Episode 104: Year in review, awards, and predictions with Ari and Eric

Summary

Marketecture Podcast Summary: Episode 104 - Year in Review, Awards, and Predictions with Ari and Eric

Published on December 27, 2024

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Introduction

In Episode 104 of the Marketecture Podcast, hosts Ari Paparo and Eric Franchi delve into a comprehensive year-end review, celebrate industry achievements through their Market Awards, and unveil insightful predictions for the advertising and marketing landscapes in the upcoming year. This episode seamlessly blends reflections on past trends, evaluations of notable successes and setbacks, and forward-looking statements that promise to shape the industry’s future.

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Year in Review

Market Awards Recap

Ari and Eric kick off the episode by revisiting their Market Awards, a segment where they evaluate their predictions and analyses from the previous year. They candidly discuss both their accurate calls and missteps, providing valuable lessons for listeners.

Eric reflects on his successful predictions regarding public CEOs, highlighting Adam Siroca of Applovin and Tim Vanderhoek of Viant as standout leaders who have significantly impacted their companies:

“[...] Adam from Applovin and Tim from Viant were two good calls last year. And I think those were two good calls this year as well.” [03:35]

Conversely, Ari acknowledges a less successful prediction involving Ross from VideoAmp, whose subsequent job loss and company struggles served as a humbling experience:

“We joked about this on the pod previously that my call, we asked who's the best, like private company CEO, and I called out Ross from VideoAmp and he like promptly lost his job like a week after we recorded.” [04:00]

Ad Tech's Cookie Conundrum

A significant portion of their review focuses on the ongoing cookie debate within the ad tech industry. Ari and Eric express skepticism about the progress made over the past year, noting that the promised advancements in cookie alternatives remain elusive.

Ari comments on Google’s role in the uncertainty surrounding cookies:

"Google also shit the bed in addition to everybody else." [05:48]

Eric concurs, emphasizing the industry's stagnation:

“The industry... did not find a way.” [05:55]

They discuss Google’s controversial Sandbox trial, which continues to add layers of uncertainty rather than providing clear solutions:

“The sandbox is not dead by any means, but they're not unilaterally removing cookies.” [06:18]

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) Highlights

The hosts highlight a robust year for M&A activity in ad tech, showcasing strategic acquisitions that signify consolidation and growth within the industry.

Ari mentions key acquisitions such as Audigen by Experian and Innovid by MediaOcean, underscoring the trend of established companies acquiring innovative startups to bolster their capabilities:

“We have the Audigen acquisition that just happened. We have Innovid being acquired by MediaOcean.” [08:23]

Eric adds to this by noting other significant deals, including Walmart’s acquisition of Vizio and LiveRamp’s acquisition of Pabu, illustrating a diverse range of strategic moves:

“You had Walmart Vizio. You had LiveRamp Pabu. You had Reddit, Memorable.” [08:22]

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Awards

Best CEOs and Executives

Public CEOs:

• Jeff Green of Applovin is lauded for his exceptional execution and strategic initiatives, notably building The Trade Desk's data platform and developing their own operating system. His leadership has driven Applovin’s stock to surge 70% year over year, making him a standout figure in the public sector.

  “They’re up 70% year over year, so far exceeding the market.” [15:15]

• Tim Vanderhoek of Viant is recognized for his outstanding performance, with Viant’s stock soaring 200% year over year. His strategic product launches and M&A activities, including the acquisition of Iris TV, have positioned Viant as a formidable player in ad tech.

  “Viant was up 200% year over year. They recorded the product announcement of the year with Vian AI.” [16:54]

Private CEOs:

• Bill Wise of MediaOcean receives unanimous acclaim for his leadership in orchestrating the acquisition of Innovid and successfully integrating new strategic investments from major customers. His ability to navigate competitive pressures and vanquish rivals like Hudson MX demonstrates his prowess in managing and expanding MediaOcean’s footprint.

  “The acquisition of Innovid. Private company acquiring a public company. That is no joke.” [18:18]

Honorable Mentions:

• Bach of Scope Three is acknowledged for his resilience and ambitious vision to decarbonize not just ads but also AI, following a successful recovery from heart surgery.

  “He successfully came out of heart surgery, recovered, and came out with a bigger and more ambitious vision.” [19:33]

Worst Moments of the Year

Ari and Eric candidly discuss the most cringe-worthy moments of the year, highlighting significant missteps within the ad tech space.

• Google’s Privacy Sandbox: The much-anticipated Privacy Sandbox initiative is deemed a colossal failure due to industry non-compliance and regulatory challenges. The hosts express disappointment in Google's inability to resolve these issues, suggesting it may lead to a "trough of disillusionment."

  “Google at some point just threw up their hands and said we can’t solve these problems.” [14:37]

• Sincera’s MFA Inventory Debacle: The mishandling of MFA inventory by Sincera, involving sudden shutdowns and lack of transparency, is cited as another major faux pas.

  “The company creating MFA inventory and they shut it down.” [21:58]

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Hottest Startups

Early-Stage Startups

• Chalice: Recognized for pioneering custom algorithms and innovative approaches to inventory valuation at the page level. Chalice has garnered attention through strategic announcements and impressive growth metrics.

  “Chalice is on a tear just with pioneering this idea of custom algorithms.” [22:51]

• Adelaide and Lumen: Adelaide has made significant strides in attention measurement, recently raising a seed-plus round, while its European counterpart, Lumen, partnered with IAS to enhance their AI-enabled data plays.

  “Adelaide just recently raised their sort of borderline. It wasn’t a B round.” [23:57]

• ShopSense AI: Lauded for its innovative third-screen shopping experiences, enabling consumers to shop while watching TV through interactive URLs and QR codes.

  “Shop Sense is like a third screen shopping experience. You’re watching the NBA and they put up a URL or a QR code and you could shop.” [24:34]

Late-Stage Startups

• TV Scientific: Commended for championing performance TV with strategic investments and groundbreaking product launches. Their intense focus on patents and innovative methodologies sets them apart in the market.

  “TV Scientific is pioneering and becoming synonymous with this idea of performance TV.” [25:45]

• Vibe: Noted for its user-friendly approach to CTV advertising, offering services like AI-generated creative builders and developing proprietary supply paths, making CTV advertising more accessible for small businesses.

