← Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.
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- [00:01]
Experian Sponsor
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- [00:41]
Ari Paparo
This podcast is brought to you by Adelaide. Media verification and measurement are undergoing major disruption. Legacy players are pivoting to performance. Advertising AI is reshaping brand safety and attention is replacing viewability. Adelaide is leading the shift with au, a new way to assess media quality that scores placements based on their potential to drive attention and outcomes beyond. Before your ads run, think of it like a credit score for media. Finally, a clear view of quality. Before you buy, take the guesswork out of your investment strategy and try Adelaide AU on your next campaign. Welcome to the Market podcast. This is Ari Paparo. I'm joined by Eric Franchi as always and our special guest is the newest member of the market team, David Berkowitz. If you hadn't heard, architecture acquired to communities of marketers, the AI Marketers Guild and serialmarketers.net, both active Slack channels filled with marketing professionals. If you'd like to join either one of those, go to those websites or marketecturemedia.com to link out and apply and we will review and get you in those communities. There's no charge and it's a thriving, interesting place for marketers to collaborate. Eric, do you know David prior to this acquisition?
- [02:01]
Eric Franchi
I don't know him well, I've met him a few times. I've read his stuff over the years. He's kind of like a longtime observer and pundit and as a non marketer I'm not allowed in his communities. So I want to hear what it's all about.
- [02:11]
Ari Paparo
Yeah, so that's another plug for these communities. We do not allow venture capitalists, salespeople, ad tech randos. It's. You do have to apply and that helps, helps the quality, I think. He also has a book. He has a couple books. He's a, he's a pretty well rounded guy and I've known him for like going on 20 years so it's really.
- [02:29]
Eric Franchi
Exciting and an interesting name.
- [02:31]
Ari Paparo
Interesting name. We'll get into that a little bit and then we want to cover the mountain, IPO and all the latest AI news. So this should be a good episode. We hope you like it? All right, we're here with David Berkowitz, our newest employee at marketecture, our head of community, the master of all marketing communities. Thank you for being here.
- [02:52]
David Berkowitz
Thanks for having me and for having me as part of market actor.
- [02:55]
Ari Paparo
What's it like to have a job?
- [02:56]
David Berkowitz
I don't know, it's. It's been a while. I'm getting used to it again.
- [02:58]
Ari Paparo
Yeah. Do you find the cafeteria yet?
- [03:00]
David Berkowitz
I gotta say, I love all the perks.
- [03:02]
Ari Paparo
Yeah, yeah. ATAR is a pain in the ass. All right, well, for those of you who don't know, David Berkowitz has been a sort of a ringleader in marketing, Digital Marketing for 10, 20 years. He has a tendency to get people to assemble and talk and give their insights, but also like the deep bottom of their souls somehow. So how do you do this? Like, what is, what is your job that you've created for yourself?
- [03:26]
David Berkowitz
It's a weird one also because, like. Yeah, I mean, I shared this a lot when, when I was talking about like what it's like to join us. And, and I was just such an introverted kid. Like, like I barely talked to anyone and if it was member of the opposite sex, I was like, I couldn't be in the same room as them. And so this whole chief community officer role and bring people together, it's been a journey. But I guess, yeah, I mean, trying to take an interest in other humans, there's something about it that's kind of exciting. And especially when you see also once start doing this and bring folks together and there's all this stuff that's happening without your knowledge and without your doing and it's like shit like, like that's great. I would just want to do more of that.
- [04:12]
Ari Paparo
I mean, I don't think we're allowed to say opposite sex anymore. It's very binary view. But other than that, it's. It's cool. Are marketers like lonely? Is there something about marketers that they want to get together in groups?
- [04:23]
David Berkowitz
Well, I mean, marketing can be a lonely field, but. But also it's like, you know, one of the things I like about marketers is that it's one of the things like, that people are coming from different places. Right? Like, like, especially when, when I was really cutting my teeth. The ABC360i. Some of our best hires were like teachers, people who just didn't expect to be in marketing. And now they're in these also like for them, for these very weird roles. And, and, and there's some Camaraderie in the trenches around that.
- [04:51]
Ari Paparo
Yeah, it's like the, I call it the ratatouille theory of marketing. You know, in the movie Ratatouille, whereas there's that chef who's like everyone can cook. And I feel like that's similar. You know, anyone can log into Canva and create a pretty shitty postcard, but it'll, you know, it'll work. It's marketing, especially now.
