Episode 126: Ampersand’s TV Strategy, Meta’s AI Ads, and Amazon’s DSP Moves

Summary

Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast. Episode 126: Ampersand’s TV Strategy, Meta’s AI Ads, and Amazon’s DSP Moves Release Date: June 6, 2025

---

Introduction

In Episode 126 of the Marketecture Podcast, hosts Ari Paparo and Eric Franchise delve into the evolving landscape of television advertising, artificial intelligence advancements in ad campaigns, and competitive moves in the demand-side platform (DSP) arena. The episode prominently features Todd Braverman, the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) of Ampersand, who provides insightful perspectives on Ampersand's strategic positioning within the TV and streaming sectors.

---

Book Announcement

[00:02:00 - 07:32]

Before transitioning to the main topics, Ari Paparo announces his newly authored book, Yield: How Google Bought, Built and Bullied Its Way to Advertising Dominance. The book, available for pre-order as of this episode, explores the intricate dynamics of ad tech, focusing on Google's ascent in the advertising industry.

Ari shares his motivation for writing the book, emphasizing the human stories behind the ad tech evolution. He recounts his experience covering the Google trial, where he gained access to internal emails and testimonies from key industry figures. This firsthand insight allowed him to craft a narrative that goes beyond mere industry analysis to highlight the personal and strategic maneuvers that shaped Google's dominance.

Eric Franchise expresses his enthusiasm, mentioning that he was among the first to pre-order the book and appreciates the tactile experience of reading physical copies over digital formats. The hosts encourage listeners to support the book by pre-ordering through Ari's website, ensuring it's easily accessible despite current listing challenges on platforms like Amazon.

---

Interview with Todd Braverman, CRO of Ampersand

Understanding Ampersand

[08:15 - 09:25]

Ari introduces Todd Braverman, the new CRO of Ampersand, a company undergoing significant transformation in the TV advertising space. Todd clarifies Ampersand's role, explaining that it is a joint venture between major cable providers—Comcast, Charter, and Cox—alongside other MVPDs like Altice and Verizon. Ampersand aggregates premium TV and streaming ad inventory, reaching approximately 63 million households and representing over 118 million multi-screen households. This unified approach aims to streamline planning, targeting, and measurement for audience-driven television campaigns.

Transition from Linear to Streaming

[10:04 - 11:20]

Ari probes Ampersand's evolution from traditional linear TV advertising to the streaming realm. Todd emphasizes Ampersand's commitment to a multi-screen strategy, integrating both linear and streaming platforms into a cohesive advertising solution. This approach addresses the fragmentation in the marketplace by offering advertisers a single access point to diverse inventory sources, enhancing the ability to conduct holistic campaigns across various viewing mediums.

Data Utilization and Privacy

[12:41 - 13:25]

A key aspect of Ampersand's strategy is leveraging data from its parent companies without directly accessing or storing subscriber information. Todd explains that while Ampersand utilizes data insights generated from Comcast, Charter, and Cox, it maintains strict data privacy by ensuring that subscriber data remains within the ownership of these entities. This method allows Ampersand to provide targeted advertising solutions while adhering to privacy standards.

Competitive Landscape and Market Positioning

[14:17 - 16:08]

Discussing the competitive landscape, Todd highlights Ampersand's distinctive position amidst other advertising platforms like Mountain TV, Scientific Vibe, and universal ads from NBC. He underscores that Ampersand serves a wide range of businesses, from large enterprises to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), by offering scalable advertising solutions tailored to diverse needs. Todd envisions a market where Ampersand's unified platform supports marketers in connecting with consumers effectively, regardless of their size or industry.

Sales and Internal Dynamics

[17:19 - 20:01]

Upon joining Ampersand, Todd faced the challenge of navigating internal negotiations between clients and parent companies. He emphasizes that Ampersand does not markup or resell inventory but represents the existing inventory across its parent companies. This transparency helps prevent sales conflicts and ensures that unique opportunities from each parent company are effectively communicated to clients. Todd also hints at the potential for future partnerships with other platforms like Roku or LG, contingent upon board approvals.

Artificial Intelligence Strategy

[21:06 - 23:18]

AI plays a pivotal role in Ampersand's future strategy. Todd outlines five key areas where AI will be integrated:

1. Optimizing Media Sales: Enhancing revenue forecasting and strategy formulation.
2. Process Automation: Reducing manual tasks to improve workflow efficiency.
3. Accelerate Product Innovation: Using AI to develop better product requirements and faster coding processes.
4. Analytics Support: Employing natural language processing to derive actionable insights from strategic documents and presentations.

While Ampersand is currently in the early stages of implementing these AI-driven enhancements, Todd asserts that AI will significantly bolster Ampersand's operational capabilities and market offerings.

---

News Segment

Meta’s AI-Driven Advertising Vision

[26:00 - 30:16]

Eric Franchise introduces a major development where Meta (formerly Facebook) has outlined a timeline to fully integrate AI into their ad campaign processes by 2026. This vision entails brands providing basic inputs—such as product images, website links, and budgets—while Meta's AI handles ad creation, targeting, personalization, and optimization in real time.

Notable Quotes:

• Eric Franchise [26:00]: "What's everyone's been thinking about, how an end-to-end AI-driven ad delivery might look like."
• Todd Braverman [29:36]: "It's going to be category-specific. Dari's point, like a pharma [company] never going to happen."

Ari and Eric discuss the potential impact of Meta's AI ambitions, debating its appeal to large brands versus SMBs. They highlight concerns regarding control, transparency, and the need for sophisticated tools that meet the stringent requirements of top-tier advertisers. Todd concurs, emphasizing that while certain categories like pharmaceuticals may find AI-driven ad campaigns challenging due to regulatory constraints, others might embrace the technology enthusiastically.

New York Times and Amazon AI Licensing Agreement

[30:16 - 32:33]

The Hosts discuss the recent licensing agreement between The New York Times and Amazon, enabling Amazon to utilize NYT's content for its AI models. This partnership includes segments like News, Cooking, and the Athletic, aligning with Amazon's commerce-centric applications, particularly in assisting devices like Alexa in kitchen settings.

Notable Quotes:

• Ari Paparo [31:58]: "They would never license. They just wanted to get paid."
• Eric Franchise [31:52]: "Amazon is making moves that are kind of under the radar."