  “Vibe is taking a different approach, going very small business. Sign up with a credit card, buy TV for $50 a month.” [26:34]

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Technological Trends

Curation in Ad Tech

Ari emphasizes the emergence of curation as the hottest trend in ad tech, propelled by companies like Audigen and Index. Curation allows for more precise targeting and inventory management, benefiting both advertisers and publishers.

“This was the year of curation.” [10:37]

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI continues to dominate the tech landscape, with significant advancements and widespread adoption across various facets of advertising:

• Publishers and AI Platforms: A notable trend is publishers forging partnerships with AI platforms like OpenAI and Perplexity, enhancing content creation and distribution.

  “Every publisher cut a deal with OpenAI or Perplexity.” [11:01]

• Agentic AI: Both hosts are excited about the concept of agentic AI, autonomous agents capable of managing tasks at scale, exemplified by companies like Pilot Desk.

  “Agentic AI... agents that are autonomous and doing the work of people just at greater scale.” [28:35]

• Brand-Focused AI: Ari advocates for AI applications centered around brand strategies rather than purely creative outputs, anticipating revolutionary changes in how brands interact with consumers.

  “Brand-focused AI, not for creative, but for what might be called the future of SEO.” [30:57]

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Reflections on the Podcast

Celebrating a milestone 100th episode, Ari and Eric reflect on their journey with the Marketecture Podcast. They highlight favorite episodes, such as the engaging conversations with Brian O'Kelly and Alex Kohn of Google, which provided deep insights into the industry's complexities.

Eric shares his admiration for episodes featuring leaders like Jason from TV Scientific and Larry Koenig from MIQ, praising their ability to shed light on intricate ad tech dynamics.

“Episode number 67 with Larry Koenig from MIQ was the most educational episode of the year.” [33:25]

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Predictions for 2025

TikTok Ban

Ari and Eric discuss the impending Supreme Court decision on banning TikTok in the U.S., speculating on the platform's fate and the redistribution of its substantial advertising spend.

Eric predicts a likely ban:

“Looks like it’s going to be banned.” [36:05]

Ari counters with a more optimistic outlook, suggesting that political maneuvers might prevent the ban:

“Trump will let it slide somehow.” [36:37]

Google’s Ad Tech Spin-Out

Ari forecasts the inevitable spin-out of Google's ad tech assets, driven by ongoing legal and regulatory pressures.

“We get a spin out of the ad tech assets announced. It is announced in 2025.” [37:11]

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) Market Heating Up

Both hosts anticipate a resurgence in the M&A market, driven by strategic acquisitions to bridge gaps in areas like CTV, Commerce, and AI.

Eric elaborates:

“With the new administration... companies start to get acquisitive and you start to see the comeback of strategic M and A.” [38:39]

AI Adoption in Advertising

Ari and Eric foresee AI becoming integral to ad tech operations, with companies adopting AI to enhance efficiency and effectiveness across planning, execution, and optimization phases.

Eric states:

“AI goes from... tools becoming adopted at scale and being used to enhance efficiency and effectiveness.” [42:34]

Ari adds that while creative AI remains promising, the true breakout will come from AI-driven planning and campaign management:

“We see either holding company or some agencies fully adopt AI for the planning and early work in the campaign cycle.” [43:15]

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Conclusion

As Episode 104 wraps up, Ari and Eric express gratitude to their listeners and acknowledge the support of their unsung heroes behind the scenes. They reiterate the podcast’s commitment to delivering insightful content every Friday and promoting community engagement through various platforms.

“Thank you for listening to the Market podcast... subscribe to our library of hundreds of executive interviews at marketecture.tv.” [47:57]

This episode not only provides a thorough analysis of the past year’s developments but also equips listeners with strategic foresight to navigate the evolving landscape of advertising and marketing in 2025.

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Notable Quotes:

• Ari: “Google also shit the bed in addition to everybody else.” [05:48]
• Eric: “They’re up 70% year over year, so far exceeding the market.” [15:15]
• Ari: “We see either holding company or some agencies fully adopt AI for the planning and early work in the campaign cycle.” [43:15]

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Stay Connected:

For more in-depth discussions and the latest insights, subscribe to the Marketecture Podcast on your favorite podcasting platform or visit marketecture.tv.

Transcript

[Ari]

This podcast is brought to you by Azerion. Azerion is one of the world's leading full stack digital advertising partners for 300 plus agencies at 2,500 plus brands. Their proprietary platform called Azerion Infinity seamlessly integrates the capabilities of owned and operated dsp, ssp, DMP and ad server technology to drive incremental performance, value and efficiency across the full marketing funnel. At Azerion, they offer custom audience activation, leveraging cookie identity data and contextual signals to gauge users across digital ctv, olv dooh audio in game channels everywhere else. Choose between direct or PMP activation, leveraging world class trading teams to deliver top of plan results or alternatively access audiences through a data connected PMP as a market leader in the sell side curation category. That's Azerion, the sponsor of this podcast. Welcome to the Market podcast. We have our year end slash year start episode the markets. Woohoo. Eric, you excited?

[Eric]

I am excited. How's your holidays been, Ari?

[Ari]

It's been busy. I've been working and cooking and you know, I made some latkes for Hanukkah that came out pretty good. We tried the thing that, the Instagram thing where you put like salmon on your latke like a canopy and it was okay. I think I still prefer applesauce. What about you? How's your holiday been?

[Eric]

It's been great. A lot of eating, a lot of, a lot of family, a lot of preparation for CES and next year. So it's going fast.

[Ari]

Yeah, the Double Wednesday holiday is weird because it's like a two week and you can't really take all that time off. You know, you have to, you have to still put it to power. So it's a little confusing, but it's good to have the family here. So last year we did the Market Awards, where that's what we call them, where we did some predictions and we called out some people. So we're going to do it again this year, but let's first do some housekeeping. So marketecture will be at ces. We are filming in people's suites. We're calling it Sweet Suites. It's going to be a lot of fun. It's sort of like MTV Cribs for ces. And the videos will be posted as fast as possible. So the Same Week on LinkedIn, on YouTube, et cetera. So make sure you look out for those. It'll be a lot of fun. And then also I'm interviewing Adam Siroca from Magnite at the Magnite Space at the Barbershop at the Cosmo. We're actually over subscribed, so we're not taking new RCPs. But if you're on the list and can get in, I hope to see you there. Hopefully it'll be fun and maybe we'll use some of that content on the pod. Eric, I think I asked you last week, but I'll ask you again. What are you doing at ces?