- [05:10]
David Berkowitz
Yeah.
- [05:11]
Ari Paparo
So tell us about the community. So we not to be self promotional, but you have, you've built two communities now that are within market the AI Marketers Guild and Serial Marketers. What are their reasons for being? What's the discussion like? What are the key issues?
- [05:25]
David Berkowitz
Well, serial marketers started, that was seven years ago and ultimately wound up using the tagline for a while. Marketers need marketers too. We need to come together and have folks who. And some of it's more practical, people looking for the next role, people looking to hire folks looking just for recommendations on what they could be doing better, what tools to use. And wound up hosting these first Wednesday meetups in New York that had just been a lot of fun to bring people together in person and marketer skill. When I started that two years ago, I didn't actually want to start a separate community and I was planning all this other stuff for serial marketers and it's like there was really nothing that was peer led for marketers to come together and try to make sense of how AI applied to their jobs. And I was like, well, I've had a history of trying to help marketers make sense of emergent tech and then have a history of community building. And I don't know if he's been canceled or uncanceled, but Al Franken, he wrote this amazing book about his comic presidential ambitions and it was called why Not Me? And so I think to that title all the time.
- [06:38]
Ari Paparo
So AI Marketers Guild is confronting issues around AI. But you know, when you go into the chats and you talk to people, it's very practical. People are talking about what prompt to use to create, what kind of imagery and stuff like that. How big of a sort of learning and education gap do you see the marketing community as it relates to AI?
- [06:57]
David Berkowitz
Well, I think like, yeah, I mean we even just had a speaker on who was great where like I was actually worried that it was going to get like too far down this like theoretical path because people are like, share your screen, share your screen. Right. Like people want to walk away from these days and, and I see this all the time too, because I give all these presentations based on the book I wrote about, yes, AI and marketing and like, you know, people are kind of like nodding off a little bit. They laugh at a few of my memes and things. But then once I have a tool recommendation, like, everyone's writing it down. Yeah. And so, so people do want to know, like, what do I actually do with this? What can I go back to the office and do now?
- [07:38]
Eric Franchi
This week we're recording this. On Thursday, May 29 25, the CEO of Anthropic said that he estimates that something along the lines of 50% of entry level white collar jobs will be eliminated by AI in the next one to five years and we might expect 10 to 20% unemployment. I always view entry level marketing jobs as like really important and foundational to the industry. Like, you touch a lot of things. You know, you're, you're a media planner, your, your, your adopts and it's a great springboard for, for careers. What's your view on that statement as it relates to AI and marketing and marketers?
- [08:19]
David Berkowitz
I think it's scary as hell, but I think it's really hard. We can't dismiss it. You know, one, one of my favorite slides I present literally every single time is a gif of Aragorn in Lord of the Rings when he's confronting Frodo in the dark tavern and he says, are you frightened? Not nearly frightened enough. And that doesn't mean all this is doom and gloom, that we should be terrified of everything going on in AI, but if we're not thinking about the implications and especially like, like, if you are say like a Holdco and you've got all these training programs like, you know, the best of it, where, where someone's actually getting training in media planning and ad apps and all kinds of things going on. All of this, like, it's, it is foundational for people and like, where are we going to get the next generation of talent from if we can't get the ad industry's equivalent of the mailroom jobs filled. Right. Like, I think that is really scary. I don't think we have the answers yet. Someone's just asking me in a group chat. Like, he's like, we all have kids who are like around like preteen, early teenage. And he was like, well, how are you preparing them? I'm like 10 years from now, 8 years from now, like trying to think of like what the workforce is going to be like. I'm like, I'm glad they're not entering it next year and maybe we have a little bit of time to see what this next wave brings because we should be scared.
- [09:36]
Ari Paparo
Yeah. So what sort of success stories are you hearing from your members about AI? Are people coming in and saying, I just built a whole campaign using AI or similar, or is it more sort of a grinding slow motion move?
- [09:51]
David Berkowitz
It's like AI kind of meets people where they are. And so, so for folks at bigger companies it's more like here's like the Cannes lion submission, right? Like here's this amazing thing we did and here's how AI impacts them. The creative, maybe some of the targeting and like just mind blowing stuff couldn't have done before for folks who are more like boutique agencies or independent contractors. And like it's like here's something that I was able to do that I never could have done before and used AI really as a whole additional team supporting me in my work. And I think that's what gets people really excited on that level.
