Emily and Mike Talk AI in Media Buying, Agency Layoffs, and Trade Desk Bounceback

Summary

Next in Media: Emily and Mike Talk AI in Media Buying, Agency Layoffs, and Trade Desk Bounceback

Release Date: May 13, 2025
Host: Mike Shields
Guest: Emily Riley, Consultant to the Ad Tech Universe and Former Analyst

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Introduction

In the latest episode of Next in Media, host Mike Shields welcomes his regular guest, Emily Riley, a seasoned consultant in the ad tech industry. The episode dives deep into the evolving landscape of media buying, the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the advertising ecosystem, recent agency layoffs, and the surprising resurgence of The Trade Desk.

Ad Tech Earnings: The Trade Desk's Surprising Bounce Back

The conversation kicks off with a discussion on recent ad tech earnings, particularly focusing on The Trade Desk and Applovin. Emily Riley highlights the unexpected positive performance of The Trade Desk, countering the prevailing "gloom and doom" sentiment in the industry.

Emily Riley [00:52]: "When they came out beating expectations, you look at what they said did well. Honestly, it's the stuff that they've been building towards for a while, including Open Path, which is a more direct buying opportunity."

Mike Shields acknowledges the significance of this turnaround, noting that The Trade Desk's success may indicate a broader shift in the media buying landscape.

The Trade Desk as a Market Bellwether

Emily elaborates on why The Trade Desk's performance is significant, emphasizing its reliance on large agency buyers compared to giants like Google, Meta, and Amazon, which draw revenue from smaller advertisers.

Emily Riley [02:19]: "If you look at Google or Meta, a huge part of their revenue is coming from these much smaller advertisers. The Trade Desk, most of the revenue comes from big agency buyers..."

Mike concurs, suggesting that The Trade Desk's stability may not necessarily reflect the broader market but still serves as a valuable indicator.

Current Business Climate: Resilience Amid Uncertainty

Despite economic pressures and potential price hikes in various sectors, Mike notes that ad spend from clients remains robust, with no immediate signs of significant budget cuts.

Mike Shields [03:29]: "I've been waiting and I'm not hearing that. It's just a lot of 'we have to proceed with business.' I haven't gotten the scary call yet from the client to cut everything."

Emily adds that while there's currently a buying frenzy, it's unsustainable in the long term as prices begin to rise.

Emily Riley [03:29]: "People are kind of in a buying frenzy. It's not going to last, but you're going to see the prices go up."

Agency Dynamics and the Rise of AI

The discussion shifts to recent changes within major agencies, including Group M's rebranding to WPP Media and ensuing layoffs. Emily questions whether AI is being leveraged as a scapegoat for reducing workforce or if genuine technological advancements are at play.

Mike Shields [05:12]: "I wonder if it's a great excuse right now to use AI or say we're doing this because of AI or the market then just get smaller or is something going on here?"

Emily delves into the concept of agentic AI, which refers to AI systems capable of making autonomous decisions in media buying.

Emily Riley [08:00]: "Agentic AI is basically humans just let the AI go and let it make decisions on its own, like booking media buys and setting price points."

She raises concerns about the reliability of such systems, especially in handling complex, high-stakes advertising campaigns.

The Double-Edged Sword of AI in Ad Tech

Emily discusses the challenges posed by AI, including the phenomenon of AI hallucinations—instances where AI generates incorrect or misleading information.

Emily Riley [09:49]: "AI hallucinations are getting way worse. Up to 25% of the time, AI gets things wrong, like misgendering users in targeted ads."

This highlights the risks of fully automating media buying without human oversight, as mistakes can compound and lead to ineffective or even harmful advertising strategies.

Mike reflects on the balance between AI efficiency and the necessity of human relationships in the advertising industry.

Mike Shields [06:44]: "Technology will make media buying more efficient, but you will be losing the power of relationships with the biggest money part of the market. That's dangerous."

The Future of Media Buying and Connected TV (CTV)

The conversation moves to the rise of Connected TV (CTV) and its role in democratizing media buying. Emily explains how major tech companies, including Samsung, LG, and Vizio, are developing their own CTV buying platforms to make advertising more accessible to smaller brands.

Emily Riley [14:10]: "They have self-service tools to make it easier and are hoping that CTV becomes democratized, unlocking access to new advertisers beyond the top 300 brands."

Mike notes that while platforms like YouTube have advanced in democratized buying, major sports events and flagship content deals continue to drive significant advertising conversations.