This agreement is seen as a strategic move for Amazon, reflecting its broader, albeit quiet, advancements in AI technologies through substantial investments and acquisitions in recent years.

Amazon’s DSP Competitive Moves

[33:14 - 36:09]

Eric highlights a leaked Amazon DSP (Demand-Side Platform) sales presentation revealing Amazon's aggressive pricing strategy, offering DSP fees at 1% compared to the industry standard of 4%. This initiative positions Amazon as a formidable competitor to established platforms like The Trade Desk, aiming to capture significant market share by offering high-quality inventory at a fraction of the cost.

Ari and Eric critique the transparency and feasibility of such pricing structures, noting that while it presents an opportunity for advertisers to reduce costs, it also challenges existing DSPs to justify their pricing models.

Notable Quotes:

• Ari Paparo [33:50]: "Your margin is our opportunity hits the trade desk."
• Eric Franchise [34:52]: "It's a shot across the bow, but it's also a fat target."

Todd adds that Ampersand is actively exploring programmatic guaranteed deals with its parent companies, aiming to target niche audiences like light TV viewers, which aligns with the broader competitive shifts in the DSP landscape.

---

Buy-Side Announcements: WPP Open Intelligence and MIQ Sigma

WPP Open Intelligence

[36:31 - 40:30]

WPP has rebranded its AI-powered marketing platform as Open Intelligence, an initiative positioned to leverage trillions of real-time signals and first-party data to predict consumer behavior and optimize campaigns. The platform boasts integration with over 300 data partners, emphasizing data privacy and compliance.

Notable Quotes:

• Ari Paparo [37:29]: "WPP just did this rebrand where they got rid of the Group M name and as part of that that they're repositioning the company as the leader among the holding cos in AI."

Ari praises the rebranding effort, noting that it differentiates WPP from its competitors by highlighting its AI-first approach. The platform aims to streamline various advertising functions, from planning and targeting to execution, integrating multiple data sources for enhanced performance.

MIQ Sigma

[38:03 - 41:28]

MIQ introduces Sigma, an AI-driven tool designed to automate and optimize programmatic advertising workflows. The name "Sigma" resonates with Gen Z slang, symbolizing a quiet yet formidable presence, akin to a "John Wick" archetype.

Notable Quotes:

• Eric Franchise [38:50]: "It's like a good name. Also MIQ's reputation is like, is a Sigma."
• Ari Paparo [39:43]: "The name fits the company also. So well done."

Ari commends the name Sigma, relating it to MIQ's reputation for efficiency and effectiveness behind the scenes. The tool is envisioned to handle complex programmatic tasks with minimal human intervention, enhancing MIQ's service offerings to agencies by providing advanced AI capabilities.

---

Final Thoughts and Corrections

Towards the end of the episode, Ari addresses a correction regarding a previous discussion about Mountain TV's average customer revenue. Originally misstated as $2 million, the actual figure is $200,000, a significant but still notable number that highlights the scale of Mountain TV's client base.

Notable Quote:

• Ari Paparo [44:43]: "I apologize for getting my own fact wrong. It's still an interesting data point that their average customer is $200,000 because I think that's a lot bigger than some people would expect."

---

Conclusion

Episode 126 of the Marketecture Podcast offers a comprehensive exploration of the current trends and strategic maneuvers in the advertising and marketing industries. From Ampersand's integrated TV and streaming advertising solutions to Meta's ambitious AI-driven ad campaigns and Amazon's competitive DSP strategies, the episode provides valuable insights into how major players are leveraging technology to shape the future of advertising. Additionally, the discussions on WPP's and MIQ's AI advancements underscore the ongoing transformation within the industry, highlighting the critical role of artificial intelligence in optimizing and innovating advertising practices.

Listeners gain a nuanced understanding of the interplay between traditional media and digital innovations, the challenges of data privacy, and the competitive dynamics that drive market evolution. Whether you're a seasoned marketing professional or an industry enthusiast, this episode equips you with the knowledge to navigate and anticipate the shifts in the advertising landscape.

---

Join Next Week: Stay tuned for the next episode of Marketecture, where Ari Paparo and Eric Franchise continue to unravel the latest developments in advertising and marketing technologies. Subscribe to marketecture.tv and sign up for their weekly newsletter for more insightful discussions and strategic analysis.

Transcript

[Ari Paparo]

This podcast is brought to you by XD Looking to get more from every impression? Meet xd, the outcome based media platform built for results powered by proprietary agentic AI. XD doesn't guess it knows. By analyzing over 30 real time data signals across billions of daily impressions, XD predicts and automates what works and eliminates what doesn't. The result Media campaigns tailored your KPIs optimized in real time for performance efficiency and scale. Whether you're a marketer chasing ROI or a publisher looking to boost yields, XD's custom built decisioning models will work for you. XD, Predict, Perform, Repeat. That's EXTE XD 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. Prevention 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 Sector Podcast. I'm Ari Paparo, I'm joined by Eric Franchise and our guest this week is Todd Braverman, the CRO of Ampersand. I wanted to have Ampersand on here because it's an interesting company in the TV space. A lot of people don't understand it and its position. I really want to understand how they're evolving as TV goes to streaming because their history is really with these MVPDs and who actually own the company. Eric, have you done much research or talked to the Ampersand people in the past?

[Eric Franchise]

I've known of the business. They were previously called ncc, I believe.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, ncc, which stood for like National Cable Company or something like that.

[Eric Franchise]

Yeah, yeah, definitely a name that needed a bit of modernization. So shout out to the team that renamed it to be Ampersand. This is an interesting business and very like something you'd see in TV where it is a new business with a specific use case, but it's owned by all of the big boys and girls.

[Ari Paparo]

And they went through this massive transformation under the leadership of Nicole Pangas Pangus Pangas who who is the CEO there and left recently to join Netflix but she really gave him a new identity, new office, new new reason for being so it'd be really interesting to catch up with Todd to find out about that. So big news this week I had big news. So if you've been living under a rock, you may not know. I wrote a book. It's called Yield How Google Bought, Built and Bullied Its Way to Advertising Dominance. And it is available for pre order on Amazon and other places you may buy books and it will be available in actual order shipping August 5th. I'll also like to say if you want to buy at a pre order, which I really would appreciate, your best bet is to go to my website, aripaparo.com and follow the links there. Because it's in pre order for some reason, it's very hard to find when you just go to Amazon and search for it. Hopefully that'll get better over time, but I've heard this is a very normal thing. So aripaparo.com has links to buy it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other places, and that's the way to go. Have you placed your order yet, Eric?

