another company and had the chance to get sales, marketing, operations, experience, but also have a ton of fun and ski quite a bit. From there, I made my way back to the east coast and was very fortunate to be paired up with a fellow Middlebury graduate who had started a chain of Cyber cafes in 1996, showing off the latest and greatest of the Internet. So Companies like Yahoo, AltaVista, Lycos, LucasArts Entertainment were showing off their products. We had virtual reality we had speech recognition, T1 Internet access at the time. And he said, hey, I need to figure out how to build an advertising business. And so that was my first introduction into product management and the Internet and ad tech. Fast forward. I spent a few years at Lycos building a paid search engine and a number of related tools. Got to study contextual targeting, behavioral targeting. Kind of student to the the. The technologies that would shape our future. From there, I was recruited to be a founding leadership team member at a company called Jumptap, which was started as a mobile search company. It was going to be the Google of, of mobile. We very quickly pivoted the company into be a. An advertising shop. And that company grew to about $150 million revenue. We sold it for $250 million to Millennial Media. That's where I met Michael Barrett. And at the time, we had some pretty interesting assets. We had a cross screen DMP before anyone knew what a graph was. We had 100 million mobile devices tied to hashed emails, all linked to cookies online. And this is the period of 2014. Media, math, data zoo, Rocket fuel, turn. Those were the DSPs of the time. Trade desk was just coming on the scene and we had built a mobile DSP. We were actually the largest mobile DSP out there. We were King.com's DSP of record back in the heyday of Candy Crush. And we were getting these inbound RFPs for a cross screen DSP. And so I had built a plan to expand the company into to cross screen. And I went to Michael and I said, michael, we're gonna build this cross screen dmp. We have all the right assets. We have a dsp, we have a cross green dmp. And he said, great, well, what's it gonna take? I was like, well, we gotta spend $9 million of capex to build out data center capacity to keep up with all the QPs that all those other DSPs were listening to. And he said, no way, man. Can't do it. He had more choice words for me, but that was okay. So I found myself out on a run in Palm Springs that April, and it was literally a lightning in a bottle moment where I looked up at the hills of Palm Springs and I said, if I have this problem, so does everyone else. And I bet software could solve this problem. So I went back to the house and, and told my wife, we're going to start another company. To which she also had choice words for me. She said, we just sold a company. Can we wrestle a little bit like Nope, this is a good one. I called a whole bunch of people that I knew from the industry, Rubicon project, Mopub, bunch of DSPs and everyone complained of the same problem. There was too much traffic to listen to. And that was the biggest limiter to these companies growing their revenue. Called my co founders and they said we know how to solve this problem. My co founders were a technical architect and a, and he was also is a very gifted software developer and a chief data scientist and they both knew how to solve this problem. That was how NAGGLE was born. So we, we did that for a few years. Google, Rubicon project, Matic Index, OpenX, they were all running their traffic through our platform. But Rubicon Project in particular was paying close attention. They saw when Antogl, the traffic shaping technology got in the middle between the exchange and the dsp, the revenue literally went and they saw the value and made the acquisition and brought us in to start really the revamp of the buyer team at the time and the Rubicon project experience. Magnite experience was a gift. It was truly a remarkable period of going through a turnaround into revenue growth mode, into acquisition mode, and ultimately becoming what Magnite is today.
- [08:50]
A
You know, you mentioned a lot from your, your time of wanting to ski to, to working in search and contextual to going to Michael Barrett and getting the this is not happening message. So you know, I think a lot of people in the startup world and I'd like to consider myself someone who started a business, maybe not an ad tech company, but there is that pushback and sometimes people are like, ah, not worth it. You know, you're a great guy, but I just don't believe in what you're building. And it's those opportunities of someone who says I actually do believe in what you're building, go for it. That makes you feel validated in the product that you're building. And I can tell from the way you're even explaining the story, from you know, looking at the mountains in Palm Desert to telling your wife and she's like great, you're doing this again to where you ended up at Magnite as Chief Product Officer, it tells you something that sometimes your gut is right. And even if there's deters outside or people who don't necessarily agree with you 100% of what you're building, that sometimes your gut is like the best compass to building the right product or the right business.
