Unlocking the Overlooked 40% with John Piccone from Adform

Summary

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Podcast Summary: AdTechGod Pod – Unlocking the Overlooked 40% with John Piccone from Adform

Episode Date: September 29, 2025
Guest: John Piccone, Regional President Americas, Adform
Host: AdTech God (The AdTech God)

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Overview

This episode dives into the critical issue of “the overlooked 40%” of digital audiences missed by advertisers due to identity fragmentation, privacy changes, and the complexities of the programmatic ad marketplace. John Piccone, with decades of experience in pioneering adtech companies, discusses how Adform addresses this challenge, its positioning as an independent European-founded platform, and why transparency and true incremental reach are now table stakes for advertisers aiming for efficiency over mere spend.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. John Piccone’s Journey in AdTech (01:20–04:01)

• Early Days in AdTech:
  • John recounts his start at Real Media, the European expansion, and the evolution to 24/7 Real Media and beyond.
    • “I spent better part of 10 years based out of Paris, France during those heady days of 1996 to 2005.” – John Piccone (01:53)
    • Emphasized the importance of understanding both the publisher and advertiser sides.
• Serial Market Builder:
  • John is known as the “go to market guy” brought in post-funding to scale businesses.
  • Worked with leading innovators and rejoined Dave Morgan at Simul Media to bring data-driven approaches to linear TV before joining Adform.
  • Attracted to Adform’s comprehensive full-stack approach, spanning DSP, ID, ad serving, and dynamic creative.

2. The Overlooked 40%: Identity Fragmentation and Opportunity (04:01–07:13)

• Industry’s Core Problem:
  • Marketers overlook up to 40% of their potential audience due to cookies being disabled, evolving privacy standards, and device fragmentation.
    • “Nearly half of your audience is invisible, unmeasured and unmonetized.” – AdTechGod (00:04, sponsor message)
• Adform’s Approach:
  • Aims to help brands “walk a mile in their own shoes,” recognizing the dual pressure of building effective products while reaching elusive audiences.
  • The challenge is compounded by cookie deprecation and the difficulty of cross-platform targeting.
    • “You have this massive fragmentation of how people are engaging with content, but also how we can target them now that we have things like cookie deprecation and changes in device behavior.” – John Piccone (04:59)
• Transparency Through the Bid Stream:
  • Adform participated in the ANA’s programmatic transparency initiative, prioritizing actionable transparency over buzzwords.
    • “Transparency is not just a buzzword. How do you actually activate what's happening in the bid stream?” – John Piccone (05:54)
  • Cookie deprecation leaves a data blind spot, especially for the 40% of Americans unreachable through traditional IDs.

3. Adform’s Independent Edge and European Outlook (07:13–08:42)

• Independence in Practice:
  • Adform remains neutral, not taking an economic position on inventory; this builds trust with brands.
  • True independence means a “brands-first” mentality, rooted in European GDPR compliance.
    • “Their ad form doesn't have a position on inventory... brands know that they can trust us, that their money is going to work.” – John Piccone (07:51)
  • Adform leverages “ID Fusion”—a “graph of graphs” approach to identity and targeting.
• European Roots Influence U.S. Strategy:
  • Early exposure to GDPR gave Adform a strategic edge in privacy and compliance as they entered the U.S. market.

4. Demystifying “Find Your 40” & Smarter Media Spend (08:42–10:32)

• What Does “Find Your 40” Mean?
  • 40% of audiences are invisible due to limitations in identity solutions and gaps in the bidstream.
  • Key Questions for Marketers:
    • “Do you know how often that first party data ID gets through the bid stream to actually reach the DSP?” (09:41)
    • “If I'm going to do a match with an onboarder, is my match rate equal to my reach rate?” (09:48)
  • John clarifies that match rates do not equate to true audience reach; marketers should better allocate budgets by removing excessive frequency and prioritizing true expansion.
    • “A marketer doesn't need to change their absolute budget size. They can carve off the excessive frequency and go find accretive reach without changing any size of the budget.” – John Piccone (10:14)

5. The Future: Media Planning & Incremental Reach (10:32–11:22)

• Shifting Brand Mindsets:
  • Brands must open their eyes to audience gaps and embrace solutions that enable better measurement and incremental reach.
    • “I just think that people haven't opened the shades to what's actually happening behind the scenes so they can see it, so they can activate better.” – John Piccone (10:54)
  • Adform provides a consultative approach—helping marketers analyze match and reach rates transparently to uncover incremental opportunities.