[Eric Franchise]

I think I was one of the first to place the. Come on, man.

[Ari Paparo]

All right, good to hear.

[Eric Franchise]

I announced my pre order publicly. I'm super excited for this. You know, I've gone back from Kindle to reading physical books.

[Ari Paparo]

Okay.

[Eric Franchise]

There's something about, like the physical book makes it easier for me to read and dive into. So I'm looking forward to the hardcover and hopefully autograph it for me.

[Ari Paparo]

I will ask you some questions. Yeah, go for it.

[Eric Franchise]

Okay. How does one former founder, now podcaster and media magnet become an author? Like, where did this come from? What's the story?

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, so I've. This has been a bucket list thing for a long time. I've. I've had a couple of aborted attempts where I've outlined a book and thought about it, but it's never really going to happen. I was working on a book that was written entirely in emoji, and that seemed like a bad idea. I have the first chapter of that if someone wants to get my emoji book. But it's really about what did I want to write about. And I had toyed with this idea of writing the history of ad tech, but I thought, who cares? It's not a story. It's just an industry. It's like a textbook. Then the experience of covering the Google trial last fall, where I was in the pews listening to the testimony for three weeks, really sparked this idea because. Because the story, it was to some extent the history of adtech, but it was a people story. It was Steph Laser getting gaslit by her Google reps. It was Tim from OpenX firing 2, 300 employees because Google changed the algorithm. In DV360, it was Neil Mohan shepherding through a brand new strategy at Google and changing the display world forever. And I had access to these people, I had access to the story and I had access to thousands of pages of internal emails from Google. And I was able to come up with an outline and start filling it in pretty rapidly. And I'm not going to say my book's good because I don't know if my book's good. You'll have to judge. But it's a good story and I did my best to tell it.

[Eric Franchise]

What is it like pitching a book? Like, how do you get a book deal?

[Ari Paparo]

The good thing about this story is that it's very topical. So it's in the news right now. What's going to happen, we talked about it in this podcast later on. But what is going to happen to not just Google and its ad tech assets, but also to journalism and media is a subject obviously I care about because I talk about it all the time and also is in the news. So I think that there's a lot of interest in the story. And it also has the advantage of being an undertold story because so much of the press is focused on the Google search case with Chrome spin out because that frankly is just more consumer impact. Consumers are going to really notice if Chrome ends up being owned by somebody else or, or if Apple products don't have default search. I get it, that's a, that's a bigger story. But this story is also big and really important and no one's telling it.

[Eric Franchise]

Final question. Scale of 1 to 5 in terms of difficulty level of writing a book and just this whole process versus, I don't know, building a couple of companies building products. Like, how hard is it?

[Ari Paparo]

5. It is, it is hard. I mean it's, it's leaning into a skill I have. I can write. So it didn't come unnaturally to me, it came quite naturally to me. But it was an intense amount of work to not just get the story, to make it interesting, to make it consistent and readable, to fact check. There's like 30 pages of footnotes in this document. I didn't want to get sued. Like every single fact in there comes from somewhere. Not from, just from my head. And then, and then, geez, doing the audiobook, there's an audiobook that's coming out. You can't order it yet, but you will be able to in the next month. And I recorded that Myself on the same microphone we're using now. And that was. Wow, that was hard.

[Eric Franchise]

That's got to be what, eight hours more?

[Ari Paparo]

It's like they limit you to two hour sessions because it's like, because you get burnout reading. I think it was probably like 16 hours. Whoa. Yeah.

[Eric Franchise]

Oh, my God. We have to have another podcast about this. This is like, all right, we're already long. I want to talk to Todd. But this is awesome. We need to talk more about this. Congrats. I can't be more excited.

[Ari Paparo]

Thanks. I really appreciate that. And everyone, I would appreciate a pre order go to ari paparo.com and pre order it. I will sign any physical book that you find me with if you give me a pen, but you got to order it first. All right, let's dive in with Todd Braverman from Ampersand. All right, and welcome Todd Braverman, the CRO of Ampersand. Todd, thank you for being here.

[Todd Braverman]

Appreciate you guys having me.

[Ari Paparo]

So, Ampersand, I would guess we have a 50% hit rate on the listeners of the show to like really understanding what Ampersand is. Do you think it's 50 or what would be your guess?

[Todd Braverman]

I'm hoping it's more than 50, but I think that's a good start right now.

[Ari Paparo]

All right, so for the 50 who think that Ampersand is just like a character on the keyboard, what is this thing?

[Todd Braverman]

So Ampersand was rebranded about three years ago, was ncc. And I think actually people probably recognize those three letters more than Ampersand. But the, the team has done a great job of branding Ampersand in the marketplace. I am, you know, one month in right now. But in essence, what Ampersand is, is it's a joint venture between Comcast, Charter and Cox, really unifying all three of those companies, premium TV and streaming ad inventory. We also have two other MVPDs, Altice and Verizon, which we have access to their inventory as well. And ultimately it is the ability to, you know, reach close to 63 million households to enable planning, targeting, and measurement of audience driven television campaign. And we represent over 118 million multi screen households. So we solve for a lot of issues in the marketplace.

[Ari Paparo]

Okay, right. So you're a linear ad network, for lack of a better phrase. Maybe that's a little offensive to call you an ad network, but it seems like it's linear ad network. Why would someone buy ads for Ampersand instead of calling up their friendly Comcast rep or their NBC rep or anyone like that?

[Todd Braverman]

Well, Ampersand you know, not necessarily an ad network, but an aggregator of inventory. So what we're able to do is we're able to eliminate fragmentation by providing advertisers with a single access point to the multi screen inventory. So yes, linear cable is a big part of it, but also is the streaming aspect of it, the ability to use Comcast streaming as well as Charter and Spectrum screaming as well.

[Ari Paparo]

Okay, yeah, we want to talk about your transition from linear to streaming. What was the original idea behind ncc? Because it was, if I remember correctly, and tell me if I'm wrong, you were taking the inventory that the cable companies had from the broadcasters, the two minutes per hour, and then aggregating it for the times when the cable companies weren't selling it to their local advertisers. Is that, is that a good summary of where it came from?