Mike Shields [16:16]: "Super Bowl, FA World Cup, exclusive streaming deals are driving more of the conversation in the market than the long tail."

The New Search Frontier and Advertising

In the latter part of the episode, Mike brings up the evolving landscape of search and advertising, referencing the transition towards conversational and answer-driven search. Emily shares insights on how platforms like OpenAI are venturing into advertising, challenging traditional models.

She recounts an anecdote about Facebook's initial resistance to advertising, highlighting the perennial tension between user experience and monetization.

Emily Riley [19:22]: "Mark Zuckerberg initially said they don't believe in advertising, but six months later, ads became a crucial revenue stream."

The duo discusses the complexities of integrating advertising into new search paradigms, such as ensuring relevance without compromising user trust.

Conclusion

The episode wraps up with a reflection on the transformative impact of AI on media buying and advertising. While technological advancements promise greater efficiency and democratization, they also introduce challenges related to transparency, reliability, and the preservation of human relationships in the industry.

Mike Shields [20:51]: "Everybody's trying to decide what this whole brave new world is going to look like."

Emily and Mike agree that while the future holds exciting possibilities, it requires careful navigation to balance innovation with the foundational elements that have traditionally driven successful advertising strategies.

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Key Takeaways:

• The Trade Desk's Resilience: Despite market skepticism, The Trade Desk outperformed expectations, signaling potential shifts in media buying trends.

• AI's Growing Influence: The rise of agentic AI offers efficiency but poses risks related to accuracy and the erosion of human-centric relationships in advertising.

• Democratization through CTV: Connected TV platforms are lowering entry barriers for smaller advertisers, potentially reshaping the advertising landscape.

• Evolving Search and Advertising: The integration of advertising into conversational and answer-driven search models represents a significant shift, requiring new strategies and considerations.

This episode provides a comprehensive overview of the current state and future directions of the media, marketing, and advertising industries, underscored by the transformative role of technology and AI.

Transcript

[Mike Shields]

Foreign. Welcome to Next in Media. I'm Mike Shields. I'm here again once again with my regular guest Emily Riley, consultant to the ad tech universe and former analyst. Emily, how you doing?

[Emily Riley]

Doing pretty well. Another rainy one, but you know, we'll get through it. Mike.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah, it's kind of dark and miserable and actually a little cold, which is. Which is a downer.

[Emily Riley]

Pretty.

[Mike Shields]

But it's fine. It's good for the grass. So a million things to talk about. I'm. I've been buried in new front mania. But then there's been a lot of ad tech earnings. Should we start with. You can bring in Applovin and Trade Desk into this. Really interesting. Did we overdo it on the Trade desk? Gloom and doom. We were looking for a canary in the coal mine a couple months ago. What do you make of their pretty positive month of what it says about where things are in this business?

[Emily Riley]

I agree. I think people were thinking to themselves, this is the beginning of the end. Last quarter was also the beginning of the tariff insanity. So when they announced Q4 results, everybody was sort of freaking out.

[Mike Shields]

Anyway, there's gotta be a sign here that this is the turn, right? Something's happening a hundred percent.

[Emily Riley]

So when they came out beat expectations, you look at what they said did well. And honestly, it's the stuff that they've been building towards for a while, including Open Path, for example, which is a little bit more of a direct buying opportunity for.

[Mike Shields]

Been kind of waiting for that to show itself a little bit as. As valuable.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, exactly. And you know, he, like in the earnings there was like this explanation of the blip and it came true. They tried to move people over to a new platform. It wasn't working as fast as they thought. Now it's working and their revenue went up. So I think people are like, okay, so we should believe Jeff Green when he's speaking.

[Mike Shields]

Jeff Green's definitely got an edge to him, by the way, lately. It's funny on LinkedIn they like, he's defensive. He's not liking this position of being criticized a little bit.

[Emily Riley]

Well, maybe that'll go away now. I mean, you know, people see him coming back. He bounced back. Yeah. I mean, the Trade Desk is so big, the next thing that we're going to see, I think is how much of it is going to become fully automated. You know, like as they start weaving AI into all this stuff.

[Mike Shields]

I don't know if the Trade Desk is a bellwether for the advertising market. It would probably get pretty good indicator, but. And I Also probably think that their growth in CTV is just a, they're in a good, a good spot in an ascendant space. But I don't know what it means broadly.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, fair enough. I mean it's easy to forget about the long tail of advertisers. So if you look at a Google or a Meta, a huge, or even Amazon, a huge part of their revenue is coming from these much smaller advertisers. Whereas the trade desk, most of the revenue comes from big agency buyers that are talking to.