[Eric]

I'm doing meetings. I think I'm going to sneak into the Adam Sirocco thing. That looks great. But I have meetings all day, every day. So I won't be at Sweet Sweets.

[Ari]

You won't be at Sweet Sweets, but.

[Eric]

At night there'll be no cameos, no baccarat, more meetings.

[Ari]

Put on the tuxedo or the martini and go to the background table.

[Eric]

No, I. I'm a. I'm not a gambler, but, you know, I can't resist roulette sometimes.

[Ari]

Yeah.

[Eric]

And I realize it's the worst odds, but, you know, just playing a color and, you know, doubling down or losing and walking away, it could be fun.

[Ari]

All right, so with that, let's jump into the market sector award. So let's hold ourselves accountable and say how we did last year. So we had a lot of questions last year. We're not going to go through every single one, but we'll talk about some good calls and some bad calls. So I think, Eric, you had some good calls. You were asked about public CEOs. What did you come up with last year?

[Eric]

I think I either had a tie or we name checked both Adam from Applovin and Tim from Viant. And I think those were two good calls last year. And I think they're going to be two good calls this year, which we'll get into in a moment. What about you?

[Ari]

Well, if you had just like forgotten this whole early stage VC crap and just put all your money on those two stocks, you would have had quite a good return for the LPs.

[Eric]

Don't remind me. Don't remind me again. I've, I've actually, I have this. I have the stats, I have the numbers. Don't remind me.

[Ari]

Yeah, it would be bad. I didn't do as well. We joked about this on the pod previously that my call, we asked who's the best, like private company CEO, and I called out Ross from videoamp and he like promptly lost his job like a week after we recorded. And the company like went into a bit of a tailspin. So I love Ross. He texts me sometimes with weird information, but not the best call on that. Also prediction. So we had, we talked a lot about predictions. I'm not sure who did which prediction, but you know, in general our vibe was on the right direction. We started saying that AI was going to be big. Well, that was a really tough prediction. But, but we thought, in particular, I think we riffed on the idea that there might be AI enabled agencies coming out. So very thin staffing, mostly tech. I don't think we've seen that yet.

[Eric]

Not yet. It's going to come.

[Ari]

Absolutely.

[Eric]

And I think it's. We need to see more solutions come to bear to allow them to do everything that an agency does. But if you also think about it to the extent that agencies are heavily focused on some of these algorithmic tools like pmax and Advantage plus and Audience plus, like you could do a lot with a little, if you're like very forward leaning from a media standpoint. But it was, yeah, it was an early one.

[Ari]

The other thing was that ad tech would find a way as it relates to cookies. I think this is a whiff. Like I don't think ad tech is in better shape today than it was a year ago with regard to cookies. I think it's the same exact conversation, same mess. With the exception that Google also shit the bed in addition to everybody else.

[Eric]

Exactly, exactly. The industry. Yeah, exactly. Did not find a way. Thank you to Google.

[Ari]

Yeah, the first half of the year was all like, hey, we have a new sandbox trial. New sandbox trial, new sandbox trial, new info like, here's how much cookies are going away, here's how it isn't. And then middle of the year Google's like, eh, there's too much regulatory pressure. We're just not going to do this. They're still doing the sandbox. The sandbox is not dead by any means, but they're not unilaterally removing cookies. So it adds another level of uncertainty.

[Eric]

Yeah, you had a pretty prescient prediction which was Google does or does not spin out its ad tech, but something happens.

[Ari]

Yeah, I entered the year, I think I was on the record at a 50% chance that it would spin out this. It would be announced this year and it did not get announced. But there was quite a bit of movement on this. So I'll just summarize for folks, which is we're waiting on the Virginia trial which is supposed to come before the end of the year. So it could come before this podcast even even drops, which I expect to require a spin out. Europe is Going to require a spin out. Also, the ruling from Europe is expected any moment. And in September, Reuters published a story that was well sourced that said that Google had offered a spin out to the European Union already just for adx. They didn't offer the ad server, they just offered adx. So, you know, that's a lot of movement. And you'll hear my prediction this year on that subject too, which will be pretty similar.

[Eric]

Nice. I had a bad one. I predicted that Netflix was going to like really, you know, just emerge very, very strong as a player in ctv while their year over year growth was substantial. Like, I forget exactly what the, what the numbers were like, you know, they demonstrated like great year over year growth in terms of like the number of ad subscribers. It's still not on the radar of like CTV media plans. So that was. I think I'll take that one as.

[Ari]

An L. Yeah, I mean, I think Netflix takes us as an L. We're just observers, but there's a lot of opportunity there and it's. I don't know if it's a misstep or it's just inertia, but I think it definitely didn't come true. Maybe Nicole is new there as she's going to get things moving. We hope so. It'll be fun to see M and A coming back. So we both thought M and A would come back and it has, has. We have the Audigen acquisition that just happened. We have Innovid being acquired by MediaOcean. We have, I don't know, name some. There's a lot more.

[Eric]

Yeah, you had Walmart Vizio.

[Ari]

Walmart Vizio, yeah.

[Eric]

You had Liveramp Pabu. You had Reddit, Memorable. So it was a really good mix of like strategic acquisitions and then just some consolidation. Right, like the, you know, seed tag, Beastfront title. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I think we nailed that one.

[Ari]

I think we'll see that continue. I don't want to go to the future talking, but you still have a lot of good, successful mid sized ad tech companies where the IPO window is largely closed and they're looking for options. So find those options. All right, let's transition to talk about the future and to start predicting things.

[Eric]

And our awards, our awards before the predictions.

[Ari]

I'm sorry, Awards, Awards and predictions.

[Eric]

Okay. Starting with a year that was. Come on, this is a recap.

[Ari]

One prediction is that we're going to have a new host of this podcast soon. Stop it. I can't take it anymore.