- [09:54]
C
Oh, there was no, no question. I mean when, when we started the company I, I had such conviction that the company was to have a positive outcome because I was building, I was literally building the product that I needed to scale a dsp, right? And so it was actually one of the easier products I've ever had to build because I knew exactly what it needed to do, exactly how it needed to function. I was the ultimate consumer of that product.
- [10:17]
A
You know, Adam, there was a time where I messaged, we had pre chatted, I messaged Eric Franchi in his DMs on Twitter, and I said, I think I can be bigger than Ad Exchanger. And I think he laughed. And then the whole acquisition happened with Eric Papero, who you're an investor with us, and Jeremy Bloom. And then we started launching more content, more news, more coverage. And we scaled. And I think sometimes it's just that gut feeling and that drive that you have to just make it better and to deliver something that's different that that actually follow comes through, oh, 100%.
- [10:51]
C
And what the, the group of you have put together is truly remarkable in the, the brand, the coverage, the insights, the different types of Personas that each of you bring to the table has really delivered. The industry was missing. I think it's a really amazing dialog that the market sector umbrella, and of course you in particular as ad tech God, have delivered to us.
- [11:13]
A
Well, Adam, I want to ask you, you spent a long time at Magnite and we don't have to cover a lot on Magnite because I understand you're not there anymore and they're a publicly traded company, but a lot happened with Magnite during my career. And I didn't work at Magnite for anyone listening, but I watched them transition, right? I watched this growth. I watched them take a strong position in the connected television space. I saw them provide products in market that were relevant to the streaming world. Maybe moving off of the desktop video and mobile video and moving more into streaming, which was booming in 2019 to now. How was that from a product leader's perspective? How did that guide you in what you needed to build and market? How did you get that feedback from clients, customers, account managers? What is it like sitting in a chief product officer role at a company like Magnite?
- [12:02]
C
Yeah, I mean, the growth of, of Magnite and the transition from desktop display, so the old media world to the new streaming world was actually a good long discussion amongst the executive team of whether to build or buy our way into it. And obviously we concluded that M and A was the way to go. And Michael was clearly the architect of putting the pieces together. But we looked at the space and choice a to build was go off and spend a couple years building the right technology or acquire your way into it. And at the end of the day, our assessment was it's fundamentally different technology, it's a different set of commercial relationships and it's a different commercial team. And so we ultimately bought our way into that seat first with Talaria and that deal closed in the spring of 2020 and then a year later finishing the roll up of the industry with the acquisition of Spotx and the call option on on the Springster technology. That really solidified our position in the market. Now all that M and A doesn't come without a price and I'm not talking about the dollars that we spent. There was a lot of work that we had to do to integrate platforms, which comes with a tremendous amount of, let's just say, personalities and hard decisions about which technology to build on top of and go forward. And ultimately like you can't make everybody happy. But I think for all intents and purposes, we made it through that as well as we could hope for. When you go through things like that, you worry about revenue loss, customer loss, and that just didn't happen for us. We managed to navigate through there, through the strength of the commercial relationships and the delivering of a high quality software, a fairly seamless transition of what was two desperate disparate systems and bringing those together into what is now Magnite's CTV ad server and exchange combined into a single platform. We spent a lot of commercial and product time working with customers to get their feedback. What do they need, what do they didn't need? Prepare them for the transition and guide them through that transition. The team just did a remarkable job, both the commercial and the product team and of course the engineers that deliver that software to deliver what is now Magnite today.
- [14:28]
A
Adam, you saw a lot at Magnite and your time at Entagle, the acquisitions, the growth in connected television. You're just getting back from can. What did you hear? Like, what's the word on the street? We hear a lot about AI agentic. We hear that all the time. You and I have chatted about this in the past of like, what is real, what is tangible, what is not. From your perspective as like a product expert, someone who's built. What did you get out of can? What did you hear?