- [10:34]
Ari Paparo
Do you see it as marketing folks now able to do sort of technical projects or do things they couldn't do, or is it replacing things that they used to do?
- [10:43]
David Berkowitz
Well, one thing, and I feel like there's a caveat because things are changing quickly. But there is some of this where there's. There's a great book Managed Media Absurd by Richard Farson and it says like, like if you ask people like what kind of superpower they want, it's really something you can usually like to be better at something they're already at.
- [11:01]
Ari Paparo
Right?
- [11:02]
David Berkowitz
Like, like an athlete wants to be able to like be the Flash or something like that. But like, you know, Brainiac wants to be the smartest person in the world even if they're already really damn smart. And this is also something where I think we added this, like we're seeing this with this new wave of video. If you are not a creative, if you're not a video producer, videographer, like you're going to get really mediocre output out of it and maybe it's just going to be like flat out like laughably terrible. But if you know how to tell stories with video and put it together and polish it up like, like VO3, Google release is going to be just like mind blowingly exciting for you and you'll create some great work.
- [11:37]
Ari Paparo
The Google videos that are coming out are so hysterical and crazy. I saw this one where they have influencers jumping into pools of lava and it's just, you believe it until they jump into the pool of Lava. And then it becomes slightly less realistic.
- [11:53]
David Berkowitz
Well, I don't think I want to see the realistic version of that, but that's the problem.
- [11:59]
Ari Paparo
Anything that pokes fun at influencers is good with me. So the name serial marketers, the idea that people we'll go into why it's called that, but you know, the idea that some folks just are marketers in many, many positions throughout their career, does that feel unusual that, you know, the tenure of the assignments in marketing tend to be, you know, shorter, I think, than in other career paths.
- [12:24]
David Berkowitz
I mean, it is typically and sometimes laughably like the first thing to get cut. You know, like being a role where you're the first one to get blamed. Uh, not really in hand people career path. I'm not sure how many of us are saying, like kids, like, this is what you want to go into.
- [12:41]
Ari Paparo
Yeah, it's the other side of the ratatouille thing. Everyone's a critic of marketing also.
- [12:45]
David Berkowitz
Yeah. And it's. It's pretty easy to beat up. And look, there's a lot of bad marketing out there. There are a lot of bad marketers, but. But still often a lot of broader issues that are outside of our control. That. Yeah, it's on us though.
- [12:58]
Ari Paparo
Right. So I wouldn't bring this up except for the fact that you make fun of it, that you have a sort of uniquely curse. So I'm going to read an email I got this morning, so. From the mailbag. Right. Because when we send out newsletters, if you respond to the newsletter, sometimes it comes to me. So I won't say who sent this. Says, David, I feel terrible sharing this, but I must. There was a serial killer in New York city in the 80s who shares your name. Seeing your name and serial in the subject line immediately conjured this up for me. Probably a connotation you'd want to avoid in the future. It's sad, but true. Cheers, Michael. So is the seventies, but thank you. Thank you for your input, Michael. So it's amazing that you've made this a joke and I appreciate that. Do you want to tell us, like, what it's like?
- [13:47]
David Berkowitz
It's so fun because I haven't gotten one of those in a while. Like these. And sometimes it'll come off at a cocktail party, like, do you know? And like, really, like, like I'm in my middest latest 40s. Like, like really?
- [14:01]
Ari Paparo
Are you aware Mr. Dahmer or someone else with your name?
- [14:05]
David Berkowitz
And by the way, just the other night at someone's place where we were watching The Joel Rifkin episode of Seinfeld the masseuse. Because that is very much the story of my life. I've seen that one where Elaine dates Joel Rifkin, but not the Joel Rifkin. And this was also one of those. So I also have to credit Aaron Strout, who had a long run as CMO at W2O in real chemistry, because on a blog for a HubSpot event in 2015, he wrote a little piece about me and he said, serial marketer, not killer.
- [14:36]
Ari Paparo
All right there, that's the origin story here.
