How CMO at Locala, Grant Gudgel, Uses AI and Location Intelligence to Power Adaptive Advertising

Summary

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Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.

Episode Title: How CMO at Locala, Grant Gudgel, Uses AI and Location Intelligence to Power Adaptive Advertising
Host: Ari Paparo
Guest: Grant Gudgel, CMO of Locala
Date: July 7, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode spotlights Grant Gudgel, Chief Marketing Officer at Locala, as he sits down with Ari Paparo at Cannes to break down how Locala leverages AI and location intelligence to empower adaptive advertising for brands with a physical presence. The conversation dives into the technical and strategic aspects of Locala's platform—how it serves national brands, optimizes campaigns at the local level, and adapts to privacy regulations. Grant offers fresh insights from his recent arrival at the company and discusses Locala’s evolution, competitive strengths, and future ambitions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Is Locala and Who Needs It?

[02:03–03:32]

• Background: Locala has been operating for ~15 years, originally as a mobile location data provider. It’s built expertise in complex "drive to store" national campaigns, especially for large brands with many physical locations.
• Evolution: The complexity of multi-location campaigns led Locala to develop automation tools—eventually resulting in a comprehensive platform that facilitates everything from planning to optimization and measurement.
• How It Works: The platform enables brands and agencies to analyze what’s happening market-by-market (both online and offline), plan campaigns, activate them across any media channel, and then measure effectiveness.

“If you're managing 1,800 locations across a country… those campaigns are very, very complex.”
– Grant Gudgel [02:27]

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2. Platform Approach: Strategy Over DSP

[03:14–04:54]

• Locala isn’t just a DSP; it’s strategy and planning software that’s platform-agnostic. Its value is the "insights layer," not inventory.
• Brands can plan on Locala, then run campaigns on any desired channel (Trade Desk, social, CTV, DOOH, audio, etc.)
• The focus is on market-specific tactics: where do you need more investment, which markets are lagging, where is growth strongest?

“We’re omnichannel. We're also channel agnostic... The real power of the platform is the insights layer.”
– Grant Gudgel [04:34]

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3. The Role of AI: Specific, Not Generic

[05:09–06:52]

• AI is everywhere but often overly broad; Locala narrows its use to real business questions.
• The platform utilizes 15+ AI agents that analyze data at a hyper-local level, surfacing actionable insights.
• There's an LLM-based interface for research and planning; the system is trained on Locala’s proprietary data.

“The way I think about AI is it's kind of a do-everything tool... Our goal was to make it go from this tool that is infinitely broad to something very specific for the types of client verticals that we work with.”
– Grant Gudgel [05:43]

• Real-World Impact: Agencies that once spent a week answering questions about specific markets can now get answers instantly, speeding up campaign adaptation and tactical decision-making.

“That would normally take them a week of a research team going in and trying to find an answer to. We help accelerate that process and make it easier to answer those types of questions.”
– Grant Gudgel [07:15]

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4. Adaptive Advertising: More Than Just Creative

[08:19–09:24]

• Grant explains Locala’s take on “adaptive advertising”—moving beyond dynamic creative optimization (DCO) to adapt all campaign variables (budget, channel, creative, timing) line by line, in every market, for every phase of the campaign.
• The aim: holistic adaptation, not siloed adjustments.

“Adaptive advertising at Locala is a process enabled by the platform and by our agents... that enables a brand to adapt all across all of those variables... before, during, and after the campaign.”
– Grant Gudgel [08:38]

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5. Location Data’s Broader Value & Competitive Analysis

[09:24–11:09]

• Locala’s POI mapping allows brands to see competitors’ proximity, DOOH screen locations, and more—informing precise media investment.
• The platform’s unique competitive analysis tools are especially beneficial for digital out-of-home (DOOH), as advertisers can evaluate physical placement and allocate resources accordingly.