[Eric]

Don't leave us.

[Ari]

Okay, what was the hottest trend of 2024 in adtech.

[Eric]

I mean, undoubtedly it was curation, no doubt.

[Ari]

Curation. Both. Full agree. Full agree. I swear to God, and I'm just displaying my ignorance here, a year ago, I didn't know what curation was. I mean, I kind of knew that App Nexus had a product that was called Curate, and I kind of knew what that did, but that was just so deep in my memory, was not on top of my list of important things. And then I did a interview with Audigen and then I did an interview with Index with Casali, and I was like, oh, crap, this is real, this is big. And I wrote a couple articles about it. I'm a huge believer in it. You were an investor in Audigen, right?

[Eric]

Yeah, yeah, we were an investor in Origin. So similarly, it went from, you know, Audigen being really the company that invented it. I think it's, you know, it's arguable. They were the first ones that were out there really championing the idea to you writing a couple of like, prescient articles to everyone talking about it and yelling about it for literally the entire year to Experian acquiring Autogen. Again, the number was in public, but it was a really, really good outcome right at the end of the year. So this was the year of curation.

[Ari]

Yeah. And it just benefits everybody. And the people who are haters are just need to stop hating so much. And you know, there's this feeling like it's somehow taking advantage of publishers because their inventory is being rebundled, but the publishers are opt in. You know, they do not have to do this. So I think those arguments are pretty weak. T. What about AI? AI was a big year for AI.

[Eric]

I mean, it was all over the place.

[Ari]

Right?

[Eric]

Like, you know, just with like, interesting announcements and innovation. But I think the one thing, if we take a step back and look at it from a trend standpoint was publishers cutting deals with these AI platforms. Digiday just, I think it was actually today they created the definitive list of who cut deals with who. But basically every publisher cut a deal with OpenAI or Perplexity. And I think it was probably one of the bigger trends of the year, for sure.

[Ari]

Yeah. And the ones who didn't cut deals sued. There's a New York Times lawsuit going on, which is sort of the opposite of cutting a deal. It's found money. I mean, 100% margin money. It's like, hey, take my archives and pay me $30 million. That's, that's wonderful news for the publisher community. We don't know what will happen in the long term if the traffic dry up will compensate, but it's great to see that trend. So what was the biggest flop or the most hype this year?

[Eric]

I was like so bullish on Netflix, so I'm going to continue that one with. I expected Netflix to really make a dent in the CTV space as it relates to building large business, getting like a significant share of, of media buys and it just didn't happen.

[Ari]

I kind of would double down on that and say not only did Netflix not make the splash, but Amazon Fire TV did. So this year saw Fire TV massively increase the volume of available inventory because they changed their subscriptions ad ads. And there was reporting from Ad Exchanger that it had a market impact on pricing in the CTV market because it flooded the market with so much available inventory. So the, the market went from supply constrained to demand constrained just because of one player's actions.

[Eric]

Yeah, that's a, that's a great point. And again back to Netflix. They were great from a content and programming standpoint, particularly around like live sports all of a sudden, right. You had Tyson Paul, you had this like football thing with Beyonce this past week. Yeah. Everybody tuned into so it's theirs. And I'm, I'm hopeful that they figure this thing out because there's so much opportunity for innovation around like modification of live generally that I'm really hopeful at 25, they figure this thing out.

[Ari]

Yeah. Eric, are you part of the Beehive or Taylor Nation? I'm not. You're just, are you, you're declining both? No, I'm not members of either, but I'm a big fan of both so I have a hard time choosing between them. So my biggest hype flop has got to be the privacy sandbox. Four years in the making, enormous amounts of effort being put into this from the Google side, but also the customer side. And they just ran into a mixture of industry non compliance, I guess I'd say IT, and the CMA, the UK's Competition Market Authority, which continued to ask, I think very reasonable questions of them. And Google at some point just threw up their hands and said we can't solve these problems. And that is just such a miss, such a fail that even if it does come out, maybe it's a trough of disillusionment. And a year or two from now we'll be talking about how great all these browser based privacy things are. But it doesn't feel that way. It feels like just a massive miscue.

[Eric]

A rare L by the Big G.

[Ari]

Well, it's not, you know, the big G Ls all the time, but they do it quickly. They, like, put out some crappy chat program and then it disappears and no one cares. This one. They went all in and they just. Yeah. All right, let's talk about the best CEOs, the best executives.

[Eric]

Yeah.

[Ari]

You do public or private first?

[Eric]

Let's go public. You go first.

[Ari]

I got to give it to Jeff Green. I know there's a lot of attention on Applovin now as the new shiny toy, but I just like the trade desk execution the way that they are. They're using their data platform to get consumers to, you know, register websites. I forget all the brand names, to be honest. And then the supply work they've done to get closer and closer to the supply and the. And the audacious move to build their own operating system, which may be a win. Maybe not. We probably need a couple years to find that out. I think he's executing on all cylinders.

[Eric]

I agree. And from a public markets performance perspective, they've done really well. They're up 70% year over year. So far exceeding the market.

[Ari]

Yeah, exactly. From a high point. I mean, it was hard to justify their valuation a year ago. 70% higher now.

[Eric]

Yeah, absolutely. You can't argue with that one. I'll take a different direction and actually bring back a name that we mentioned last year and earlier in this episode. My CEO of the year for public is Tim Vanderhoek. Let me explain why. Let's talk about the ultimate scorecard of how a public CEO is measured. It's measured by their stock performance. Vyant, as of when I did the research last week, was up 200% year over year. So again, an awesome year from a performance perspective. Vyant also had what I would consider the launch of the year, the product announcement of the year with Vian AI. Like, they recorded that video. They've got, like, basically, like everybody in ad tech looking at it, commenting on it, sharing it. I think they really, like, did a good job of painting the picture of what Martin Sir Martin, in our. In our last interview said the, you know, sort of like, wow factor of AI. Like, they showed what. What you can do with AI from a DSP standpoint. They're just getting started. And they did smart strategic M and A with the acquisition of Iris tv. So I think if you think about, like, you know, all those boxes, you'd want to check bay and had an awesome year and you got to give Tim a ton of credit and he's been out there like he is mixing it up. He's mixing it up on LinkedIn. He's mixing it up a little bit less on X. That's, that's Chris. But he's become like I think a lot more public facing than he has been in a long time.