- [14:38]
David Berkowitz
That's the origin. And once he did that, and then a year later, I was doing some of my consulting and speaking on my own for the first time. I was literally going to an IMEDIA event and I needed something for the badge. And I thought back to that. I'm like, you know what? Like, I cuz, like what we're all talking about here. We've got to laugh at what we're doing, right? Like, we've got like, we can't take this. It's just marketing. But the idea that I almost didn't start the community, which it was a couple years later after I started consulting out of that name, but I almost didn't start it because I'm like, this is based on a twisted pun in my own name. Like, this is like. And then the idea that this would be acquired someday and like would keep growing this. It's wild. Look, I'm glad we're still having fun.
- [15:20]
Ari Paparo
Yeah. If we ever do Search Engine, we'll call it the son of SEM.
- [15:23]
Eric Franchi
For the listeners. Joe Rifkin is currently serving 203 years in prison for the murders says nine women between 1989 and 1993.
- [15:34]
Ari Paparo
Yeah, we should divert this podcast to. To a serial killer review.
- [15:39]
Eric Franchi
David, have you ever tried the middle initial? Like Michael B. Jordan.
- [15:44]
David Berkowitz
And. And David E. Berkowitz. Like, but the. It's just too much fun.
- [15:49]
Eric Franchi
And.
- [15:50]
David Berkowitz
And part. Like when I was younger, it was like, I've got my grandfather's name, I want to honor him and all that. And then I'm like, like, this is just so twisted and weird. And. And it's like it is still living in New York City after all. Like, it's the gift that keeps on giving.
- [16:05]
Ari Paparo
It is.
- [16:05]
David Berkowitz
I, like, like, why would I. I could go by Dave, right? People wouldn't right away.
- [16:12]
Ari Paparo
So let's end on a different subject. So David and I have. Have been reminiscing about all the. In addition to being a serial Marketer, He's a serial networker. And you know, and I've been known to hang out at a free cocktail party here and there. So what is the one like dead ad tech or advertising event that you miss? Like one of the, the bygones Immediate.
- [16:37]
David Berkowitz
Was probably my favorite to actually attend and that I missed. And the original like ad tech expos at Javits, like what I really missed there was in the closing years, I would just go and hang out with like the three other people who've been going a while and we were all just making fun of everything else. It was, I mean, I was going.
- [16:59]
Ari Paparo
To say the same thing. Ad tech events were my favorite. They were so low class. And you know, I think I've said this on the podcast before, but I was once hired to be the official blogger of the ad tech event. Me and Rick Bruner. That's how I met Rick. They flew us out to California. They didn't pay us, but they flew us and gave us free tickets. And we were like with our laptops blogging the events as they happened.
- [17:20]
David Berkowitz
Well, I was hired to be an official blogger of a Forrester event and then they reached out to me like a couple hours in and said I'm blogging too much.
- [17:33]
Eric Franchi
Stop.
- [17:35]
Ari Paparo
Okay, well, this was an awesome conversation. We are going to now flip over and do the refresh News of the week. This podcast is brought to you by Freewheel. Freewheel gives advertisers direct connections to streaming video inventory from the world's leading publishers. It's simple, really. They're removing middlemen, which means more working media dollars, better outcomes and enhanced control. Discover how it pays to go direct visit freewheel.com architecture. That's freewheel.com architecture.
- [18:10]
Eric Franchi
All right, we got the news of the week. What's on the docker for the refresh? So Mountain IPOs finally. We'll dig into that. A bunch of AI news as always, but this is a bunch of stuff and it's all kind of connected interestingly to the publisher side and the launch of WPP Media. So let's take it from the top. Last week, Mountain IPO'd. It was by all accounts a successful IPO. Reached $1.6 billion valuation on the first day. Had a. Had a nice pop. A couple things to talk about before we talk about Mallon business and ipo. Shout out to Tom Triskayari. He did a really good analysis in his newsletter. I'm sure we'll link to it in the Architecture Newton newsletter on Monday. He estimated current media spend is 600 million with 40% take rates. I was looking at some other numbers and just for kind of context setting and grounding, as of this morning, the stock continues to go up. It's valued at just under 2 billion. They had the trailing 12 months TTM 246 million in revenue. So net revenue based on a $2 billion valuation this morning, it's an 8x multiple and they're growing 28% for context. So ad tech trades all over the place. And none of this is investment advice, by the way. It trades all over the place. Different businesses are valued wildly differently. But just from the competitive set, Viant trades at a 2.85x as was this morning. Chrisio 0.7x Magnite 3.4x DV 3.23x Applovin 28x. So things are all over the place. But if you look at it like within the competitive set, Mountain is valued quite richly and probably on the high side of traditional ad tech trading, which is between 5 and 7x. So bunch of context setting there, bunch of, you know, just like stats and data. Guys, give me your take.