[Todd Braverman]

Yeah, and I think the biggest misperception of what it is is Ampersand is absolutely not a reseller. And it's an important distinction that we do like to make to our clients. And in the marketplace we are owned, like I said, by Comcast, Charter and Cox and we have representation deals with Verizon and LT's. But we don't buy the inventory from those inventories and resell it. We simply sell that inventory that they have within their supply which does historically equal that two minutes an hour.

[Ari Paparo]

Okay, cool. Now the two minutes per hour and the linear stuff all is like yesterday's news to some extent. And the, and the move to streaming changes that a lot different people have those two minutes per hour and also the ways of buying are different. So how did the company make the transition and how is it currently making the transition into the streaming and with streaming, the data driven world.

[Todd Braverman]

Yeah, look, I mean Ampersand is a company to your point that was rooted in linear, but we are embracing both worlds, both that linear side as well as the streaming side. We are pushing a multi screen mindset. Efforts to reduce fragmentation by unifying the streaming and traditional television under one platform is really what our value prop is to the marketplace because it allows them to enable holistic campaigns across both linear and the streaming side of the house.

[Ari Paparo]

Okay, can you give us an example? Like what does that mean? Like could I buy a segment of that are based entirely on audience? And how does it work where some of it is denominated by a currency like Nielsen and others is denominated by currencies that are more user centric?

[Todd Braverman]

Look, we look at it as delivering audiences. So whether that's Nielsen or any Other type of measurement company, like ultimately, on the addressability side, we want to reach audiences. And because the data that we have from our owners, and just one thing to clarify is like, we utilize data insights that is generated from our owners data, we don't actually touch or hold the subscriber data, but we know that there's an authentication process, whether it's utilizing Spectrum's TV Live app or Comcast app, but also the linear side. So we are trying to deduplicate and minimize the frequency or make sure that we don't have frequency going through the roof by making sure that we can reach both folks on linear and streaming.

[Ari Paparo]

So you have the data from your owners, but you said you don't have it. You use it, but you don't have it. Can you like parse that for us?

[Todd Braverman]

Yeah. So because we are representing that data, we do not own the data. They own the data. We don't touch it and we don't hold it. We literally, you know, when we're doing things, we can do the match rates. But ultimately it is Comcast data, it is Cox data, and it is Charters data.

[Ari Paparo]

Okay, what sort of data? Like what. What are people using data for in the TV world?

[Todd Braverman]

So the data overlays that we're getting from our owners is obviously, you know, like name email, because they're authenticating the owners, Cox Charter and Comcast, they know exactly who that person. So then we can measure and say had. Here's the ad exposure to X to then measure on beyond.

[Ari Paparo]

Okay. So I can come to you as a agency or an advertiser with a data source, whatever it is, and match it in a. Are you using. Is this part of Block Graph or blockthrough, whichever one is owned by Comcast.

[Todd Braverman]

Yep. Block Graph is one of the ways that we do that as well. Yes.

[Ari Paparo]

All right. Yeah. So Block Graph, we had interview a while back on architecture somewhere on our website. Blockthrough is a totally different company, but I confuse them.

[Todd Braverman]

Okay.

[Ari Paparo]

So it's sort of like a clean, roomish kind of solution.

[Todd Braverman]

And we partner with Cleanrooms as well to put things in there as well.

[Ari Paparo]

When you think about tv, a lot of it is about distribution. And the cable companies, your owners were the traditional way to distribute. Obviously you could go over the air too. And in the new world, there are physical devices and OEMs that are distributing. Roku, Amazon, Samsung, LG, et cetera, et cetera. How does that affect your business and how do you think internally about that transition?

[Todd Braverman]

Yeah, it's this multi Screen reaching audiences wherever they are. I think that's the biggest thing that's happened over the last five, 10 years is how do we reach audiences? Because to your point, the television, traditional television ecosystem is declining. And while we have tremendous scale compared to our competitive set being in 63 million homes right now, I think advertisers want to reach audiences and they're not as concerned of how they reach that audience. Do they reach them via a platform? Do they reach them via television? Do they reach them via streaming, whatever it may be? And we're trying to be able to serve that need across the marketplace.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah. And how do you see the world evolving with so many new competitors? So, you know, on this podcast we've talked a lot about the SMB market because both Eric and I are invested in companies in that space. So Mountain tv, Scientific Vibe, and now NBC, one of your owners has a, has universal ads, which is doing that. How do you see, like if you were to build a picture for us of the market landscape, how do you see those companies fitting in or not fitting in with what you do and other kind of ways in which advertising gets into this channel for what we.

[Todd Braverman]

Stand for and what Ampersand is and what our owners are like? You know, it's not just the major holding companies that we're talking to. Yes, that makes up a big part of our business, but it is also, you know, small, medium sized businesses. You know, I was having breakfast with somebody this morning and ultimately like they're trying to solve for. How do they reach those folks who are spending $1,000 a month on their car wash, whatever it may be. So I think there's a need for everybody. I don't, I don't think this is a zero sum game where, you know, yes, there will be winners and there will be losers, but ultimately I think anybody who can support the opportunity or the ability to help marketers connect with their consumers is going to be successful in the long run.

[Ari Paparo]

To me, as someone who's not a real TV guy, it feels as though there's a lot of different companies that have really similar pitches, if not reality on this. Like if you asked someone from Comcast Effective Group, which is, you know, their traditional, it used to be called Spotlight, it's the group that sells to ads to local folks. And you ask them what they do, I bet they would say something like, we help help TV advertisers find audiences across a great deal of reach. So like, help us out, man. Like tell us where, where do we segment? How do, how Do. How does it all fit together?

[Todd Braverman]

Comcast advertising, new new name for those folks.

[Ari Paparo]

Oh, I'm sorry.

[Todd Braverman]

Look, I think there's different parts within these organizations that are going to serve different folks. Do ultimately we get to a self serve world, like that's an opportunity, you know, for the long tail and those smaller folks. But yes, look, everybody's got the pitch because linear has historically had the scale, has had the mass reach and it was an effective, efficient way to reach audiences. Now with the ability to layer on data and be more targeted in what they do, gives them, you know, a little bit more return on their ad spend.