[Ari]

Yeah, I think he did two things that people think are impossible. One was get people excited about an ad tech product and two was help a sub billion dollar market cap company grow in valuation. You know, I think a lot of us have stock in a bunch of public companies are 100, $200 million market cap and they seem like they're stuck there forever. And Viant maybe is finding a way to get Escape Velocity.

[Eric]

And then I think honorable mention, you have to call out app love. And again exceeded the market cap of TTD up 750% year over year. Seems to be cracking the code on E Commerce. What a year by those guys.

[Ari]

I'm looking forward to this exact podcast a year from now. To talk about this will either be like, oh my God, Applov has taken over the world or wow, that was, that was exciting. You know, we'll see.

[Eric]

It could go either way. It could truly go either way. So that's a great point.

[Ari]

So for private CEOs, Eric and I actually are in agreement. So we have a unanimous vote here for previous podcast guest, Mr. Bill Wise. Billy blocked in. Yeah, like hopefully this won't go to Bill's ego because it's such a small, modest ego to begin with. Why, why do you think deserves this?

[Eric]

Well, so number one, he. I think it was our first interview of 2024 and it was one of our best. I thought it was a great episode. So, you know, a, a podcast, number one. Number two, the acquisition of Innovid. Right. Like a private company acquiring a public company. That is no joke. And one that I think has some really impressive strategic implications with where they could take the thing. So pulling off a deal like that is incredible. And then following it up a week or so later with three of the six holding companies, three of his largest customers making strategic investments in the business. Like a real power play to lock things in.

[Ari]

Yeah. The only thing I'll add is that he also vanquished his main rival. So Hudson MX was considered the kind of fly in the ointment on the media ocean story and they went fully out of business. It's not rare that you totally vanquish a rival with that dramatic a flair. So very interesting. We'd love to see Bill Wise on the public CEO list at some point. Come on, let's get going. No one's getting younger around here. We want to see that media ocean's ipo, but I guess for now, he'll have to stay on the private list.

[Eric]

And again, just, you know, if we got. If we can slip in an honorable mention for this category, since we were both, you know, in agreement. I'll call out Bach. If you recall, this time last year, the guy was preparing for heart surgery, and so successfully came out of heart surgery, recovered, and came out of the gate with a bigger and more ambitious vision for Scope three, which is not just decarbonizing ads, but decarbonizing AI. So just from the standpoint of, like, you know, the resilience that guy's shown and the again, raw ambition, I think it's worthy of a shout out.

[Ari]

All right, let's talk about the worst moments of the year. We call it the most cringe moment. Eric, do you want to go first on that one?

[Eric]

Yeah, I think Google completely just giving up on deprecating cookies. I don't know if you call that cringe. I don't know exactly what you call that, but, like, I think we were all like, oh, my God, when that thing happened. What do you think?

[Ari]

I've got to go for the Colossus Colossal mess Even bigger than cookies. Well, I don't know. It just wins points for the messiness. This is the most cringe moment. So this is the moment where most of the people listening to our podcast was like, make it stop. Make it stop. I mean, if you recall, there was this SSP no one had heard of, run by a public company who lost their auditor, who was accused by analytics of using data in the incorrect way. And then their immediate response was to sue analytics, to throw their partner, BitSwitch, under the bus, to blame everyone but themselves. And then they came back and said, oh, well, I don't know, maybe something happened. Who knows? But we're best friends with BitSwitch now, and then we're back in business, and no one really knows what's going on with this company, and it's just messy, messy, messy. It's like Real Housewives of Ad Tech type story.

[Eric]

I was really trying to rack my brain for cringe moments this year, and it feels like there were less of them. Maybe next year we'll see more.

[Ari]

Well, analytics serves up the cringe moments for us. Remember this year. This has been a long year. We've aged five or six years this year. But this was also the year remember the www3.forbes.com? that was pretty gross.

[Eric]

All right, I changed my answer. Good call. Good call. Yeah, that was awful.

[Ari]

That was pretty awful. So I don't know, there's been a lot.

[Eric]

And then since Sarah figured out, oh, God, I forget the name of the company. That was basically like an entire company creating MFA inventory and they shut it down.

[Ari]

Wasn't that owned by Paron, had a division that was like, press a button and get your own MFA site?

[Eric]

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I forget the name, but yeah, it was. Yeah. Shout out to Sincera. All right, you're right, you're right. It was more than just cookies.

[Ari]

While we're on Sincera, I think they were our hottest early stage startup last year.

[Eric]

They were.

[Ari]

So they're still an early stage startup, but we got to mix it up a little bit. We can't have repeats. So what's your vote for the hottest early stage startup? And by early stage, we're talking about series A earlier.

[Eric]

You had some, some good picks here too. So if I, if I have to name one, I'm going to name Chalice. Chalice is on a tear just with, you know, a, kind of pioneering this idea of custom algorithms. And then B, if you look at some of the announcements that they made this year around being able to value inventory at a page level, what they're doing with Index, and then just as an investor seeing, you know, some of the, some of the growth, it's been really impressive. So shout out to Chalice. Again, it's a early stage defined by. We agreed that it would be series A or earlier, but it's a company that's been at it for some time. They've been on a total tear. What about you?

[Ari]

Yeah, they did that interesting thing with Index. I didn't fully understand it, but they sent me the press release like four times. So I'm going to, I'm going to shout out the attention space. So we had, we had Mark from Adelaide here who did. It was one of my favorite episodes. It didn't really do great numbers, but I thought it was really interesting where Mark explained how attention measurement works. So Adelaide just recently raised their sort of borderline. It wasn't a B round. Right. Because you were involved with it. It was sort of like an A round.

[Eric]

It was a seed plus.

[Ari]

Yeah, Seed plus. Seed plus. But I also want to call out their European counterpart, Lumen, who just did a deal with IAS and has a different methodology from Adelaide to also do attention. And I think they have a really Interesting sort of AI enabled data play and then I'm cheating. I'm just adding more. I think Mobius from the Goodheart brothers, that's still in stealth is pretty interesting.