6. Looking Forward: Q4 Optimism and Ecosystem Growth (11:22–12:27)

• Q4 and Beyond:
  • John is “bullish on brands doing more with less.”
    • “Every time that they get the chance to be more aware of what's going on, they get smarter. And when brands get smarter, everybody wins downstream.” – John Piccone (11:48)
  • Reinforces the ecosystem dynamic: Brands and publishers are principals—the rest are agents supporting their growth.
  • Smarter activation equates to economic and industry growth for all.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Transparency is not just a buzzword. How do you actually activate what's happening in the bid stream?”
  – John Piccone (05:54)

• “A marketer doesn't need to change their absolute budget size. They can carve off the excessive frequency and go find accretive reach without changing any size of the budget.”
  – John Piccone (10:14)

• “I just think that people haven't opened the shades to what's actually happening behind the scenes so they can see it, so they can activate better.”
  – John Piccone (10:54)

• “Every time that they get the chance to be more aware of what's going on, they get smarter. And when brands get smarter, everybody wins downstream.”
  – John Piccone (11:48)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction & Guest Background: 01:17–04:01
• Defining and Addressing the Overlooked 40%: 04:01–07:13
• Adform’s Market Position & Philosophy: 07:13–08:42
• Clarifying “Find Your 40” & Budget Efficiency: 08:42–10:32
• Changing Mindsets & Incremental Reach: 10:32–11:22
• Q4 Outlook & Industry Growth: 11:22–12:27

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Tone and Style

The conversation between AdTech God and John Piccone is candid yet deeply insightful, geared towards practical solutions for marketers and transparent industry evolution. John’s straightforward, data-driven optimism is counterbalanced by the host’s curiosity and focus on actionable outcomes.

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This summary captures the essence and actionable insights of the episode, ideal for adtech professionals, marketers, and those interested in the evolving challenges of digital advertising.

Transcript

[A]

A word from our sponsors every day. Your digital campaigns are missing nearly 40% of their target audiences due to identity fragmentation. That means that nearly half of your audience is invisible, unmeasured and unmonetized. Reach out to find your [e-mail] that's the number 40. To see what that missing 40% could mean for your revenue, reach out to us again. That's find your [e-mail] welcome to the AdTech Godpod. Your window into the world of advertising technology and the people behind it. I'm your host, AdTech God. Welcome to the AdTech God Pod. I'm your host, AdTech God. Today I'm joined by John Picone, Regional President Americas from adforming. John's experience as a seasoned leader spans a career having worked at companies like 24 7, Real Media, Simul Media, Innovid and now Adform, where he spent the last three and a half years building what the market has needed. Full disclosure. This episode is sponsored by adform. I've heard great things about John in the market. John, I'm really excited to have you with me. Welcome to the AdTech God Pod.

[B]

The pleasure is mine, AdTech God. Thank you for having me, John.

[A]

Looking at your background, 24. 7 real media, I would love to hear about your background. I would love to hear more about you and how you got into the space and what led you to heading up America's for AtForm.

[B]

Yeah, 24 7, which started off as Real Media on my side, a company founded by Dave Morgan in the mid-90s. And I was working for a subsidiary of a company that invested in Dave's company, Real Media. And I had the opportunity to work in the technology group. I was asked to start up the European division of that technology group, which was really exciting. I spent better part of 10 years based out of Paris, France during those heady days of 1996 to 2005. And at that time we were really focusing on publisher ads, ad serving solution and to be at the very early stages of understanding how ads get delivered and the impact that they make on not just publishers but advertisers and agencies was really good insight to see the the economics of the business that's driven by the technology. And so as I said, I spent roughly 10 years there. 24.7and Real Media merged become 24.7Real Media, that became Zaxis and then I went into a couple more startups, always being the go to market guy when either the first round of financing was secured, working with some of the smartest people in the business. And went back into the game with Dave at Simulmania again, one of the starting members of that team, and wanted to bring a data driven approach to linear television to truly understand why so much money stayed in that space. But doing it through a data driven lens. And so obviously learned a ton there and found Adform to be super intriguing because they approach the market from a full tech stack and it's unique when you have a company that's got so many pieces of kit in their toolkit. So everything from a DSP to an ID solution, to a buy side ad server, to dynamic creative optimization suite, and each one of these pieces impacts the industry differently and impacts the respective stakeholders of both publisher, agency and advertiser differently. So I thought that that was a cool place to go. And with my background, having worked in Europe and Adform being founded In Denmark in 2003, it was a great opportunity to reconnect with some old friends in Europe, but based out of here, out of New York.

[A]

So you've been in the space for a really long time. And you mentioned something that I caught that you're usually a guy that's brought on when funding comes in, they're ready to scale and build. And that says a lot about you as a person, you as a personality. You just kind of get stuff done. That kind of brings me to my next question. Like, getting stuff done is not always done the right way. And a lot of these marketers are talking about efficiency, they're talking about reach, but people are often overlooking this huge percentage of a user base and it's the 40% that are overlooked. How is Adform in particular addressing that 40%? And why are you pushing brands to think differently about those audiences?