“Inside the platform, they're able to do competitive analysis because of our POI mapping... how does that impact how you want to make investments in digital out of home or mobile or CTV?”
– Grant Gudgel [10:51]

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6. Privacy Considerations

[11:38–12:21]

• As a French company, Locala is deeply attuned to GDPR and privacy compliance.
• The team is vigilant about evolving regulations and adapts practices as needed, reinforcing consumer trust.

“We're originally a French company... very, very attentive to what's going on in the regulatory environment around privacy with location. And as we move along, we just adapt to what those regulations are.”
– Grant Gudgel [11:47]

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7. Locala’s Strategic Shift & Ambitions

[12:21–12:55]

• Locala has moved from a managed-service, drive-to-store focus to a platform story—emphasizing self-service, automation, and upstream planning.
• Cannes is an opportunity for the brand to expand its profile and articulate this broader narrative to agencies and brands.

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8. Lightning Round: Quick Hits

[12:48–13:54]

• Biggest Competitive Advantage: “15 years of experience doing drive to store” + automation.
• Biggest Challenge: Brand awareness in the U.S.; Locala faces “classic challenger brand” struggles.
• If Locala Were an Animal? Narwhal—“Because it’s the unicorn of the sea.” [13:41]

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Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes

• On AI Hype:

  "It's a nuclear buzzword... It's the new year of mobile. It lasted 20 years. And I think we're in the same situation."
  – Ari Paparo & Grant Gudgel [05:23]

• On Real Agency Use:

  "...the client will call me and ask me a question like, you know, why are we down online in Charlotte?... We help accelerate that process and make it easier."
  – Grant Gudgel [07:15]

• On ‘Adaptive Advertising’:

  “It's totally just CMO talk. I got to do my job.”
  – Grant Gudgel [08:27]

• On Location Data’s Longevity:

  “Location... It's been around since the beginning of newspaper.”
  – Ari Paparo [09:43]

• On Being a Challenger Brand:

  “Challenge is just we're not well known in the market right now... classic challenger brand in the US trying to make a name for ourselves.”
  – Grant Gudgel [13:27]

• On Being a Narwhal:

  “Because it's the unicorn of the sea.”
  – Grant Gudgel [13:51]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |-----------------------------------------------|--------------| | Locala’s background & evolution | 02:03—03:32 | | Not just a DSP; planning/strategy focus | 03:14—04:54 | | AI: Specific applications for real problems | 05:09—06:52 | | Adaptive advertising explained | 08:19—09:24 | | Competitive analysis & DOOH insights | 09:24—11:16 | | Privacy discussion | 11:38—12:21 | | Platform shift & Cannes goals | 12:21—12:55 | | Lightning round (advantage, challenge, animal)| 12:48—13:54 |

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Tone and Closing

The conversation is both technical and lighthearted, filled with industry in-jokes and candid moments. Grant’s openness about Locala’s positioning, their candid acceptance of CMO jargon (“adaptive advertising”), and playful closing remarks about narwhals make for an engaging, insightful listen. The episode delivers a practical, hype-free look at how AI and location data are transforming adaptive advertising, particularly for brands with major physical footprints—making it especially useful for marketers, agencies, and industry observers eager to understand where media planning and activation is headed.

Transcript

[A]

Oh, hello, I'm Jeremy Bloom, co founder and CEO of marketexture Media. And boy do I have news for you. Market is back and if you've been watching from a distance thinking that looks phenomenal, but a trip to New York is just a bridge or several too far. We've got great news for you. We're bringing Market live to the beating heart of Adland. That's right. On September 23, 2026, market coming to Chicago. We're going to be bringing the same sold out energy, sharp insights and industry defining conversations to the center of advertising's biggest transformations. From media and commerce to AI tech and modern marketing. This is where the people shaping what's next for the ad industry will be, want to be and need to be. Early registration is live now, so lock in your [e-mail] Again lock in your ticket at chicago.architecture live.com Disclaimer I live in Chicago. It's not Chicago, it's Chicago.

