
The ad industry is seeing major shifts, with Microsoft stepping back from Xandr amidst the rise of AI and the complexities of CTV advertising at the forefronts. Meanwhile, the value of local advertising is in question, as it struggles to keep up with the evolution of digital platforms and measurement.
Loading summary
Mike Shields
Your brand needs positive attention. And Rembrandt, the leader in AI video augmentation and virtual product placement, demonstrated through exclusive research with NeXTing Media, that attention can be a leading indicator of performance. Find out more about this innovative approach and how to use AI to generate positive attention with Rembrand. Visit www.rembrand.com Nexting Media to learn more. Hi, everybody. Welcome to to Media. I'm Mike Shields. I'm here with my new regular guest consultant to the ad world, Emily Riley. Hey, Emily, how you doing?
Emily Riley
I'm doing well. How you doing, Mike? Nice to be back?
Mike Shields
I'm good. I'm complaining about how tired I am from the upfronts, which. No. Which is a pathetic thing to complain about, but lots going on in our world. Let's table TV for a second. Talk about Microsoft getting rid of Xander, which they're framing as. Because they are focused on. And really the world has changed so much as they brought them about, they're about AI and that's the future of advertising. And this doesn't really matter. You know, I wonder how much of that is spin, but it's, it is just big picture for people who have followed this for a long time. It's kind of feels insane on a few different levels. And the fact that Microsoft is once again making a huge acquisition and then backing off it in ad tech. I wonder about their commitment to advertising. Although they're making a killing from LinkedIn and other and Bing, so I wouldn't go that far. And it's also just crazy. The legacy of what was spent on AppNexus through various owners and pieces, and now it's barely a mention or barely exists. Where were you on that, like shutdown? What it means, is it a big deal or not?
Emily Riley
I mean, it definitely shows that there are some really big DSPs and SSPs out there that apparently don't seem like they need to exist anymore for program to keep going. So whether or not that's because of AI, there's also a lot of talk that. All right, so if we bring buyers and sellers closer together through curation or, you know, I think there's some SPO deals that are happening from SSPs so that they're talking to buyers directly. You don't need the same super complicated, you know, multiple platforms talking to each other, multiple exchanges representing different sides. And if, if Microsoft was too slow to figure that out, like, are they dealing with curation at all? Probably, I'm.
Mike Shields
I guess you don't hear that. I don't know.
Emily Riley
Like, yeah, so they could have just been flat footed when a lot of the changes over the last two years started happening anyway. You know, you look at the trade desk for years they've been talking about, oh, we're going direct to publishers now. We're providing, you know, a one and then magnite.
Mike Shields
We have the, we're doing the same thing on our side kind of thing. You're right. They didn't, you didn't hear a lot of lead the market conversation coming out of Microsoft slash. Xander, did they just buy this at the wrong time? Did they not invest?
Emily Riley
Or maybe they didn't do a ton with it. And so there are just all these other options right now. Why would you go to Microsoft if you don't have to?
Mike Shields
I also thought of. They won. I don't know how much this matters but they, they won the quote unquote Netflix deal a couple years ago. That was a, that was a big like NBC, you wanted it. And all these. And then they, and then Netflix went their own way. I wonder how much that hurt them. And maybe like that was their biggest client or that really mattered to their business or its future. I don't know.
Emily Riley
I know if you build towards one mega client and that doesn't look like any other client need kind of build yourself into a corner.
Mike Shields
Yeah. And if you lose them, you're in trouble.
Emily Riley
Yeah. Netflix wasn't coming to the table. Super sophisticated. They were brand new to this concept. You know. So if they built towards what Netflix needed, that's not what the most sophisticated companies out there want today. Now Netflix is still playing catch up a little bit.
Mike Shields
You're right. It's like how long did. For the longest time as an outsider you're like why do we need all these 5000 dsps is crazy. But there is some kind of culling actually happening now that you'll. And driven by consolidation, probably curation. I wonder if the, you know, push towards AI driven advertising is a role or what we need, will that further limit the need, the need for all these DSPs or not? I don't, I don't know. But that's an excuse. But that. It's just an interesting moment right now.