[Mike Shields]

That's true. That's their heritage was getting in with the, with the big, you know, the big agencies.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, exactly. And they're pretty locked in, you know, so if you are an advertiser that works with an agency, pretty high chance that you're working with trade desk. And as long as those big advertisers aren't going to go full self serve automation, then the trade desk has a really important role to play because media buying agencies have proven they can buy tech, but they still need, you know, they, they're going to build as much tech as you as they could.

[Mike Shields]

You know, it's interesting, I bounced around a bunch of the new fronts this week and there's the upfronts coming up next week. I'm looking for people to say to me, oh my God, my client is pausing everything for the tariffs. Not that I want that to happen, but I keep waiting and I'm not, I'm not hearing that. It's just a lot of we have to proceed with business. I haven't gotten the scary call yet from the client to cut everything but everyone. But no one knows anything either. It's. But so I guess that's all pretty good for the business. It's just a weird time.

[Emily Riley]

People keep buying stuff. You still have company goals, but I think part of it is going to show up when prices start going up. So the Wall Street Journal for example, had an article about when Apple is going to start having to raise their prices on devices. So right now people are sort of fear buying and you see it with cars, you see it with all these things that have parts that come from Asia, you know, anything with metal in it or chips. And so actually people are like kind of in a buying frenzy. It's not going to last, but you're going to see the prices go up. Do you still advertise? Do you advertise the same way? One of the interesting things I heard was people that are in the catalog business are worried about shipping catalogs because they have to Stay true to the prices that are printed in the cat.

[Mike Shields]

That's interesting that, that you can't. Those are done well in advance and you can't just like throw those out there and then everything changes. That's interesting.

[Emily Riley]

Oh, sorry. I changed our minds. We doubled the price since you got in the mail. So digital is kind of in a good position because at least it's real time.

[Mike Shields]

You can turn on off and change it as you go. Yeah, it's so hard. There's a lag on. The holidays are going to be up in the air I think for certain categories, toys and sounds like it might be, it might be a challenge. So we'll see what happens with brands. That's very weird place to plan from. I want to get back to what you mentioned, the agencies and their ties to the trade desk. Interesting. This week a couple things. Group M is no longer. It's now WPP Media. And then there are layoffs happening which is not totally surprising because Brian Lesser has been very vocal about. We're not going to do it. We're not going to have as many people. We're not going to need as many media planners. But I wonder if it's a. Is it a great excuse right now to use AI to or say we're doing this because of AI or the market then just get smaller or is something going on here?

[Emily Riley]

Oh, AI, I want to talk to you Mike about AI in a couple ways. Talk about with the agencies first. Yeah. So WPP eating the whole Group M brand seems a little weird to me. I mean Group M has a great brand.

[Mike Shields]

I agree and disagree. So it's funny because I, I think it stood, it definitely stood for like this buying power prom, you know, like.

[Emily Riley]

Number one media buying entity for a long time.

[Mike Shields]

But also does anybody care about like whether you work at Mind Share or Group M or this like that. Over time I feel like things all blend together in my head.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, fair enough. I mean it's an industry term. Literally nobody outside of the industry has any idea what that means. That's fair. But you know, I do wonder when you say so confidently that we're going to fire people and use AI to make decisions on these multi million dollar ad campaigns. It's a bit of a gamble. I mean right now agentic AI is the new name of the game. So goodbye LLMs. Hello. Agentic AI basically means humans. Just let the AI go and let.

[Mike Shields]

You're in a service industry telling your clients that that's what we're going to be. That's Kind of weird.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, exactly. I mean, one of the reasons why TV has been sold through direct salespeople for so long is because relationships matter in ad sales. And so, you know, digital was crummy, low quality stuff for so long. People didn't really care that a lot of it was automated. But that's changing with ctv. Relationships do matter. And like the prices are pretty high on some of this stuff. So I do wonder where it's going to go. Is it going to just be the long tail, low price display stuff?

[Mike Shields]

That's a really interesting point. Where are you going to place where. Yeah, maybe the tech will be smarter and the media buying more efficient. But you all, you will be losing the power of relationships with the biggest money part of the market. Right. Like, and well, maybe that's better long term, but it feels like some decision making and some deal making won't be lost there, which is dangerous.