[B]

Okay. Welcome to Architecture. We're in Get Smart Fast with in depth interviews of leading tech executives. I'm Ari Paparo. I'm joined today at the UTA beach from Cannes with Grant Gudgel who is the CMO of Locala. Grant, thanks for joining me.

[C]

Yeah, thanks for having me.

[B]

Got your name right, right?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

You did. Okay. So you're pretty new in this job as cmo. How long have you been doing this?

[C]

I joined in March and have been kind of working under the radar as we work on our positioning and then we announced just a couple weeks ago.

[B]

Oh great. Congratulations. Thank you. So you're new so you could give us kind of the bright, the fresh look about Locala. Explain it to our audience if they're not familiar.

[C]

Yeah. So Locala has been around in the industry for about 15 years. Started as a, as a mobile location data provider and has evolved over time. Really built expertise in like drive to store, working with national brands who have a lot of physical locations. So really kind of built a name in that niche and one of the challenges with that type of campaign is that they're very, very complex.

[B]

Right.

[C]

If you're managing 1800 locations across, across a country. So we, we kind of became known for, for that expertise among retail, qsr, auto and because of the complexity of those campaigns, we ended up building a lot of like automation tools for our own ops teams to be able to, to better manage and deliver results on those types of campaigns and have since built out an entire kind of platform that really sits upstream from like the programmatic ecosystem. So it's a, it's a planning platform that enables brands and our teams to look at what's going on market by market, both online and offline, and make campaign optimizations that sit at the planning phase, then activate through whatever channel they want to and then measure down at the bottom.

[B]

So not strictly a dsp.

[C]

Not strictly a dsp. We have a proprietary dsp, but we're, we're agnostic as to the platform. Agencies, brands really use us as a, a strategy planning tool to better adapt campaigns market by market and understand kind of the business context of what's happening in the markets before it hits the, the exchange.

[B]

So let's say I'm a, I'm a regional QSR company, I have hundreds of hundreds of stores. What am I, what am I doing? What's the, what's the use case and what am I getting out of it?

[C]

Yeah, I think that, I think that because of the complexity of trying to manage that many physical locations, the kind of default mode of the industry is, okay, you know, we know what our national Persona is. We know what a, you know, we know what a jack in the box shopper, you know, customer looks like nationally. But the reality is you're, you know, you're going to have specific markets where you're lagging, you're going to have specific markets where you're leading, you're going to have specific markets where you have real growth opportunities.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[C]

And what we help surface are the insights that enable them to understand, okay, where, where do we need to be doing conquesting, where are we lagging in terms of online awareness versus offline awareness? And then optimize a plan to those specific market realities and output that as something that is actionable and that they can activate through the esp.

[B]

Right. And then they choose the. I want to run a campaign on their trade desk, let's say.

[C]

Yeah, trade desk. DB Social. Social, yeah. We're omnichannel. We're also channel agnostic. So whether it's digital, out of phone, ctv, mobile, audio, whatever they want to do, the real power of the platform is the insights layer. And then depending upon how they're activating, the optimization that you're able to make from what's actually happening on the ground.

[B]

And the insights layer, does that include kind of letting people know what worked and what didn't?

[C]

Yes. Yeah. So, so we talk about plan, activate, learn. So there's a, there is a proprietary measurement layer as well that enables us to feed back into, you know, what you're doing next Right.

[B]

So what, what's the impact of AI on this? Because it sounds like the sort of thing they'd be really good at.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, so. Yes, and it's a funny thing about AI in this industry. It's. It's kind of a buzzword. I know, I've heard you talk about

[B]

this in the past. More than a buzzword.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

It's a nuclear buzzword.

[C]

It's the new year of mobile. It's the new year of mobile. It lasted 20 years. And I think we're in the same. In the same situation. But, but yeah, I mean, the way I think about AI is it's a, it's kind of a do everything tool. Right. It's, you know, an LLM. You can ask it any question. I can go ask it for dating advice or I can make a media plan.