- [20:04]
Ari Paparo
Yeah, I'll jump in. I wrote a newsletter about Mountain a couple of months ago as it related just on the S1. I think there's more updated data. I think with this space that both Eric and I are invested in personally, not in Mountain, but in competitors. We're all bullish on this idea of bringing new advertisers to ctv. The basic thesis makes sense. Whether these businesses are going to be successful or not is entirely about customer acquisition costs and retention because these are relatively small businesses in many cases, and so we all know how hard it is to retain them. And the point I made in my newsletter, which I think is relevant here, is that the numbers of new account acquisitions that were in the S1 were very aggressive, like they're very positive. And I personally think that's largely because it was a 2024 comparison, which was political. And every single campaign is a new customer as far as Mountain's concerned. So I wasn't as impressed by their account growth as they wanted it to seem. The other thing is that they are pitching this as SMB, SMB, SMB. And their average customer, if I remember correctly, was spending something like two and a half million in media a year. So that's not SMB. They're calling it SMB, but these are app installs, e commerce stores, D2C brands, stuff like that. Not there's anything wrong with that. I just want to clarify that there's a little bit of obfuscating I think about who really are their customers and what they really want. And finally the last thing I'll say is this is a company like Applovin that has a lot of haters. The DMs are hot and wild about companies. People in the ad tech community do not like this company for one reason or another.
- [21:43]
Eric Franchi
David, what's your take?
- [21:44]
David Berkowitz
Yeah, I mean not a ton to add there. I was always just blown away by their marketing and trying to compete with them on that front with their ever present conference takeovers and like it was just astounding to me just like how much they really built their presence on that.
- [22:02]
Ari Paparo
When I'm watching regular TV I see Mountain ads, probably, you know, geo targeted or cookie targeted, whatever it is, but they're aggressive on marketing and pretty effective too.
- [22:12]
Eric Franchi
Yeah, yeah, and I think that's a, that's a really good point. This performance TV market, to your point Ari, it has basically two flavors. It is what I think the state of the mountain business is today, which is largely competitive with Applovin and probably TV scientific going after performance marketers who are largely Meta and Google advertisers. And if you can make it work, prove the results. There's substantial budgets there, so average spend of 2 million makes a lot of sense. And then on the other side there's the SMB opportunity which might just be kind of like forward looking or an emergent area for Mountain which is the domain of companies like Vive, where you're on the board and then a bunch of startups that are all going after this SMB opportunity Extreme or AI we had at the architecture conference, to me that latter one seems like a really hard one to crack. But if you crack it, I mean, gosh, the potential there as evidenced by the millions of customers that Meta and Google have, is enormous. And the real question is, is there a standalone business that can crack that? And Mountain seems to be positioning themselves as the one that's looking to go after it.
- [23:22]
Ari Paparo
Yeah, I think they're positioning that way. But you also have Comcast Universal ads and Tatari is a real competitor and there's sort of this mystery about why Google hasn't taken it a little bit more seriously given Google Ads and AdWords. So I think it's going to be very competitive. Nothing wrong with Mountain, nothing wrong with their valuation. I just think it's going to be a very competitive fray to get more of these budgets, more of these advertisers into this emerging TV world. The Good thing. And I think anyone who's dealt with small businesses know this, which is they love to see their ad. So if they could go home and turn on the telly and see their ad, they're happy.
- [24:01]
David Berkowitz
Absolutely.
- [24:02]
Eric Franchi
There's, I think there's real value for car dealerships, for pizza places. I mean just like the engine of small business of America. I think there's something to it and with the interactivity, right. Scanning QR code, you know, mention this ad, get X off, there's something there.