- [14:55]
C
I thought that there is a, a fervor and an energy in the industry that we just haven't seen in many years. I think there's this excitement for innovation and companies are doing some really interesting and new things and we were stagnant for a while. I mean it used to be all the DSPs are the same, all the SSPs are the same, all the data companies are the same. And we're on the precipice of some real change and innovation in the industry. Yeah, I was thinking about the right analogy here. And historically in our industry you hear a lot of people say yeah, we're changing the wing of the airplane while we're still flying. And I think there's something different that's happening here. This is much more like boom, supersonic that is developing a brand new supersonic aircraft and things like the 1973 supersonic flight being banned over land, being amended. There's real change that is afoot and of course it's very new. I think everyone again is trying to figure out what's real, when's it going to be real. And most of what we're, we're seeing so far that that is being demoed or shown is sort of the early workflow wins that get rebuilt with the LLMs. That makes total sense, right? Because manual media planning steps and creative creation, that's like a perfect job for, for the LLMs because they're way better at distilling the advertiser intent and their goals and matching those up with publisher supply and the publisher data than humans could ever do. But man, like I, I've talked to the leaders in the, the buyer, agent and orchestration category. I've talked to some of the, let's say more traditional platforms that have leaned into AI and composable stacks and they all say the same thing. Very little is transacting this way. The agencies are building technology players are building, but money is just not flowing through the pipes yet. And that makes sense because this is, this is big transition. Some of the conversation I was, conversations I was involved is like well, when and the agents do the negotiation and the humans completely take their hands off and boy, like we're a long way from that. Because even just the automated media planning, those first steps aren't being taken yet. But that's an exciting part, is that when that continuous agentic loop infrastructure gets put in place and these discrete human gated steps from negotiation to generate the creative to optimizing bids to measurement, when, when those stop being these separate systems are being handed off sequentially, it just becomes this autonomous system that optimizes and it runs in near real time. That's exciting times. That's when the gains move from incremental. Okay, well we don't need as many media planners and there's like, I don't know, 10%, 20% gains. Then we start to get the 10x gains on this. And I think this industry has been quite linear and it's past the way that it has developed versus big reinvention. And I do wonder whether this time, this, this change is going to happen where it's incremental. Boom. There's something big and different here. And that's the point where we're going to stop asking the question, should we add AI to X? Because this time companies are asking the question, are we doing X because humans were involved? And this is based on pre AI constraints, human reviews, batch processing, silo, data systems that are really hard to string together. And so I think we're going to see some incremental. But I do think that there's going to be a tipping point where a redesign is happening and there are enough companies that are looking at that. I do think it's going to be hard for those new companies to dislodge the incumbents because of position. And I think that position can be established on both the sell side and the buy side, I think so. I think those are, are great positions to occupy. And so I do think the incumbents will either build these things because building is so much easier than it has ever been, or they can buy their way, way into it. But I do think that this is a different period and we should expect a different development than the linear development we've seen in the past.
- [19:31]
A
And you make a good point. Are we building to compensate for human limitations or are we building based off of this new system that can completely flip us upside down in the way we operate overall? Because even if we go to as granular as like campaign setup and optimization, allow and disallow lists, these are all kind of done in a, I hate to say it, it's a very boring role, right? Like you set up a campaign, you do the frequency capping, you upload the creative, you target the inventory, you do an allow this pmp, whatever you want to do and then you launch this campaign and you get feedback and you do whatever optimizations you need to do. Sure, we automate that and now AI with some basic rules can start doing these automation, these steps for you. But is there just a whole different way of buying that we're not even exploring? Because we're just so used to this existing process and I don't think anyone's brought that up with me in the last three years I've been doing the podcast, I think it's all been about operational efficiency, not. Does this just change and flip the industry upside down into something totally new?
- [20:38]
C
Yeah, that's the way this industry has grown up. It's all been, okay, well, the industry works this way. Let's make it incrementally better. Let's make it incrementally better. I do think that the, the, the big incumbents, they're facing pressure to create more economic efficiency, better buyer outcomes, and the easiest thing to do is to put AI in front of the existing processes. What I'm seeing is that there are new companies that are entering the space that are rethinking that process. That's not to say the incumbents are in jeopardy. I do think the, as I said, I think the incumbents, they have position. And position is really hard to dislodge, whether it's the ad server position, whether it's being the key SSP for publishers and media owners in this DTV space, or the hardware manufacturers, or the buy side position where the tools are in the buyer's hands already. So those positions are very strong and those are big, powerful companies that probably do some of this linear improvement, but then we'll build something brand new or buy something brand new as the innovation happens outside. I think we're, I think we're in for some really exciting times in the next 12 to 18 months.