[B]

Don't.

[C]

Don't make it. What's my horoscope? And so, and so I think taken a little bit of a different approach on our, on like how we think about it, because we already had the, the insights layer. We've trained our agents on our internal insights. Yeah. And our goal was to make it, you know, go from this tool that is infinitely broad to something that is very specific for the specific types of client verticals that we work with.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

So we have several different layers of AI that we're deploying. We have, you know, we have 15 different agents looking at the different data sets, being able to help kind of parse insights at a really local level. And then we have an LLM interface where you can go in and talk to it for research and look, and that's feeding off of, off of the data platform. I think that, you know, when you're, you know, the funny thing about can is this is kind of a festival of like marketers. Marketing. Marketing tools to marketers. It is. And so you can have a lot of kind of noise. I think the thing that I really liked about the team and one of the reasons I joined Locale is they're very focused on, okay, like, what is this actually doing in terms of delivering value for the customer? And how do we actually use these tools in a way that they can be translated into a specific customer benefit.

[B]

So I actually ran into an engineer on the street, which was unusual.

[C]

There aren't that many. We brought some, we brought some engineers.

[B]

You brought some engineers. So do I look at your platform and say, oh, I'm jack in the box, to use their example? We're not saying they would really do this, you know, what markets am I strong in and where should I be doubling down on marketing? Is that the kind of AI implication we're talking about?

[C]

So, yeah. So, okay, so when you talk to, like, I talk with like, agency CEOs who are. Who have clients like this, and like, there are several major pain points for them in managing these types of campaigns. Because if you're talking about 1800 or 3000 locations, at the end of the day, that requires a lot of human resources to go in and parse. So, you know, I had a conversation with one recently where they're saying, like, oh, the client will call me and ask me a question like, you know, why are we down online? You know, in Charlotte? And then, you know, in these specific markets, we're seeing this big rise in foot traffic that would normally take them a week of a research team going in and trying to find an answer to. We help accelerate that process and make it easier to answer those types of questions. So that's how they're using it. So it's like, okay, in a pre campaign phase, when you're going in and doing the research, you know, where are the markets where maybe we need to be investing more in awareness, where we. Where do we need to be focusing on conquesting and then adapt channel, you know, budgeting, messaging, all of the different variables that go into a campaign.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Based on those insights.

[B]

And you've been. You've been touting a phrase I haven't heard before called what's called adaptive advertising. What do you. Is that just CMO talk? What does that mean?

[C]

It's totally just CMO talk. I got to. I got to do my job. So adaptive advertising for us. You know, it's funny because I get the response to that sometimes we're like, oh, it wasn't crazy doing adaptive ads like, years ago.

[B]

Sure.

[C]

My background is actually in the dco space, so, you know, I think when people have talked about adaptive advertising in the past, it's been. Or adaptive ads, it's been very focused on, like, creative. We look at it as a more holistic approach. So adaptive advertising at Locala is a. Is a process that is enabled by the platform and by our agents. Okay. That enables a brand to adapt all across, all of those variables that we just talked about. Channel, budget, creative, messaging, et cetera. Before, during, and after the campaign.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And so not just adapting creative or not just adapting our bid.

[B]

Right.

[C]

But really, really enabling them to adapt a campaign line by line across maybe 1800 or 3000 lines to the specific strategies and tactics that are going to work within each market.

[B]

Yeah, we've been talking. We've used QSR as an example in this conversation because it's an easy one to picture. What's the implication of location data for national brands that don't have a local Aussie?

[C]

I mean, and this is part of our market thesis, is that, is that location. It's not new. It's been around since the beginning of mobile.

[B]

It's been around since the beginning of newspaper.