- [24:19]
Ari Paparo
And the reason this market exists and has not existed historically are two. There's one factor that's already baked in which is the ability to buy using Programmatic, which allows the budgets to shrink massively from sort of an entry level of calling up your cable company of like 40, $50,000 to an entry level of literally $50. That's the first trend that's changed the world here. And the second trend which is more emerging is the creative. Where I can create creative for you that's as good as production level that a major brand would have. And that's still coming, probably not as widely adopted, but those two on top of each other are very, very powerful.
- [24:57]
David Berkowitz
And the thing that I'm waiting for and Google's dabbling with, with the performance max and everyone's trying to get a handle on this is if you're a small business, if you want to spend that next 500 bucks, thousand bucks on advertising and see is it going to get people into your store or to your boutique site, your Etsy shop, right. Like wherever you're trying to direct people, then like you don't really care about where that's going, right. So it doesn't matter so much like you know, 4,000 bucks, you can get some decent 15 second spot bundle in or an out of home ad or a mobile, like if they're able to show and someone's able to show that this is actually getting you 1500 bucks or 2000 bucks worth of business, that's a big win. And I think as we get more cross channel AI powered targeting, this is where there is that risk for someone like a mountain of the rich. You know, Google, Meta, even Amazon getting richer there.
- [25:57]
Eric Franchi
That's a great point. And one question, I'll throw it to you and then we'll, we'll end it here. Why hasn't Meta, Google or Amazon gone after this yet?
- [26:06]
Ari Paparo
Yeah, so it's different for all three. So Meta has abandoned monetizing anything outside of its walls. You know, the fan system got pulled back from open web it's only app. They could expand into ctv, but they just haven't really. To date, Google has been hobbled by their fear of IP addresses and privacy, which is the only way to do business in CTV. Now they've walked that back over the last six months on DV360. So will they also do that in Google Ads and will they do sort of the business development work that's kind of required to make sense of the CTV world? I think that's an opportunity they probably will grasp. And Amazon I think is in this market, but it hasn't focused as much on kind of the SMB side of it. Also, if Amazon's primary way it wants to convert people is online e commerce, the local aspect is a little less of a selling point than it is for the other folks.
- [27:01]
Eric Franchi
And some of those ads on Prime Video before you watch a movie just are so good the way they just direct you to buying it on Amazon. I think you're right. Well done. Okay, we will continue to watch it. All right, let's talk about AI again.
- [27:15]
Ari Paparo
Sure.
- [27:16]
Eric Franchi
I'm just going to like read through a couple of headlines of just this week because they all point to, I think a really important trend. So you grabbed this one earlier this week, ARI New York Post web traffic dropped from 125 million to 85 million in a month in one year, so down 32% due to search algorithm changes and user habits. Number two, trade org, the news and Media alliance came out hard against AI mode, which is a Google announcement we we talked about last week calling it theft. Number three, ChatGPT traffic has nearly doubled this year to publishers even though it's a small percentage, it's doubling year over year. And then number four, and this just was just posted right before we started recording Business Insider, BI is cutting 21% of staff and it is looking to number one, reduce exposure to traffic sensitive businesses. And number two, focus on fully embracing a these are all dots that are clearly connected in my mind. What do you think?
- [28:19]
Ari Paparo
Yeah, chickens coming home to roost. Based on what we expected to happen, nothing unexpected here, which is instead of search, you get answers, right? Answers are complete answers so they do not require you to click out to the publisher site as much. When you do click out, you're a more qualified visitor. You know what you're getting. You want to read the full article or you want to shop for the product. So there's two sides to that coin. One side good, one side bad. And the business models that get left by the wayside are the ones that are not exactly search arbitrage, but where the value of the content is not unique or is, you know, duplicative.
- [29:00]
David Berkowitz
You know, anyone in the arbitrage space now, this is a pretty tough time to be in there. And then also like, this is just like we're still so early. And so then if you, if you start looking ahead to when agents actually work at fetching you the information that you want and you have no need to go to those sites in particular, I don't think agents are going to take over in this. Like, like everything we do is, you know, it's going to be agent driven. It's a version of the future. But there's a lot of stuff that's just like part of our daily habits. And if we don't need to go and click 5, 10 sites to go there or even not to mention, like how many times are we just going and like googling the name of the site to begin with instead of going right there? Like, I mean, just people are lazy. And so the more that Google and ChatGPT and others can feed into that laziness, brutality is just beginning.