- [21:50]
A
But I have a general interest in, in all things like generative AI, image creation, video. I use it a lot for some of my memes. I use it a lot for some of the videos I used to make. Recently, I think as recently as the last week or so, Meta just launched a new video creation tool. I think it's called Muse. And they're kind of getting into the whole image creation world and what that means. You're looking at companies like Magnite, who acquired Streamr. You, you look at WPP and how they've implemented and acquired multiple companies to help support all their processes. Overall, do you think that generative AI is something that is going to change the agency world as much? Because a lot of the recent big acquisitions were done around data, right? How do we utilize the Stadio? How do we bring it in house? But do you feel like generative AI has a lot of potential there? I'd love to hear your perspective there.
- [22:44]
C
Yeah. I mean, no, no question. I, you know, just like campaign setup or targeting or optimization where AI can take over and do things at a scale a Precision and an effectiveness that humans just can't. I think AI is going to generative AI is going to do the same thing for creative. Now, that doesn't mean the agencies don't have a role, still need people to prompt AI and ask it to do the right things. And so I think the change will be from people storyboarding, people designing to prompting. But what AI can do is develop thousands and thousands or tens of thousands of variations of creative and then find the right ones that are creating the right outcome. And so when AI can create that, that same emotional connection that a human created, creative can happen and do it at that massive scale, we, we've reached a real unlock in the ability to influence consumer behavior. And so I think that's a really interesting angle why so many companies have made acquisitions in, in that category. It not only develops this, this creative landscape on this incredible palette, but also unlocks the ability to bring advertisers into ecosystems that couldn't enter the space or took them too long to enter the space that couldn't before. Which is of course, one of the reasons that we had acquired the streamer assets were to be able to help our partners bring in the SMBs in ways that they, they couldn't do at a pace they couldn't do in the past.
- [24:22]
A
Adam, what's next for you? I know pre call. We talked about you being an advisor working with multiple companies. What do you think is next and what are you excited about?
- [24:32]
C
Yeah, well, I'll tell you what I'm excited about first. I'm excited about the way that AI is transforming the, what I'm calling the lanes of the industry. What I'm seeing is this evolution of. It used to be really easy to get a lane between the buyer and the consumer. As a SSP of any size and shape, it was really easy to get a lane into the dsps. You call them up and ask them, or you ask a friend to call them up, or you call your friend the CEO and you got a connection. And money just flowed across that, that lane. What I'm seeing now, and it is fueled by a few things. Number one, there's a real call in the industry for greater simplicity. There's a clear direction. This was a very clear signal at can that the buyers are turning their attention to performance and outcomes. And of course, AI is the catalyst that makes both of those things happen. It can simplify and it can really drive outcomes. And so as we think about buyer agents and orchestration layers being put in the hands of agencies that either Build or buyers that build or companies that are licensing their tools and it's abstracting the, the decisioning and the, the measurement of how the money travels across lanes up a layer. And so what I'm seeing is that companies are going to need to answer the question why their lane exists. And it has to be because it's delivering buyer outcomes. I think the thing, the key ingredients that are going into those lanes are position. So supply position data. That data can be fueled from the sell side or the buy side and optimization. Optimization I think becomes more commoditized and democratized with AI because the great data science, machine learning practices, I think the access to what those kinds of systems did in the past will be democratized by AI. So we're back to position in data as the key drivers here. And it's pretty obvious like some of the lanes that are good off or Amazon's gonna have a lane, they've got O and O, they've got incredible shopper data. Google's gonna have a lane, they've got YouTube, they've got incredible search and the future of, of AI and Gemini inputs. Meta's gonna have a lane. TikTok is gonna have a lane. I think there's a real interesting question of what happens to the rest of the lanes. I think there's going to be both a consolidation but also an explosion of the number of lanes. And here's what I mean by that. I think consolidation happens with the commodity lanes. If you're just a pipe, there's no role there. So I think you have a compression there. But then I think the lanes are going to be formed with interesting data assets, specialty data assets. So you can imagine a pharmaceutical lane, a travel lane, a financial lane and so forth. And this proliferation of lanes can happen because before it was hard to find those lanes. You have to like hunt in the DSP and find the supply source and find the data source. In the future the agents are gonna be able to do that and they'll find the, the right lanes. And so I think there's a real interesting development of the industry how these lanes are forming and different companies are taking different perspectives of how to form their lanes. And I think that's a really fascinating one to unfold. And I also think that, that if you believe that thesis there's, there's a roll up opportunity that can happen within in those lanes.