[Eric]

Mobian.

[Ari]

Mobian.

[Eric]

Mobian.

[Ari]

Not Mobius. Mobian. Sorry, my bad. They haven't fully, you know, launched even. It's like sort of half stealth. They're talking about it, people have seen it. But what it is and how it's exactly going to work is still tbd, but it's pretty, pretty exciting stuff.

[Eric]

It's interesting. It's a company that everyone is aware of, so I would certainly call it one of the hottest companies. But very few are working with and have the kind of depth of understanding what they're doing. So I think they're doing a great job of building buzz. Look, we're in early stage investors so I could go on and on about companies doing cool things. I do think that there's one that launched at CES and then by the end of the year. So this is shopsense AI who you had on the pod yet? Brian ON by the end of the year they have, I think half a dozen premium publishers that are using their tech to build RMNs. So it's been one of the best launches I've seen in a year's time, in some time. So shout out to shopsense. They're in the middle of a bunch of really cool stuff.

[Ari]

Shop Sense is like a third screen shopping experience. You're watching the NBA and they put up a URL or a QR code and you could shop. It's neat. It's a neat idea. It's like not cutting edge AI or anything like that, but get people to shop while they watch tv. I'm all for it. Okay, what about later Stage Series B or later? Who's on your list?

[Eric]

TV Scientific for sure. They came out early this year with an investment round led by Sir Martin with a bunch of other great firms involved. They are kind of pioneering and becoming synonymous with this idea of performance tv. So they've done an incredible job, I think of really championing that. And again, anybody that knows the company knows they're doing quite well. We had Jason on the open market pod, so number one, he is so intense. Actually, Jason and I think the winner of your nomination, which we'll talk about in a second on both of them are awesome. Jason is so intense and the work that they're doing around patents, it's just a different conversation. It's pretty fascinating. I'd recommend everybody check that one out.

[Ari]

What Was your rival company Vibe, where I'm on the board. So I'm very biased here but I love what Vibe's doing. They're in the same space as TV Scientific but taking a different approach, going very small business. Sign up with a credit card, buy TV for $50 a month. They launched their AI generated creative builder which is really sexy. They're building Supply path, basically their own sources of supply. And I think these two companies are sort of taking different approaches to the same problem. TV Scientific kind of going like algorithm down and Vibe going UI up and they're both going to grow the market for CTV publishers quite a bit. So it's a win win for everybody.

[Eric]

Yeah, I agree. Shout out to Arthur. They had another like really impressive product launch this year with the videos and a bunch of their execs like doing demos. It was really good. Anybody else on your minds for later?

[Ari]

Stitches putting me on the spot. No. Do you have anybody?

[Eric]

Because you've been to a late stage and consider like, I mean Index. Index is a private company, I think a 20 year old company and they're doing great. Like there's so many companies we could name here.

[Ari]

Yeah, I think Index's embrace of curation and their product development around that has been impressive. So I like to see that it's not exactly a pivot but it's a to push in a different direction that I think they're a little bit ahead of their direct competitors. I had a chance to see the UI of a company called Bliss in the uk. It's not very well known blis. They have sort of a DSP that is very focused on non cookies about geography and things like that. I was very impressed with that. I don't know what their business status is because they're mostly uk but they one of the better products I've seen in a while. Okay, so what about new tech, like cutting edge tech? It must be AI, right?

[Eric]

Absolutely. There's still so much to be built and so much innovation happening on the AI front. And again, just because we're a little biased and we're early stage investors, we're seeing it. The one thing that I'm excited about that I think we're going to see real promise in the years to come. And even 2025 is agentic AI. You know, this idea of just having like agents that are autonomous and you know, are beginning to do the work of people just at greater scale. You know, we're seeing some examples of this in the, in, in our portfolio with companies like Pilot Desk you know, which is allow, which is effectively using agents to do the work of, you know, many, many people 24 hours a day. And I think this is the type of thing that's got potential to you know, really be massively both, I think, disruptive and helpful to, to the industry. So agents are on my mind.

[Ari]

Yeah, I think that's a good call. I think with regard to Pilot Desk, what I like about that company is that they're operating within the constraints of legacy ad tech. Like, there's two approaches if you want to use AI and ad tech. Number one is you start from scratch, you just say, feed us your log files and we'll figure it out. And that's really problematic. No one's going to put their business in your hands when it's just black box. And option two is sort of what they're doing, which is, okay, we understand what a line item is, we understand what an order is, let's use technology to make them better. And I think that's given some of the constraints, probably the right approach. For me. I am a believer in brand focused AI, not for creative, but for what might be called the future of SEO. So this is sort of some of the work that the startup that Michael Rubenstein and John Heller are working on. Yeah, I don't know if their approach is the right one. There's another company in the west coast called like Bluefish, I think that's also doing something similar. I think that brands are going to present their products to consumers in a totally different way. Using AI. Websites will be just for a little bit of eye candy, but the real core information that drives purchasing decisions will be created and disseminated by AI to AI so that agents can help them make better decisions.

[Eric]

I've seen a couple of pitches for companies that are going after this space over the course of the past couple months. So it's happening for sure.

[Ari]

Okay, let's point inwards about the Marketecture podcast. So we hit our 100th episode this year. Yay. That was pretty exciting. Market itself a year ago was just me. I was selling ads, I was placing the ads, I was doing everything. And now I've got three people, four, four newsletters, three podcasts. We're having our first event. So a lot has happened. But with all that said, what were your memories of the best episodes? What did you learn? Let's just like, let's give ourselves a big pat on the back.

[Eric]

Yeah, for sure. So, wow. This wasn't my pick, but after you pulled off that acquisition of ATG and Jeremy Bloom. That was a fun episode. It was, yeah. Yeah. I felt like that was a milestone. Things changed from there. God, I gotta pick one that's a favorite. The one we did with Michael Kasson just a few weeks ago. I mean, you know, like, that guy is so good. The story is. Yeah, he's so funny. He had us rolling and had some great stories. And I think it's pretty incredible the longevity that he's had. What about you?