- [29:57]
Ari Paparo
I think we're really, everyone's really underestimating the amount of, of change there's going to be in media consumption. I think that, you know, it's not on our docket, but the CEO of Perplexity, I think he tweeted some, some like ideas for how to change the Perplexity homepage. And they were very distinctly like Yahoo portal style, like, let's put some news on the homepage, let's put this on the homepage. And it just felt like the last war. You know, you could imagine a fully realistic video reading the news of the day to you. And that's not far off. You could probably build it today. It just wouldn't be cost efficient to do it. You know, a TikTok like feed that knows you and talks to you and gives you interesting facts as you go. You know, these things are within our grasp. And I think that this is such a big technology evolution that we should not expect the media to not radically change.
- [30:51]
David Berkowitz
And if you want to see an early version of that, I mean, I'm looking straight out of my telly and my daughter and I like, we actually watch the telly. I mean it's fluffy news, right? You know, but we watch a lot of telly news and then I'm getting a lot of the headlines is that are right on that companion screen. And I can't remember the last time I saw a headline there and I'm like, I've got to go and read that full story.
- [31:16]
Ari Paparo
Oh, wait, so this is a telly promo. We've got a free plug for telly here. All right, that's fine.
- [31:22]
Eric Franchi
Shout out to Ilya. Did you ever get your tbr?
- [31:26]
Ari Paparo
I'm not going to get a telly. They're cool, but I'm a late adopter.
- [31:29]
Eric Franchi
All right, this is a crazy one, right? Because the LLMs, they need data, so there's a clear opportunity and it's licensing today and it's probably some sort of different business model tomorrow. Ben Thompson had an interesting idea that this will revive the idea of micropayments using stablecoins to just kind of reinvent the model of the web. And people need news, people need information. So getting to the other side of this is like really, really difficult to predict. Really difficult to predict. One more and we'll call it a week. So WPP Media launches. So WP Media is basically the former Group M and it launches as a fully integrated AI powered media company under wpp. And it is the kind of consolidation of a bunch of agencies. Mindshare wavemaker Essence Mediacom will continue to provide clients with dedicated teams as brands within WPP Media. I thought this was interesting from the standpoint that A, you know, they, they came out with a very AI first AI centric messaging and then B, they launched an ad campaign. And it's pretty good. Like the video, you know, speaking about David's, you know, capabilities, if you know what you're doing with, with video prompting, it was really good. And they're, you know, running ads and all sorts of kind of B2B environments. So I give this one a kind of a W look.
- [32:58]
Ari Paparo
If you could get anyone interested in the mechanizations of agency holding companies, you're winning. And here we are on our podcast talking about it. So they must be doing something right.
- [33:07]
Eric Franchi
They must be. David Witches act.
- [33:09]
David Berkowitz
Yeah, I was there at Publicis, I guess, like right before they rolled out Marcel. And so you see a lot of things that are just using the right buzzwords, but they've put a little bit of proof behind it. It'd be interesting to see what this really means for their talent going forward. Right. And how they define where humans are adding value versus technology and where those investments go. But yeah, it's one of the better debuts and it's a. And it's a strong statement.
- [33:43]
Ari Paparo
Yeah. You know, I wanted to call out Stefan Pretorius, who's a friend of mine, he was the c. He is the CTO of WPP and he was on this podcast maybe six months ago. So he was featured in a pretty long Bloomberg video where they walk through the actual products that WPP has built on AI. So if you want an insight as to into what they're doing, that's not just the marketing fluff. They actually show the UI and stuff like that. About all the creative development, creative resizing, you know, stuff like that, the meat and potatoes. It's a bit of a long video, but I would recommend it.
- [34:17]
David Berkowitz
Absolutely.
- [34:18]
Eric Franchi
Let's link to it in the newsletter and with that, I think we should call it a week.
- [34:23]
Ari Paparo
Absolutely. So, David Berkowitz, the newest member of the marketecture team. Thanks for joining us.
- [34:28]
David Berkowitz
Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
- [34:30]
Ari Paparo
And Eric, always a pleasure.
- [34:31]
Eric Franchi
Thank you, Ari. Thank you, David. Bye bye everybody. See you next week. Thank you for subscribing to Market.
- [34:37]
Ari Paparo
New interviews are added every week at marketecture TV and your favorite podcasting app. Thank you for listening to the marketecture 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@adtechgod.com.