- [28:19]
A
Yeah, there was recent news that was actually released today but this will be next week's episode with the kind of the red vest media and PAC view, Commerce they announced some sort of partnership and it just talks about the ability of just bringing all that consumer data from Ace Hardware, what that means, organizing the data. And you hear it a lot from the major, I want to call them data companies because that's what they are. Amazon, right? Amazon's major data company, retail media, commerce media. But then you look at these kind of like mid tail sized accounts, right? 5,100 stores I think is what I read how much data they have about their consumers footfall retail, online retail, and you start to think to yourself, okay, the supply is not the supply we know of. The supply that we know of in the future is really the data that they have. And what does that mean in a medium that doesn't necessarily get as many data points in comparison to someone who collects login, home address, credit card, consumer behavior transactions. Like the supply is not the same supply we had five years ago where it was like, you got video, I'll buy video. It's really becoming way more sophisticated also.
- [29:34]
C
Oh, there's no question about that. And you know, you can imagine retail media lanes like you have many of those. I think, you know, you've had the biggies you've had. I love what Amazon has done, I love what Walmart is doing. The other companies that have commerce media and retail media, they struggled in the past to get scale and monetization because just having the data isn't enough. They needed to have that data, but then it has to be activated, has to be sold. In I think in the future the act of selling is going to look a little bit different because their supply, as you described, which is data paired with, with supply, can be discovered by agents and it can be done much more effectively and much more seamlessly and much more effortlessly than it ever has in the past. And so I absolutely think that, you know, you're going to have this explosion of lanes and companies like you just described, they're all going to have the right to have a lane because they'll be able to answer the question, why do you exist? Why is your lane being bought? And it's because there's going to be proprietary data that you can't get anywhere else that's going to drive outcomes for buyers in a accretive and incremental way. I also think the marketers, some of the agencies are looking to build lanes and that's kind of building a lane from the demand side. One of the themes that I also heard at cam, which ties into this conversation, is that buyers are frustrated with their money being spent in ways that they don't have control over. So the platforms that are steering their money or their money or their clients money is being used to build up companies that then turn their backs on them or have other interests or get acquired. And so what I was also hearing is that there's a cluster of big buyers who want to take more control of their paths from buy side to sell side in the future and even potentially own an investment way parts of the companies that will help them deliver their media.
- [31:36]
A
Last question for you out of before we wrap it up because this has been a great combo. I've interviewed probably just on this show, 150, 160 people, we've talked about the future, what agentic looks like flipping the industry upside down. For you personally, where do you see yourself leaning into in terms of product? Is it buy side, sell side? Do you find that data is what sparks that passion for you? Where do you lean in as an individual, not even associated with a company, just yourself as a person, what do you love?
- [32:09]
C
Yeah, well, I've been very fortunate in my career to have touched the buy side, the sell side and data that powers both of those. My personal belief is that this distinction of software and infrastructure between buy side and sell side is going to blur and come together into single platforms. So I can't say that I'm gravitating to buy or sell sites. I think the future is something that looks very different. I do think that this idea of buyer orchestration, buyer agents and orchestration layers is very interesting. But none of these things matter without supply, position and differentiated data. And so the various things that I'm looking for, looking at right now, whether it's some of the roll up concepts that I talked about or companies that have asked me to get involved have some of those key ingredients in their portfolios. And so for me what's most important is those key ingredients and the ability to use some of these transformative technologies to advance the industry and simplify the industry and ultimately deliver buyers great outcomes and at the same time deliver revenue and yield to publishers.
- [33:21]
A
Adam, thank you again for joining me. Thank you for being my guest. Thanks for believing in anti God and architecture again. Adam, I appreciate your time and welcome back from Ken.
- [33:30]
C
Thanks for having me. Ad Tech God, it was a pleasure to be on here and it's great to see you.
- [33:34]
A
Same here.
- [33:36]
B
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 ad tech. Don't miss out on the latest updates. So follow me on X Instagram and connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't forget. Etc TG Slack community has insights, networking opportunities and jobs. Keep the conversation going and stay at the forefront of ad tech innovation.