[Emily Riley]

You know, you think of like, okay, I work at a brand, I have $2 million to spend next month and I want regular reporting. Do I ask the AI to give me the reports and do I believe the AI and can it optimize for me? I don't know what any of that looks like today. I mean, I don't think anybody's really spelled out the details.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah. Anyway, it's kind of like, what down the road, what is a media agency and what is its role? And that is going to be evolving.

[Emily Riley]

It also is like already pretty automated. Programmatic is there because of automation at some level anyway. But advertisers have been asking to open the black box. They've been asking for more transparency. AI does not promise to do that.

[Mike Shields]

No, it makes it, it makes the box blacker and darker and bigger.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah. Becomes this like completely impenetrable. Who knows what's going on, Right?

[Mike Shields]

Not maybe the value they had in mind with that kind of relationship. You said you wanted to talk about AI more. What's in your mind?

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, for sure. I mean, right now what I think we're seeing more of is this announcement that agentic AI is coming. So Brian o' Kelly had made an announcement that they're going to be adding that to Scope three. You have a couple of ad tech veterans over at Firsthand. So you've got Michael Rubenstein and John Heller, who is at free will. Michael Rubenstein, obviously. Brandon Kelly, Appnexus guy. And they're talking about agentic AI. There was actually a recent publication of the new AI landscape. What tech companies are flipping to become AI companies. And it's the same thing. It's this concept of let the AI go.

[Mike Shields]

And just to be clear, you're talking about. Because there's the agentic AI is going to book my vacation for me and buy my clothes. But you're talking about in the B2B.

[Emily Riley]

Transaction space, AD tech decision making. So interacting with consumers in a creative. Figuring out from your media plan where to buy and just making those decisions, deciding the price points on its own, doing a lot of stuff on its own. You know, it's almost like you said to your AI agent, hey, I'd like to travel somewhere warm. And you wake up in the morning like, okay, your whole trip has been booked. And you're like, wait a minute. Was I not allowed to tell you that I prefer the Bahamas over.

[Mike Shields]

It's funny, I just had this because I. I've been actually arguing with people about this. I'm typically wrong on these things, but I'm not certain consumers want to relinquish control over things as much as my wife and I just did a trip. And the planning is a pain in the ass. Like, you're trying to look at TripAdvisor and look at the reviews and talk to your friends and figure out what's the right call. And it would have been theoretically cool to let some agents do that. But then you're like, wait, it's not the vacation I exactly wanted. I think. I wonder if consumers are ready for that. But that's not really what you're asking about right now.

[Emily Riley]

Well, no, I 100% agree. It's also like, our media buyers ready for that. Are people at brands ready for that to relinquish control? But here's the nerd version of this. There are studies that recently came out. TechCrunch reported on it. So do you know about AI hallucinations?

[Mike Shields]

Yes. And it's apparently getting worse, right?

[Emily Riley]

Getting way worse. Yeah. So Nature published an article literally like last week on this that the New York Times covered. It's like up to 25% of the.

[Mike Shields]

Time, not good old testing.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, yeah. And you look at the hilarious. Like, I don't know if you remember this a long time ago. I. It was like Omar Tawaka Allah, I think, said it. He was like, if you flip a coin and you do heads or tails on whether or not a cookie is for a male user or a female user, it's like worse than 50 50.

[Mike Shields]

Right, right. Which is like the one. The one thing that should get right is like.

[Emily Riley]

And it's like, so wrong gender Exactly. And so you're using similarly bad data right now to make decisions in digital media. Like we're just gonna like let the AI go on this. It's bad enough if it's like, well, travel data is more or less accurate. You know, it's like you're booking a vacation. It's like there's a very specific list of flights that the AI can choose from. You're talking about reams and reams of semi accurate slash inaccurate.

[Mike Shields]

Right. You can have mistake upon mistake upon mistake.

[Emily Riley]

It compounds itself.

[Mike Shields]

Right. On the flip side, there's been, you know, the brands have been letting it go a little bit with Meta and Google and those, those AI media platforms, but it just came out this recently that Google's opening up the, the black box a little bit there where they're going to have a lot more, a little more transparency. I wonder if you're going to have to find some kind of balance here where there's some control and some or are enough marketers going to say, like, the performance is so good, I don't really care what happens, even if it makes mistakes.

[Emily Riley]

Well, again, this goes back to that bifurcation of big advertisers and little advertisers. I think little advertisers are happy to let go of the reins and say, do what you got to do.