[B]

Yeah, I think it's really important to walk a mile in a brand's shoes. You know, they, they have to react to changing dynamics in the industry to build awareness while at the same time building the products that they're actually advertising. So they have this really interesting dynamic. Are we selling the right products and are we reaching the right audiences? And then you have the fragmentation of not only the channels in which they want to reach them, but you have, in our space here and expect definitely in the programmatic marketplace, you have this massive fragmentation of how people are engaging with content, but also how we can target them now that we have things like cookie deprecation and changes in device behavior. And so when you understand that a brand's fundamental focus is on reach and frequency, because those are the core pillars of media planning, which are then supported by the media activation. They just know that the most effective frequency is 0 to 1. Somebody went from not seeing my ad to seeing my ad and thereafter, how many more times can I remind them? And in today's marketplace you can't get a true signal across platform. Lots of good companies are working on it, but, but it's tough to get. And so what Adform has done is to try and help through transparency of what's happening in the bid stream. And you'd be surprised at what's going on in that bid stream. I think ana programmatic transparency document that came out about a year ago did a really good job of illuminating what's happening behind the scenes in the programmatic marketplace. And Adform was one of two DSPs to participate in that. And it was really important to me to make sure that transparency is not just a buzzword. How do you actually activate what's happening in the bid stream? How do you let a brand or a principal know, hey, this is what's going on behind the scenes? And so what we quickly discovered is that what we think is happening isn't necessarily the case. And the deprecation of cookies has led this wide open gap with 40% of Americans don't use a cookie or use Safari and Firebox to say it differently. Brands are stuck trying to figure out, well, am I going to double down on 60%, how much money am I going to spend on bringing in a first party id? How much is that ID in the bid stream? And that's what we help them with.

[A]

So John, I was looking at the company prior to the call and we had a prior chat to this and you mentioned that we're an independent player in a very competitive market. That being said, you're not small. I mean, I think the total number of employees was close to 700.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

Okay, so what, what sets you apart as an independent player in the market and how does that position you differently for the broader vision of what your company is doing and why advertisers want to see ad form position itself in the market?

[B]

Yeah, I think the role of independence is changes definition over time. There were times when there were just technology players and then those technology players started taking positions on inventory. So in that position, their ad form doesn't have a position on inventory and then becomes a reseller of inventory. So that's one important economic piece that brands know that they can trust us, that their money is going to work against their respective media budgets. The second piece is the, as I mentioned, the transparency the data is only as good as if you can use it. And helping them understand how to use it on both through a buy side ad server and through a DSP and through ID Fusion, which is, think of it as a graph of graphs. Due to our nature of being GDPR compliant with our European roots, we have this notion where we think about brands first and we think about what they need before we think about our business because we know that if we can help them, we're going to win.

[A]

You know John, you mentioned GDPR being compliant, being a European first company. Can I say that a European first company with a presence there. You were probably ahead of the curve in understanding how to address a market that you know has restrictions and privacy regulation. So it's good to know that, that you, you were a step ahead. Having started and, and dealing with GDPR and then moving into the United States, that that obviously reflected your strategy in entering this market. Another question for you is you mentioned the 40% and that's like key focus of what you're doing. How is that different? So budgets get a little bit tight for marketers at times. You, they're trying to find the right audiences to target. And so when you find your 40, what are you giving these advertisers in terms of the right results and the right way to spend their money rather than just spending more money?

[B]

So let's, let's clarify what this find your 40 is. If you have 40% of your audience that you can't see, you need to rely on another first party data. Do you know how often that first party data ID gets through the bid stream to actually reach the dsp? That's question number one. More times than not, they don't. Secondly, if I'm going to do a match with an onboarder, is my match rate equal to my reach rate? That's another question that often isn't answered numerically. People say they oh yeah, I got a great match rate of my onboarder, which could be wonderful. But then they assume that that's the same reach rate and that's just not true. So when we help them understand how much money went to frequency versus reach, a marketer doesn't need to change their absolute budget size. They can carve off the excessive frequency and go find accretive reach without changing any size of the budget.

[A]

So looking ahead, do you see this as the unreached audience and do you see this as becoming central to how brands are thinking about media planning? Is it a wake up call for them to think about how they target and how they focus on spending their budgets.

[B]

I think brands are very verse at figuring out what their effective frequency needs to be in the constant effort to go after and find that incremental reach. I just think that people haven't opened the shades to what's actually happening behind the scenes so they can see it, so they can activate better. And I think this is what ad forms bring to the table. We can help you understand the relationship between your match rate to your reach rate and show you where you can find incremental reach. It's not something that you got to spend a ton of money doing. We'll just show you as part of our engagement, just to get the ball rolling.

[A]

So question for you, John. We hear a lot in the, in the space. You're obviously innovating and thinking about new ways to target an audience that has historically been unseen or even untargeted. What are you really bullish about moving into the fourth quarter? This is end of September, so we're, we're right on the cusp of it. What are you excited about for the fourth quarter of the year and what are you excited about with that form?

[B]

I'm excited that brands can do more with less. Every time that they get the chance to be more aware of what's going on, they get smarter. And when brands get smarter, everybody wins downstream. I think we forget that there's only really two principles in the business. There's the principal brand and there's the publisher. And the rest of us are their agents. We have to help them grow because with more product growth, the economy grows. With more need for advertising, the publishers grow. So I'm very excited that if brands can get more action off of their media activation, the ecosystem is going to grow and we're all going to get better together.

[A]

Amazing. John, I wanted to thank you and thank you for sponsoring this episode and thank you for being my guest today on the podcast. I really appreciate it.

[B]

Thank you. Ad Tech God.

[A]

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 ATG Slack community has insights, networking opportunities and jobs. Keep the conversation going and stay at the forefront of adtech innovation.