Emily Riley
Yeah. And the AI can live in a lot of different places along the supply chain. You still need to have connection to the inventory and to the buyer. And a lot of people want that to be a platform of some kind. They want to be, to pull reports. They want to be able to compare campaigns. They want to have some sort of visibility and control. You can't I can't imagine a world today or even in five years where a giant brand literally says, okay, give me an AI agent that's going to run all $500 million of my digital and I'm not going to look at it until the end of the month.
Mike Shields
Right, right. We're good. Like, I don't need, I don't need to worry about that.
Emily Riley
AI decision making has to be connected to some kind of platform still. And whichever company does that the best, they're going to be the one to pull in the agencies. You know, agency teams need that level of organization and transparency just to be able to service their brands.
Mike Shields
You know, and from everything you read that you, those agents will only be as valuable as if they have lots and lots of great data to train on. So you need to be plugged into a big platform that does a lot of business. Yes.
Emily Riley
How good is the data? Yeah, not necessarily perfect. So.
Mike Shields
All right, talk about something that is super not AI is the upfront season. I didn't go to all them. I went to several new fronts, several upfronts. I got a feel for most of it. I was at the Disney one, for example, and in some ways it feels like a. This is going to sound terrible, but like, remember watching like an old Bob Hopes EP special on TV as a kid, you're like, even this is super corny. People still kind of like that stuff. Back then, the whole format of like the celebrity badger overwhelming you with celebrity was. I wonder if, I mean, it's not for me. I'm not the customer in this case, I'm just an attendee. And it was just a weird moment to be having this, as we've discussed with the uncertainty. But it's kind of wild, the show of force that some of the big players are still determined to do at this time of year.
Emily Riley
I think there are very specific reasons why you see talent on the stage. And so if you look at Disney or if you look at YouTube, some of it has to do with how they want to appear at the very premium level. So you think like super bowl premium sponsorships, sports stars.
Mike Shields
Yeah, they had Patrick Mahomes, they had Glenn Powell, like, exactly.
Emily Riley
That's where you get these huge deals, multi year sponsorship deals where you're tied in with the star. So they're doing it sort of to show the roster of star power that they have at their finger for those very top tier deals for the people in the audience that care about that. But your average buyer, you know, two months from now, once those premium Deals are locked up. They don't care if Lady Gaga was on the stage or 50 Cent was on the stage. You know, they're much more interested in the mechanics. Right. Like, where's my audience?
Mike Shields
How do I saying, how do I get the target I need?
Emily Riley
Yeah, yeah, but that's not what the upfronts are for today. And you know, emarketer is showing a decline in the amount of money that's being committed each year. This year was particularly kind of murky because of all the political monkeying with the economy. But you still have to take into consideration the fact that there's $16 billion that are going to be did over like in the next month or two.
Mike Shields
Yeah, it's funny, I, I was at the YouTube event and left before Lady Gaga came on stage because I wanted to watch the Nick game and they got slaughtered and pissed about it. Um.
Emily Riley
Ouch. Yeah, you're not the only one that was bummed.
Mike Shields
But Lady Gaga I'm sure was awesome. And the reason it's, it's interesting, I thought to me what stuck out is the, like, I don't, I don't have no idea what the big show is going to be there anyone's talking about. Everybody was talking about their NFL partnership. To me it's almost like. And YouTube even had to throw in an NFL deal because they know they have to have that kind of thing to dress up what they do. Even though they're very leaned into. We are all about creators and young culture. It seems like it's a standoff between a brand's going to care more about live sports and that being the cultural centerpiece of for most people or the what younger people mostly care about, which is creators that are not known to a lot of the media buying crowds still.
Emily Riley
Yeah, I mean, so it's so funny. YouTube is trying to figure out how to play with the big dogs who've been doing this for so long. Yeah. And they, they are kind of funny because they're just this hodgepodge of rando content. You compare YouTube to, say Amazon. YouTube is enormous. It makes more money than basically any other company that shows stuff on tv. But they don't, they have mostly long tail content. They haven't, like you said, they haven't leaned in to sports. And what's weird if you compare them to Amazon is even though they're part of Google, they don't have the technology superpowers that you would expect them to have. So Amazon was on stage talking about contextual targeting based on super cool metadata because they own all the show data. They were talking about closed loop retail media stuff. They have huge audiences that shop with them. All this added up is super enticing for somebody that's looking at CTV as an extension of their digital buy or something that they want to be super measurable. You would think YouTube coming from the digital side would have some similar competitive packaging. And instead what they were showing off was like, we have a whole page takeover.