[Ari Paparo]

Okay, so I've been giving you a hard time here for the audience listening. How many days have you been in the job?

[Todd Braverman]

Workdays 21, but we're here less than a month officially on the calendar.

[Ari Paparo]

Okay, so give us your perspective on coming in here. Like what brought you to the job? What are, what are the surprises you found and what are the biggest opportunities?

[Todd Braverman]

It was not something that I was actively looking for. It was an opportunity that was brought to me and definitely did my diligence before I, before I jumped right in and look, I think the differentiator truly is the data that we have access to and I think that that is unparalleled in the marketplace. Yes, we are not sitting in a walled garden. But to me it was all about the people. The people at Ampersand are unbelievable. Our owners are fantastic. I mean, you look at the folks who are running those businesses, they are smart, innovative folks. And to me, that's what this was all about. Like, am I going to go somewhere where is going to have the ability to grow and to bring value to the marketplace. And I think Ampersand is, will allow us to do that for marketers and really get out there to bring some, you know, function to some dysfunction that exists out there.

[Ari Paparo]

Right.

[Todd Braverman]

Surprises, surprises is I can't just go do a deal anymore like I used to do at my days at in WarnerMedia. I got to go, I got to go, you know, do the deal with the, do the deal with the clients and then I got to make sure that the owners are okay with that. But that's been the biggest one. So you negotiate with the client. Then I got to turn my chair around and negotiate with the owners.

[Ari Paparo]

But that's interesting.

[Todd Braverman]

Everybody's been amazing partners and I think that is, you know, been the biggest thing. And I think, you know, going back to one of your earlier questions, another surprise was, you know, and we're going to Do a big push on. This is just people truly understanding what Ampersand is like. We are not taking a margin on Comcast, Charter and Cox's inventory and marking it up and reselling it. We are literally, you know, just representing their inventory and selling it at the marketplace just at a larger scale with less fragmentation.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, I think that comes home when you talk about that swivel chair approval thing. How do you deal with sales conflict? Same account, two different sales teams.

[Todd Braverman]

Yeah, it's definitely something that, you know, in my first 30 days have spent a lot of time talking about. And, you know, Comcast has value and metrics and things that not value and metrics, but they have opportunities that they bring to the marketplace that are unique just to Comcast. What Ampersand is doing is taking things that live across all three of our owners or two other MVPDs and going to market as one. So, you know, if Comcast is in the marketplace selling, you know, pause ads that are unique just to Comcast, that's what their client, that's what their team goes out, and that's what they sell. If they're in the hyperlocal marketplace selling to Bob's Car Wash, that's what they go out to sell. But as it relates to all three owners and the inventory that sits across it and the data that sits across it, that is something that Ampersand is really in the marketplace doing.

[Ari Paparo]

Is there a future where Ampersand reps Roku inventory, LG's inventory, or another one of those folks?

[Todd Braverman]

I think, you know, we would need approval from the board and I think ultimately everything is up for grabs. I don't think that that is so far fetched.

[Ari Paparo]

It isn't. It doesn't seem far fetched because they would bring to the same table the same assets, the data and the. And the need for scale and national representation. In a sense.

[Todd Braverman]

Yeah. Ultimately, it's a question for. For the owners, since, you know, we are, to your point, we are repping their inventory. So if they decide, hey, let's go bring in another owner and another partner, then, you know, that's something that, you know, they will decide. Absol.

[Ari Paparo]

Ultimately, I'm sure that deal would be very easy to get through the lawyers in Philadelphia.

[Todd Braverman]

Sure. Yeah, exactly.

[Ari Paparo]

Have you been in Philadelphia much?

[Todd Braverman]

Historically, yes. I have not spent much time in Philadelphia in my first 30 days here. With the upfront obviously right around the corner, I've been spending a tremendous amount of time just understanding what we're doing there and how we can bring value to our Agency partners for the next month or two, obviously going to can in a. In a week to talk to some of our partners there. And then we'll dive in in Philadelphia and across all of our markets across the country.

[Ari Paparo]

What's your go to Wawa order?

[Todd Braverman]

So I love Wawa. My children never knew about Wawa. We were in a soccer tournament, and I'm like, we're going to Wawa. And they're like, we're going to a gas station. I'm like, no, no, no, no. Wawa is not a gas station. So we went there and I think my, my son, one son got a smoothie, the other one got a sandwich. Then you go, you got, you got the Wawa right in front of you right now. So, yes, I am a big fan of Wawa. I grew up in South Florida, where Wawas did not exist. And as I know, my way up the Northeast with a stop in Virginia in between, I learned all about Wawa.

[Ari Paparo]

It's really the best part of that region of the world. Eric, I've been dominating this conversation. Do you want to dive in here a little bit?

[Eric Franchise]

Todd, we're in a segment into news in a little bit. It's been just an incredible year of developments around AI and with things that are coming down the pipe From Google, with VO3 from an ad creation standpoint and just the ability to utilize AI across everything from like, planning to optimization. How are you guys thinking about AI? Just because, you know, TV ends up being such a real fertile ground to either be disrupted or evolve.

[Todd Braverman]

Yeah, I think break it down into five categories, if you will, of kind of how. I won't say how we use AI, but how we plan to use AI. First one, optimizing media sales. AI definitely will accelerate strategy and collateral creation, which is obviously to help us with revenue forecasting. So that's one process. This is the easy one, you know, pro, not easy, but this is the one that a lot of people are talking about from process automation, helping workflows help reduce repetitive manual tasks. You know, this exists everywhere. My previous company, the amount of things that were done manually was unbelievable. The big one, accelerate product innovation. AI engines are going to help write better requirements. So whether that's user stories, help write better code faster, all of those types of things. Analytics support, and then, you know, kind of that natural language processing for insights. Just the ability to analyze strategy goals, presentations to actually provide actionable insights. Like that's our plan, you know, are we fully in on all of those? You know, not to the extent we know we will be in the future. But that's definitely how Ampersand is going to, you know, plan to use that moving forward.

[Eric Franchise]

Got it. Okay, that makes sense. So, you know, it sounds like phase one for Ampersand, unlike, you know, or like a lot of companies is using AI to augment and improve, like internal operations.