[Mike Shields]

They don't have the resources anyway.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, 100%, you know, and Meta knows that. That's why Mark Zuckerberg is like, oh, we're going to take over all advertising.

[Mike Shields]

Online and actually make it bigger part of gdp. Which I thought was kind of crazy but fascinating.

[Emily Riley]

Right? I mean, you look at Amazon essentially operates like that now. They're like, we're not going to tell you anything. You just input a couple things and at the end of the month we'll send you a bill.

[Mike Shields]

So we're getting back to what you mentioned with Brian R. Kelly and all these guys coming into this space. It's funny, I don't know what I expect. I was talking to somebody, I thought maybe by now we would have 20 new AI DSPs in the market or so. Like it would all just be a whole bunch of new startups, a new wave of ad tech. Is this going to be disruptive to ad tech entirely? Is it going to change the. Is it. The existing players are going to just adopt all this stuff. I don't know if anybody knows this where we're headed right now.

[Emily Riley]

There have been some AI announcements. So just last week Pubmatic announced they their beta for a Big switch to their activate platform which will be a lot more AI driven. A lot of it is a sort of an efficiency play obviously. So just making smarter, faster decisions which for any media buying middle tech totally makes sense. Like AI or AI does do the math better. So I get, totally get that. I think the, there are a couple of sort of programmatic details that we have to figure out if they work or not using AI and that's what the tests are all going to be. The whole beta is, you know, does Programmatic work fast enough, does it scale enough? You know like Pubmatic owns its own servers so that helps for them because they don't have to pay somebody else if they need to scale way up while they're using AI. But all of that is sort of what remains to be seen.

[Mike Shields]

Speaking of totally non AI related, the new fronts and upfronts are happening. Like you mentioned, they're still very relationship driven like we've said is a weird moment to be doing asking brands to make long term commitments to anything. But it seems like it's business as usual for the moment. I actually want to ask you, I was, I was writing about. It's never clear to me whether there's a TV market versus a new front market if there are different things or not. The TV manufacturers are all out in force and I, I was, I was a big doubter about this but do you think the Samsung's, LG's and Vizios of this world are long for the ad business?

[Emily Riley]

You know, it's funny you say that. I would even put like Comcast Universal ads in the same bucket in some ways which is you have companies that have sort of previously been considered on the publisher side that are really more techie or like middlemen.

[Mike Shields]

Hardware.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah, hardware. They all have their own buying platforms at this point for ctv. Some of them are integrated with a bunch of self service tools to make it easier and they're really just going for it. They're hoping that CTV becomes democratized like it used to be. TV was only for the big rich.

[Mike Shields]

Fancy the top 300 brands or whatever. Yeah.

[Emily Riley]

So you, if you unlock your CTV content to a whole new suite of advertisers because you have self service stuff, you have this ability to make creative for way cheaper than you know, a $2 million commercial. Now it takes $10,000 or 50, $10. Who knows then? Yeah, they, they have a game to play, you know, I mean they have the content, they have the access to the audience. It kind of depends on what CTV media buying looks like with the smaller.

[Mike Shields]

Advertiser you mentioned, Universal ads from Comcast, they're getting, they have a lot of non Comcast partners involved from, at least from what they've announced. Paramount, others.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah.

[Mike Shields]

I just wonder if a, if a existing. It's just, it's actually very similar to what we've said about Google for many years. Should a seller of advertising also be the marketplace manager and will that work over time? No one seems to care right now, but I wonder if that will, you know, if there's a desire for independence.

[Emily Riley]

Calling them a monopoly.

[Mike Shields]

Right, right. Because it's not big yet.

[Emily Riley]

Right. If they're setting prices across a whole bunch of different individual entities and it becomes something of a market maker, then you could imagine people starting to complain that it's monopolistic. Right now though, you look at some of the top on screen video watching, it's YouTube, you know, so there's still like.

[Mike Shields]

And, and YouTube is, is probably the one they're the furthest along in terms of democratized buying. Right. Like you're, they don't have that kind of legacy. I know they've been trying to crack TV and I think they've done a good job of it. But it's gonna be interesting to see how much they can quote unquote, like drive the market. You know, in the past the number one TV network would sort of like set the tone and the pricing and yeah, for sure. It's obviously a different world, but they have the most viewership, but they're still viewed in a certain way by certain brands. I wonder how much they'll be able to run the show this year.