[Ari]

Yeah, so I looked at the stats and the most views was the Brian O'Kelly episode. So that was like five or six weeks ago. That was a good one. He's fun. He's a little prickly and contentious at times. So we had a good conversation. But my favorite was when we got Alex Kohn of Google of the Sandbox here and he very bravely stood up. I remember I did. It was one of our longest episodes because I just interrogated him for like 45, 50 minutes about everything about the Sandbox. Yeah, that was our number two. Listen to episode two. So people really got a lot out of that. And, you know, he had a tough year. I'll just say, you know, guys, guys having probably not enjoying his day to day so much, but he's. He's doing his best to make. Make the Sandbox thing happen in some form.

[Eric]

Yeah. What a likable guy, by the way. He is, you know, just like hang out with him in person at an event or conference. You instantly become a fan.

[Ari]

Absolutely. He's a great guy. Hopefully we'll have him back at some point once we have a little more clarity on what's going on. And the other episode, I think you pulled this out in some of the notes was Larry Koenig from miq. Holy cow.

[Eric]

That was so good. So that was episode number 67. And it was basically inspired by a presentation you saw Lara do, which is still publicly available. Yeah, by the way, the link is out there. Which was effectively the state of. The state of programmatic buying in CTV and the stats that she was able to just cite. And again, it was. It was from that presentation, but just like really underscoring the fragmentation of the market. 114 different supply paths to a given CTV app. The variance of CPMs up to 250% again on the same inventory. I think she did a great job, like helping everyone understand the state of the state, but then also how to make things better. That was to me like the most educational episode of the year. And obviously Chris from. From Jounce being a close second of though it's.

[Ari]

Yeah, I was going to call out Chris. So Chris from Jounce was on maybe in the spring during this sort of height of the MFA craziness, and he just very calmly and clearly defined what he thought MFA was, how it was trending. We. We saw. One of the bigger underreported stories of this year has been a big decline in mfa because the mania around it started, I think, in the fall of 23, because there was ANA report and then people started cracking down on it and then there was analytics and there's a whole bunch of things happened. And the number of sites on a media plan, number of MFA sites and media plans is dramatically lower, which is good for everybody. So. So I'm glad that we had a very, very small part in communicating about that.

[Eric]

Yeah. If you think about it, right, like you talk about TTD with the SP 500 plus, talk about the rise of curation. All of this is directly taking aim at that. That stuff that you were. You were pointing towards. And it's been a. It's been a real year of improvement.

[Ari]

I forgot about The S&P 500 plus. That was. Yeah. Jeff Green does not win awards for naming stuff. That's just like not his skill set.

[Eric]

That's all right. He's got a couple other things he's all right at.

[Ari]

All right, let's move on to what everyone wants to hear our predictions because people live and die by the opinions of Eric and Ari on ad tech. So let's peer into our crystal ball and see what we see for the great year 2025. I'm just going to tee up one until we get both of our opinions on it, which is the TikTok band, which is coming up really soon. It's like three weeks from now. It's supposed to be banned. It's going to the Supreme Court next week, I think. What do you think's going to happen?

[Eric]

Looks like it's going to be banned. So number one, like, if you got to choose a side, like the fact that it's reaching this point, it's like 50, 50. We could say, hey, let's say it gets banned. If it gets banned, it becomes very interesting, Right? Like, do you see that? What's that business size even? It's like $20 billion.

[Ari]

It's huge. It's huge. I don't know if we've seen a us number, but certainly bigger than Snap. I would say it's the number three social network after Facebook and Instagram.

[Eric]

Yeah, without a doubt. Right. So it's a. Where does all that social video spend go? And is Zuck yet again a winner just because Instagram can suck up all of that, you know, spend. Can YouTube suck up all of that? Spend is number one and then number two, they've got a massive multi billion dollar like social commerce business. Where does that go? Or does it stay on the platform as a US company without the algorithm? I don't know if that's the case. So I don't know. But I feel like my prediction is this is going to be a big story and it's going to happen quick.

[Ari]

Yeah, I think I'll predict specifically. I don't think the Supreme Court will get involved. I think they'll turn it down. I think Trump will let it slide somehow. Some magical, you know, Trump always finds some way out of a corner. He's going to figure out some way to let it, let it slide and let TikTok continue. I'm not really sure what mechanism will be used and maybe there is no mechanism, but it'll still let it use. I think TikTok is still going to be around and if it gets banned, we should do really Aaron Sorkin, if he listens to this podcast, really should do a sequel to the social network. It could be like, you know, Chinese intrigue. You could have Zuck on his, on his surfboard. You know, there's like so much material there for the social network part too. Okay, so I'm going to go on the record about the Google thing. Prediction wise, I think absolutely, 100%. We get a spin out of the ad tech assets announced. It may not complete in the year, but it is announced in 2025. I don't see any reason why they would continue protecting it. At some point they're going to have two or three different courts mandating against spun out. There's only so many appeals you can do. There's only so much they can do and they have no political strength at all. Everyone in D.C. including Elon and Trump hate them. And it's going to happen.

[Eric]

I can't argue. You're all over this.

[Ari]

I'm all over it. Maybe they'll hire me as a consultant to figure out how to rebrand it.

[Eric]

That would be amazing. I think we said last year the M and A market comes back. My prediction for next year, the M and A market heats up and we see a continued rise in strategic M and A. The strategics again defined as either the public companies or the scaled private companies to a large degree have been sitting on the Sidelines as it relates to M and A. I think with the new administration, with the acknowledged kind of gaps that many of these companies have in everything from CTV to Commerce to AI. And you've been, I think, really pointing out like just how far behind, you know, so many of the large companies are with AI. I think they start to get acquisitive and you start to see the comeback of strategic M and A versus you know, kind of half strategic ass consolidation as we saw this year.

[Ari]

Yeah, I agree with you. We'll add some color flavor to my side of the prediction, which is I think AI works two ways. There's one which is big company acquires small AI company. That makes sense. There's a different flavor though, which is there's an AI opportunity, but you need to buy a legacy company to make it work. Like Creative would be that example. It is much harder to create an AI generative creative asset company than it is to bolt AI onto Adobe or onto Celtra or Vidmob or someone like that or Sitely. There's a lot of these scaled creative companies and I think that would be an example. I think retail media might be another example where the hard part is getting into the retailer, not the AI part. And so there's a lot of opportunities for, I would call them mid size successful SaaS companies in our space to get acquired for an AI thesis.