[Todd Braverman]

Absolutely. I think that's the first step. And then ultimately we do deterministic down the road and you know, ultimately how AI fits into how we utilize the data insights that is generated from the owners. Like that, that, that'll be very interesting down the road.

[Ari Paparo]

The AI must hate your company name. It must confuse the prompt so much. Might as well name your company M Dash and let's see what happens.

[Todd Braverman]

I think when, when they were trademarking Amperson, I don't think they were thinking about how AI was going to. How I was going to recognize that. But yes, you're very true.

[Ari Paparo]

All right, well, let's take a break and come back for the refresh news of the week. Todd Braverman, the new CRO of Ampersand, thank you so much for joining us.

[Todd Braverman]

Thank you. And one last thing I do want to congratulate on the launch of the book. Very exciting. I can't wait to get my hands on it and get a copy and read it.

[Ari Paparo]

Appreciate that there will be no lack of book promos on this podcast, so I think the listeners will get used to that.

[Todd Braverman]

I'm glad I can contribute to that.

[Ari Paparo]

You might be the first. This podcast is brought to you by audiohook, the leading independent audio dsp. Audiohook has direct publisher integrations into all major podcast and streaming radio platforms, providing 40% more inventory than what could be accessed in omnichannel DSPs. What's more, audiobook has full transcripts on more than 90% of all podcast inventory, enabling advanced contextual targeting and brand suitability. Audio Hook is so confident that in addition to CPM buys, they offer the industry's only pay for performance option, where brands can scale audio and podcasting with peace of mind, knowing they are only paying for outcomes. Visit audiohook.com to learn more. That's audiohook.com.

[Eric Franchise]

All right, we're back, everybody, with the refresh, the news of the week. I don't know where to begin. There is so much AI stuff happening that is like, it would be the biggest news of every week and it all happened this week. So let's just take it from the top. We'll cover as much as we can. So I think it was Monday there was an article in the Journal about Meta effectively saying that there is now a timeline towards them going all in on AI generated ad campaigns. So right now Meta, I think is one of the leading companies using AI for their, you know, their sort of like ad creation and ad optimization. One of the things that they do now is they will tape an ad and use generative AI and make some changes. What they're basically putting a stake in the ground on is in 2026 and maybe even by the end of this year, this vision of a brand taking a product image, maybe their website, giving a budget and then Facebook or Instagram basically doing everything else. So automatically generating ads, finding the right people to target, personalizing it in real time based on like location. Right. So winter in New York, you got a car in the snow, winter in la, got a car driving through the, you know, the coastline. Basically the vision that everybody's been thinking about, how an end to end AI driven ad delivery might look like. Meta is saying that end of 2020 is the timeframe for it. I didn't think this, this was that big of a, of a story because Zuck has been talking about this for some time and they've got over a million customers using AI, but people went crazy over this. Why did everybody go crazy about this Ark?

[Ari Paparo]

Well, I think the big tech companies have had this as their North Star for 10, 15 years. There was, and I've said this on this pod before, which is Google got into a lot of trouble for saying this too early. They said this in like the 2010 timeframe and everyone freaked out. But this feels like it's real and Zuck is very ambitious and, and he seems like he's got the goods and maybe it's possible. I think that you always have to listen to what these big tech companies say and then ask yourself, what segment of the advertiser world are they really talking about? And I think it's almost always the case they're talking about, you know, very direct response, mostly online advertisers for whom this might be the case and the ability to do something like this for like a top 500, you know, traditional advertisers, probably even if it was possible, they wouldn't want it. So I think this could be a big step forward. It's the natural step forward. Like you, you would expect this. It's just like pmax or Advantage plus or Max plus, whatever, all these things taken to the next logical step.

[Eric Franchise]

Let me press on that and we'll ask Todd. Do you think that a top 500 customer wouldn't that has performance goals, would not want to, you know, just say, hey, all right, here's the asset, here's a budget, here is a CPA to optimize towards, and here's my bank account. You didn't think that. You don't think that would appeal to basically any marketer?

[Ari Paparo]

I think the tooling would be significantly different. So I'm not going to say it will never happen or that it's not an interesting thing to think about, but the controls and tooling is different. And we've already seen this. Like, if you ask the traditional advertisers about their opinion about pmax and other things like that, they always talk about the lack of control and transparency and that doesn't change. Just because the AI is even better doesn't make the demands for transparency and control in media more important. Similarly, in creative, a, you know, e comm advertiser might be totally fine just giving them the homepage and the product feeds and letting the ads come out, whereas, you know, an auto advertiser is not, not going to be okay with that at all. But there could be some middle ground. There could be a world where, you know, the brand's assets remain unchanged, but the pricing and the offer and the coupon language is automated. So it gets complicated. And I hate to be Debbie Downer here, I'm a big technologist, but the reality is that there are. The tooling, workflow and controls required for the top 500 advertisers are significant.

[Eric Franchise]

Todd, what's your view on this? Because presumably this is your world, right? Top 500 advertisers, big brands.

[Todd Braverman]

I think it's going to be category specific. Dari's point, like a pharma never going to happen. I mean, there's just too many regulations behind that, you know, from, you know, government regulations, gambling. Same thing probably with the regulation that exists there. Who's going to be that CMO and CEO that says, hey, let's take a shot here? I think, you know, there's going to need to be checks and balances on the back end. And, you know, I think what, you know, Meta talked about doesn't necessarily allow for that. I think it's like, hey, give us a product, we make it, we run it it, we bill it, and we're done. I think it's going to take a bold cmo. And are we a year away from that? Who knows? But I think it'll be category specific and I think certain categories may lean in and others definitely will not.

[Eric Franchise]

Yeah, let's not forget that the bulk of Meta's customer base is SMBs from a revenue and total customer perspective. So I understand why he's, you know, emphasizing this so much. But like the personalization to do that at scale, even, you know, using examples of like highly regulated industries, that is the perfect use case for AI. So I can't imagine that, you know, it's not embraced in some large capacity. Like I'm, I'm definitely on the other side of this in that like I think that AI and these types of capabilities will permeate every category up to the largest brands.

[Ari Paparo]

It'll take time, it'll be, it'll be different and it'll take time.