[Emily Riley]

Well, so some of it has to do with flagship content. So the super bowl, you've got the FA World cup going on in soccer. So there are these like crazy streaming deals that are being done worldwide. Like ESPN for example has like exclusive US rights to FA cup. And that stuff is weirdly crossing boundaries from old school media companies to these new school digital companies. So like an Amazon or Netflix has rights to all this top tier streaming sports stuff. That's going to actually I think drive more of the conversation in the market than the sort of long tail.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah, that is, it's almost like YouTube has done a fantastic job, but I wonder if they missed a moment by, you know, they didn't, they didn't grab the, some NBA rights. They have some NFL but not a huge amount like that. That still puts them a little bit on the sidelines to use a sports analogy on what, what, what is still that you know, the, that's where the live viewing still happens and it's a dominant part of the market. It's. That's gonna be very interesting to see if they can play well.

[Emily Riley]

And it's funny too, because it's like, again, we go back to automation versus people. If you're a human being working for a brand, you're saying, I want to be in the super bowl or I want to be, you know, during the.

[Mike Shields]

I want to see my ad during these big things. Yeah.

[Emily Riley]

And I'm going to pay. What would maybe mathematically be difficult to.

[Mike Shields]

Prove out as worth buying, but that's how humans are. Yeah, it makes sense.

[Emily Riley]

And, you know, those metrics aren't perfectly tied through this, you know, whole spreadsheet that some AI is going to be able to ingest and understand today. So there's got to still be that bigger conversation happening between the media companies and the buyers.

[Mike Shields]

One last thing. You brought this up and it's, there's a, there's an Axios piece around the, like, the battle for the new search frontier. And it's like there's so much. We think we know where the market is today is going to be representative where it's headed, and it could be a complete redo. I wonder what your thoughts are on that. And then did you, did you see the CEO of Instacart Fidget Simcoe, I think her name, but she was, she was a longtime meta executive. She jumped over to OpenAI, which is. Seems to be indicating that they're going to get bigger into advertising. What do you make of the, the broader. That's a lot to ask, but this broader search redo.

[Emily Riley]

I have a favorite story from when I was an analyst actually at Jupiter, when Mark Zuckerberg had, had just graduated from school or just left school, and it was his girlfriend at the time, now his wife's graduation the next day, he stopped by and met with me and shout out to David Card, longtime old school analyst in like, Adidas shower shoes, sitting there. And we were like, all right, Facebook, cool. So when are you going to start advertising on your platform? And he was like, we don't believe in advertising. This is the site for the people. And then, you know, like six months later, I was like, oh, guess what? They're going to put ads on the site. It's an, it's a revenue stream. Like, you're a fool not to pick up on a revenue stream that's like, very well accepted by all humans on Earth as, like a way for them to Pay less for stuff that they want. So, you know, it's a perennial thing where you have this founder who believes in some, you know, vision of their idealistic.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah.

[Emily Riley]

As soon as they realize they can grow, you know, six times faster if they just put ads all over the place.

[Mike Shields]

Right, right.

[Emily Riley]

It's a really difficult thing to say no to. So especially if they, they said they were going to buy Chrome, you know, they're clearly trying to become a little bit more user friendly and something that the regular consumer is interacting with. And if they're trying to do that, there's going to be a way to monetize it. Advertising isn't a bad one.

[Mike Shields]

I guess the jury is out on how advertising will work in answer driven search, conversational search, where you're not looking through lists of links and then and populating them with ads. You got to figure out the magic formula. But I think it seems inevitable.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah. I mean, it's funny you say that people are now trading insights on how to do the prompt better, you know.

[Mike Shields]

So it's like, oh, because it is a different skill.

[Emily Riley]

Yeah. And sharing prompts with each other and you get to a point where you're realizing people are getting completely different results because prompts are so much larger and more complicated. And there's a huge ripple effect to that. So one is, am I getting unfair information because my prompts aren't as cool as some fancy person over here? Who do they better pricing or access to cooler goods than I do because I don't even know to ask for it? And the other one is, I think, a little bit different, which is more like SEO and SEM. Like if I'm a seller or if I have a, if I'm a publisher with content, how do I optimize towards that?

[Mike Shields]

How do I work the system?

[Emily Riley]

If I can, how do I work the system? You know, so everybody's sort of trying to decide what, what this whole brave new world is going to look like.

[Mike Shields]

Well, there's a lot of time to figure that out. Emily, awesome conversation. Thanks again. And let's do this soon.