[C]

Yeah, exactly. But if you look at the market today, you look at the environment with data, it's. We're seeing increasing fragmentation, differences in, you know, jurisdictional requirements around privacy, etc. And so we see location as one important component for brands like this, brands with physical locations to be able to better optimize campaigns to the realities of what's happening on a local market. You know, because we sit kind of upstream of the midstream. We're, we're. You know, I think you guys have done a great job. You guys, all the, all the RTV people.

[B]

The RTV people. I'm being. I'm being pigeonholed again. As a web RTP guy. I get it. Okay.

[C]

I know you've moved on now.

[B]

I'm a podcaster. I'm an unemployed podcaster.

[C]

As my teenager likes to tell me, teenagers are tough. So, yeah, I think that, I think that, you know, RTB optimized for the impression we're trying to optimize for what's going to work market by market for a business.

[B]

Right.

[C]

Based on the context of that business. So, for example, one of the elements that's the most powerful. So when we go talk to brands directly.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Inside the platform, they're able to do competitive analysis because. Because of our POI mapping, we're able to see. Okay. Like based on where all the local. Do, you know, digital out of home screens are in your area. This is your physical distance from your competitors. Oh, okay. And how does that impact how you want to make investments in digital out of home or mobile or ctv?

[B]

Oh, yeah, we hadn't talked about digital out of home. That's a really good use case for location because the screens are in a physical location.

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

Obviously. Yeah.

[A]

Right.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

So how, how often do customers use you as a planning tool for that? A lot.

[C]

Yeah. So. So, you know, our kind of most sophisticated customers with the platform are using us for Omni channel, so they're using us for digital out of home, they're using for ctv. And the channel mix will change market by market. So how they're actually allocating across channels is going to be adapted based on the insights that they're pulling through the platform.

[B]

You brought up privacy a moment ago. I think it's important to bring that up because location data is extremely sensitive. So how do you protect the consumer's privacy in this environment?

[C]

So I mean, you know, at a very high level, we're, we're originally a French company, so we've, we've grown up in the whole, in the whole GDPR space and very, very conscious of privacy. Our cpto French knows the, knows that whole ecosystem and, and so yeah, I think that, you know, we're very, very attentive to what's going on in the regulatory environment around privacy with location. And as we move along, we just adapt to what those regulations are. But I think I heard the word. There you go. See, I got to plug it, I got to fit it down.

[B]

And what are you hoping to accomplish at can, what's like your, your main goal here?

[C]

I mean, see friends and drink some rose. No, I think that, I think that, you know, we're at a, we're at an interesting inflection point in the business. We've kind of moved from this like managed service location based data drive to store positioning. You know, over the past several months we've really leaned in on the, on the platform story and we have a lot of conversations queued up to tell that story out here.

[B]

So I usually do lightning round on these conversations. So quick questions, quick answers. What's your number one competitive advantage?

[C]

Number one competitive advantage I think is 15 years of experience doing drive to store. I think that it's, you know, if you take that as the, as the kind of USP or the original USP and then layer in automation through agents, it becomes a really powerful value buffer. Biggest challenge, I think the biggest challenge is just we're not well known in the market right now. I think that my experience talking with agencies and brands has been when they see the platform and actually understand what they're able to pull out of it, the conversation advances very naturally. We have the classic challenge of the French kind of challenger brand in the US Trying to make a name for ourselves. So it's really just a question of being out in market and talking to more people.

[B]

And last question, if Locala was an animal, what animal would it be?

[C]

Oh my God, I don't know. What would we be?

[B]

Don't say lion. Everyone says lion.

[C]

No, I was going to say narwhal.

[B]

Narwhal. Do it.

[C]

I don't know why.

[B]

Why Narwhal?

[C]

Because it's the unicorn of the sea.

[B]

There you have it. Unicorn of the sea. Locala. All right, Grand Gregil, thank you so much for joining us.

[C]

Thank you.

[B]

Ari.

[C]

Ari.

[B]

Ari. Ari. Narwhal. Narwhal. I don't know. All right. Thank you for being here.

[C]

Thank.