[Eric Franchise]

So big news number two was New York Times and Amazon signed an AI licensing agreement. I don't know if you were surprised about this one or not surprised about this one because when it comes to AI, New York Times has been in the news from a lawsuit perspective. So they sued OpenAI, they sued Microsoft. They had a very aggressive stance about using their catalog, using their media to feed the LLMs. So this is a, a pretty big deal that they're signing a licensing agreement. I think it's very interesting that they were doing it with Amazon because if we think about the LLMs that we all go to and that champion the deals with the publishers, Amazon has been nowhere. So this is a licensing deal that includes News, cooking and the athletic. And you know, I would presume that Amazon is cutting a relatively big check for this thing. What do you think?

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, I would say first, the lawsuits have always been sort of the first step towards getting just a larger check.

[Todd Braverman]

Yes.

[Ari Paparo]

I don't think the New York Times has ever said it's off limits. They would never license. They just wanted to get paid. So Amazon paying them is good news for everybody. Secondly, it does feel as though there might be a little bit of a category difference here where especially the fact they mentioned cooking and the athletic in that that content is very commerce centric. It's no skin off New York Times back if people buy a product more readily on Amazon because of their content, whereas creating sort of a search engine, that doesn't mean you don't have to visit the newyorktimes.com is much closer to their core and maybe a little bit more of a threat.

[Eric Franchise]

Yeah, that makes sense. The thing I noted here, just connecting some dots and maybe to your point, Ari, this is like a single use case that makes a lot of sense for Amazon. Right. Like, you know, to the extent that Alexa is in the kitchen and fueling ideas around cooking. Having access to cooking makes a lot of sense. Amazon is making moves that are kind of under the radar. Right. They had those two big aqua hires, like nine figure aqua hires that were kind of complex M and A last year with Adept and Covariant. They have the big investment in Anthropic. So it's like they're out there building something but being relatively under the radar and not having a lot of big announcements, which I think is kind of cool and worth keeping an eye on.

[Ari Paparo]

We might have to just accept that they're smarter than the rest of us.

[Eric Franchise]

Absolutely. So Digiday had a must read. A leaked Amazon DSP sales presentation this week. So we'll link to it in the newsletter next week. But I grabbed a screenshot of maybe the most interesting slide here where Amazon has been aggressively looking to compete on price for its dsp. And they've got a slide here that basically calls it out with a DSP fee of 1% versus an industry standard fee of 4%. They're saying we're 75% less expensive.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, Your margin is our opportunity hits the trade desk. Next, to be clear, this 1% fee appears to be only for Programmatic Guaranteed. And this is a long expected situation where in the Programmatic Guaranteed workflow, the DSP really doesn't do anything. The DSP just responds yes to every bid request. And there's been a lot of feeling among buyers that it's paying the full DSP fee doesn't make sense. And many DSPs on their rate card don't clearly differentiate. So you have to, you have to kind of negotiate already with the DSP to get that 4% fee. And 4% is too much. It's really. It should be an ad serving fee which, you know, if you just call up MediaOcean, ask for an ad serving fee, it's not charged as a percentage of media. So in the sense, and if you're a video 10, $20 CPM, you can do the math, it turns out to be, you know, maybe it's 1%, 2%, things like that. So this is a shot across the bow, but it's also a fat target. It's an area where the DSPs effectively are overcharging.

[Eric Franchise]

Yeah, agreed. What about the rest of it? Like just, you know, more broad DSP use cases. They're competing like, I think very aggressively there as well.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, yeah. Amazon is. Amazon's DSP group is making the transition over a couple of years from being an extension of their retail media business where most of the customers were also selling products on Amazon to a full throated competitor to the trade desk. They want to win the open web as a dsp. They have the talent who's been on the show, people like Brian Tomasetti and Neil Richter. They have the money, they have the data. And I think we all think DV360 is maybe not Google's top priority. So one of the competitors is, is kind of dialing back and this is a big opportunity for Amazon and I would say this is the number one threat to the trade desk's position in the market.

[Eric Franchise]

Are you in the middle of this, you know, kind of DSP stuff with your business at Appersam?

[Todd Braverman]

It's something that we're focusing on, you know, building out programmatic, you know, PMPs and PGs with the holding companies is something we're starting to do. Ultimately it's the, it's the owner's inventory. But how do we do that? And right now we're looking to target, you know, light TV viewers, folks that are harder to reach, things of that nature. But yes, it's something where we're definitely looking to go moving forward.

[Eric Franchise]

Okay, back to AI. We've got two like interesting buy side announcements I want to spend a couple of minutes talking about. They both happen like within I think like 24 hours of each other. The first was and Ari, this is all your category because they're names, they're like cool new names. WPP Open Intelligence. So give us a one to five on the name.

[Ari Paparo]

The name one. Don't like it. Open Intelligence. Very vague. What does open mean? Intelligence. Anyone can own that word.

[Eric Franchise]

I don't love it, but what is it? It is an AI powered marketing platform built around the first LMM large marketing model.

[Ari Paparo]

No, do not create your new acronyms. Do not.

[Eric Franchise]

All right, you're tough. You're tough. Anyway, so what is Open Intelligence? It's a marketing platform. It uses, according to wpp, trillion of real time signals and clients first party data to predict behavior and optimize campaigns, boosting performance while keeping data private and compliant. So you know, sounds like this is bringing forth a platform vision around Infosum, some of the existing buying capabilities and you know, all the data partnerships. They noted I think something like 300 data partners being part of this.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, I think what is good here is that WPP just did this rebrand where they got rid of the Group M name and as part of that that they're repositioning the company as the leader among the holding cos in AI and they probably are the leader among the Holdcos in AI. They are investing more. And so by really leaning into that, they are potentially opening up a little differentiation wedge against their arch rivals. And that's very hard to do. So I think the overall marketing campaign is quite good, even if the specific branding may be a little bit off.

[Eric Franchise]

I think that's right. If we go back last week we talked about the launch of WPP Media. It was like very intentionally talked about using AI. Being AI first had a great marketing campaign. This week it's the launch of Open Intelligence. Presumably there'll be more to come at Cannes. So I think you're right and they're doing a good job of championing the future of wpp. I thought that what MIQ announced was actually pretty cool too. So MIQ announced Sigma. All right, give us your 1 to 5 on the Sigma name.

[Ari Paparo]

Okay, so let's do a little backstory here. Do we all agree on what a Sigma is in slang?

[Eric Franchise]

Absolutely.