[Eric]

That makes a lot of sense. That's right on. I'm like back to Netflix. I'm also really excited about just like live moving into streaming and I think that could be an area where we see some M and A as well because it's just such a massive opportunity. You can really build a thesis around it.

[Ari]

Well, what do you mean? What sort of companies do you think will be excited about Live?

[Eric]

Amazon and Netflix. Right. They're going to be having more and more live programming and then having the ability to have unique monetization during those moments. Again, I don't want to like talk up the portfolio so I won't name individual companies, but there's companies that specialize in monetization of life. There's companies that specialize in creating commerce opportunities in live program. I think the live of tomorrow doesn't necessarily need to look like the live of today as it relates to monetization and ad formats and how you actually make money off this stuff.

[Ari]

Yeah, I agree with you. Like you mentioned ShopSense, AI is one example. But yeah, I could definitely see that. So what do we think is going to happen with AI in general? Do you have predictions about AI as it relates to advertising this year?

[Eric]

Absolutely. Like you see the groundwork being laid, number one, right. With the Holdcos doing all of this both combination of acquisition and then the mega merger that we just covered a couple of weeks ago and all the investments that are being made. So I think that AI goes from, I can't say, I can't get this out of my head. It was the wow, how Now I think 2025. Yeah, 2025 becomes the year of now both in terms of like these tools becoming adopted at scale and being used to, you know, both enhance efficiency and enhanced effectiveness. So I think every company is going to need to transform and become AI forward and it's 2025.

[Ari]

Yeah, I agree with you in general specifically, I think the first use case that came to everyone's mind with AI was all creative, creative, creative, creative. And I've been kind of skeptical about that for a lot of reasons. I think that the Vyant demo showed how powerful it could be for planning and doing the work that frankly humans are not even that good at in agencies but use spreadsheets and things like that. I think if I had to go out on a limb on a specific prediction, it would be that we see either holding company or some agencies fully adopt AI for the planning and early work in the campaign cycle.

[Eric]

So you have planning and again Vine AI I think really showed the future of it. You've got buying, you've got operations, account management. There's a whole bunch of areas that are just extremely analytics, analytics, extremely people intensive that we know there's companies just attacking from an AI perspective. So I fully agree with you. But then at the same time just the ability to do cool things from a personalization perspective and what we're seeing with Sora and even Grok with text to video, it's really, really exciting. So again, I think it happens everywhere.

[Ari]

Yeah, I think it happens everywhere. Eventually I'm waiting for the breakout. I'm waiting for the advertising specific use case that starts scaling to tens of millions of dollars in revenue or hundreds of millions in cost savings. And I don't think, unless, I mean you could say, well Adobe Photoshop's, you know, auto fill is an advertising use case. Fine, but not really like I want in those steps you just outlined, you know, planning, execution, optimization, reporting, where's the breakout? Ad tech company or advertising technology company. I don't think we've seen it. Unless you want to nominate somebody.

[Eric]

Well, you've seen it with pmax, with Advantage plus of Course, tens of billions of dollars.

[Ari]

Yes. Yeah, we've talked about that previously. Yeah.

[Eric]

So, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's. There's companies that are on. That are on the edge of it for sure, that I think we'll. We'll hear more from in 2025.

[Ari]

And we could combine some of these themes. We could say, well, maybe Netflix has that closed loop data, or maybe Walmart and Vizio have the closed loop data. Maybe they create. They acquire tv Scientific or Vibe, depending on who wants to sell. And then they create PMAX for tv and the world has changed. That's a combo. That totally makes sense. I'm not predicting that. I'm just saying you could see how it all comes together.

[Eric]

Somebody should hire you.

[Ari]

I'm too busy, man. I don't have time for this stuff.

[Eric]

Do we have a prediction for Marketecture for 2025?

[Ari]

I would say that market. We currently have three employees. Let's do the employee thing. I used to do this at Beeswax every year at our. Seriously, it was fun. Every year I would put spreadsheet together and everyone. I'd ask every employee to predict how many employees we would have as of the Christmas party the following year. And then we'd give out an award for whoever came closest. And it was funny because people would have really bad guesses, some of them anyway. So I currently have three employees. It's me, Adtech, God, and Jeremy. How many employees will I have as of this session next year?

[Eric]

I think you're going to have more. I'll go with six. I'll go with doubling the company size. Just kind of knowing and observing everything that you're doing. I could imagine that each of the three legs of the marketexture stool could benefit from more resources, more enhancement.

[Ari]

Yeah, I'm good with 11. 11? I don't have a plan to get to 11. I'm just totally guessing. The thing is, we don't have a strategic plan. We don't have a strategy. We're just winging it. And it's working so far. So my plan in 20 is to continue winging it. The only thing that's for certain is that every Friday morning you'll be able to listen to the dulcet tones of Eric and I talking about Wawa.

[Eric]

Amazing. All right, well, we should end it there.

[Ari]

Yeah, we should. So thank you all for listening. Thank you for your support through the year. I want to thank our unsung hero, our producer, Mike Felhaber, who works on our av. We called him out last year. And we want to call him out again. He helps producer lecture running. We don't count him as an employee, but still, you know, we want to thank him and everyone. Have a great holidays and CS at ces. Eric, do you want to say anything before I cut you off like I always do by accident?

[Eric]

No, just that thank you for letting me be involved in what is an awesome unpaid internship that has gone for so long. So thank you, Ari. Thank you, team. And thank you everybody that listened.

[Ari]

You're not getting our checks. I must have your address wrong.

[Eric]

Amazing. All right, everybody, we'll see you next week.

[Ari]

See you next week.

[Eric]

Thank you for subscribing to marketecture. New interviews are added every week at marketecture TV and your favorite podcasting app.

[Ari]

Thank you for listening to the Market podcast. New episodes come out every Friday and an insightful vendor interview is published each Monday. You can subscribe to our library of hundreds of executive interviews at marketecture tv. You can also sign up for free for our weekly newsletter with my original strategic insights on the week's news at News Market tv. And if you're feeling social, we operate a vibrant Slack community that you can apply to join at adtechgod.

[Eric]

Com.