[Ari Paparo]

Okay, explain it to me. What's the difference between an Alpha and a Sigma in slang?

[Eric Franchise]

In Gen Z slang to be Gen Z slang to this middle aged man's understanding of Gen Z slang. Right. So Alpha is out there, chest beating, aggressive, talking a lot of smack, you know, like, you know, biggest personality in the room.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah.

[Eric Franchise]

Big Ma is actually the one you gotta worry about. He or she is quiet, executing, intrinsically motivated and will catch up with you at the end of the day. This is my interpretation. Alpha versus Sigma.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, that was a really good explanation. What someone said or I saw online was that Sigma is like John Wick. Right?

[Todd Braverman]

Right.

[Ari Paparo]

You know, quiet and someone you have to worry about. Okay. So I think there's a good name like it's on the, it's on the wave, man. This is like a good name. Also MIQ's reputation is like, is a Sigma. It's like behind the scenes they know what they're doing, they get you done. They're not an agency of record. They. So the name fits the company also. So well done.

[Eric Franchise]

All right, we've got, we've got a thumbs up from, from the toughest naming critic in the industry. And it's interesting, it's, it sounds a little bit like open intelligence. Right. So I'll give you my, my kind of two sentences on it. Right. AI powered ad platform that, you know, unifies programmatic and similar numbers, 300 data feeds, trillions of consumer signals, basically, you know, as an end to end platform for planning, targeting, execution, using multiple Platforms. So you know, it's like, it's so interesting because you had VI and DSP happen out of nowhere last year. Then you know, as you observed Ari, like a period of relative quiet from big platforms. But sounds like these big platforms were all built, building and we're seeing the manifestation of it right now. And this thing seems pretty cool.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, I think I got actually a view of this a couple months ago at the MIQ client event that I attended. There's so much manual work, so much human intelligence involved in operating at high efficiency and programmatic that making some of that AI generated makes a ton of sense. I think what's interesting if you look at Vayant versus this is you really have to ask yourself who are the client, who's using it, who's hands on keyboard using this AI, which might be different. You know, Vayant was sort of aiming at a mid level agency person, maybe a smaller agency. Sigma, I think is mostly intended for internal use, meaning the MIQ employees because they're a full service shop and obviously zuck announcing things where, you know, it's any mom and pop who wants to spend money and they probably have different product attributes when you're looking at different audiences like that.

[Eric Franchise]

Yeah, well said. Feels like this was a big week that took, took the industry forward.

[Ari Paparo]

And the next story actually is on that topic too. It's for a different Persona. Like the Gigi thing.

[Eric Franchise]

Yeah, yeah. So Gigi, Full disclosure, a portfolio company of my firms, they got their start as basically a buying and attribution platform for the Amazon streaming use case as a start. Right. So basically like they thought there was a real opportunity to do more using data for Amazon customers. And then we should actually kind of have Adam on. He's a, he's a pretty fascinating guy. He at one point got so AI pilled that he just was talking about it nonstop and you know, just like going deep in terms of the application for the business and basically decided to like make a big bet on turning Gigi agentic. I didn't even put this one on the docket, but you did, which I think was interesting. All right, what did you see in Jiji that caught your attention?

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah, I think so. What is gigi? What did they announce? It's a human avatar, a woman named Gigi who helps you to run your campaigns. And I liked it for its innovative ui. The idea like we were just talking five seconds ago about different audiences, different use cases. I can't help believe there's some group of advertisers who would really like to talk to a human or human like person and organize their campaigns and get that feedback in a very soft, helpful way. I mean, account managers is what real human being account managers do at a lot of ad networks and agencies. Having it be AI driven I don't have a problem with as long as it's disclosed. And I think I want to just give them a hat tip for innovation. I don't know if it'll work, but I love the idea.

[Eric Franchise]

And the other interesting thing is we hear so much about AI replacing agencies. What Gigi is doing is actually building a product for agencies. Like they're betting on the future being like agencies are still going to have a really important role but just some power them with AI tools, which seems like a fresh approach. So super proud of Adam on this one. All right, we got a few more things here before we close it out. Talk about what happened. So the judge orders Google to turn over feasibility analysis of ADEX and GAM spin outs, which apparently they've been talking about for a few years.

[Ari Paparo]

Yeah. So Google's legal strategy in some cases is just so laughable. So they have been saying that it's totally infeasible to spin out gam. They've literally said it would destroy the Internet, which is you, you know, come on guys. And then, and then they say, well, the analysis they've done internally because of course they've done an analysis internally. Like they'd be stupid not to. They can't disclose that because it's privileged, it's confidential, blah blah blah. And the judge had enough of it. And so the judge has ordered Google to turn over. The judge said, very specifically written by non lawyers, the analysis of the potential spin out. It's called, I think Project Sunday and Project Monday Day. There's also something called single click, which is kind of funny because it was double click. And my guess is we won't actually see a lot of this all be redacted to all hell. But it's really. I would, I would give my left foot to read these documents.

[Eric Franchise]

I bet, I bet. Especially given, given the amount of time you, you've put into this. Anything else in the docket you want to talk about? You want to put them all in the newsletter?

[Ari Paparo]

Let's put them all in the newsletter. I do want to do a correction though. Last week we talked about Mountain and its ipo and one of the points I made was that their definition of small business SMB is not exactly what they say it is. And I quoted my own self in my own newsletter saying that the average mountain customer was $2 million. And then I read my own newsletter and I was wrong. It's actually an order of magnitude difference, $200,000, which is really different. And some people quoted me on Twitter and I tried to correct them. So I apologize for getting my own fact wrong. It's still an interesting data point that their average customer is 200,000 because I think that's a lot bigger than than some people would expect with not 2 million. So I just wanted to set that straight.

[Eric Franchise]

Thank you. This has been fun. Thank you Todd.

[Todd Braverman]

I appreciate it. Really enjoyed it today.

[Ari Paparo]

Yep. Thanks Todd. Thanks Eric. And we will be back next week.

[Eric Franchise]

See you next week everybody. Thank you for subscribing to Market.

[Ari Paparo]

New interviews are added every week at Market and your favorite podcast.

[Todd Braverman]

Foreign.

[Ari Paparo]

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 Marketing. And if you're feeling social, we operate a vibrant Slack community that you can apply to [e-mail].