Mike Shields
You're not saying that you don't think YouTube has lousy ad tech, is it that I don't think you're saying because.
Emily Riley
It'S Google package themselves to be like an Amazon.
Mike Shields
That's interesting because they're, they're caught in a weird spot because they're trying to sell culture and the influence of creators. It doesn't lend itself to being as data driven and ad tech driven as, as they, you would think they would want to leverage that power. It's not easy to programmaticize that stuff, if that makes sense.
Emily Riley
Well, another way to think about it is they are huge. And it's a lot of it comes from advertisers that probably don't really care about the upfronts as much. You know.
Mike Shields
Yeah, it's very, it's a very long tail.
Emily Riley
It's everybody, advertisers, they offer, they've offered targeting for forever. You know, they're coming from a place of, of power, but they're out of their element.
Mike Shields
And so the story they're telling this week is not that because it's for tv.
Emily Riley
Weird story buyers.
Mike Shields
Exactly.
Emily Riley
You know, trying to appeal to a different buyer and trying to capture some of those premium early spend dollars this year. But that's not the story they tell normally.
Mike Shields
Right, Right.
Emily Riley
I think it was just pretty apparent based on their presentation.
Mike Shields
Yeah. And you know, Amazon, I've only seen parts of it I wasn't there. It's almost like a show of force. Like we're going to like when the, when Trump wants to have his army parade. Like they just show how big of the powerful they are. They, they could spend so much money on this kind of thing, bring out all these stars. But they also have, they have the goods on ad tech. They have the connect the dots thing. They're. That they're really talking about is it's really hard for like the NBC use and Warner Brothers to even think about that.
Emily Riley
Well, it's funny too because CTV is rising up and everybody has their vision of what it's going to become. And I think that there were probably like three main themes. So you've got the NBC's and the Disney's where it's like, it's all about sports, awesome experiences, really cool series, first run movies, all that kind of classic, you know, big audience, engaging content. And then let's just have some cool ad formats around it and everybody will be happy because it's sort of just like old school TV.
Mike Shields
Plus, right.
Emily Riley
Whereas YouTube is like social engagement, long tail, Gen Z. Everybody loves influencers. Like they're totally betting on sort of the social media experience or the influencer experience coming to the living room.
Mike Shields
Right.
Emily Riley
And then you have Amazon, which is like commerce and advertisers want to be able to measure end to end even from a branding campaign at the, you know, the super. And we can do that and we're super technical and you know, it's really just about what they.
Mike Shields
And they have sports and shows and like. And like they have all the pieces.
Emily Riley
Exactly. They will do whatever it takes to give the advertiser outcomes. And if that means buying rights to, you know, top tier sports, they'll do that. There's different philosophies and we really don't know which is going to win or if it's going to be a hybrid of all three.
Mike Shields
Right, right.
Emily Riley
And be all of those things.
Mike Shields
Yeah. And whether it's going to be a slow up front or not, if we see a turning point where people feel more confident about spending and then. And things look great. Hopefully that's true. You know, it's ironic, amidst this week there is this news that came out that in a different time would be a mega story. The charter and Cox merging. Right. Which, you know, like I said at another time I think they'd be worried about regulators saying, hold on a second now, I'm sure this, like, this doesn't feel like a part of me is almost like not to be cynical, but like, is this even a big deal? Like it's a big deal, but does it. Is it like just about trying to hold together companies that are fading or is it anything strategic about this?
Emily Riley
Yeah, well, the world that they exist in has a lot of local markets. So they're looking at local news, local sports, radio, all that kind of stuff that unfortunately has just not caught up with digital programmatic, ctv. You know, you have a lot of these guys that are still selling spots on broadcast or linear and maybe on the website. There's just not a lot of CTV being sold.
Mike Shields
It's not nearly as dynamic as the core market and.
Emily Riley
Right. So like news came out for Example like throughout the NBA season, a lot of the locally broadcast games we're losing viewers. On the linear side, the ad sales teams don't really have the mechanism to sell the CTV kind of corollary to that. So they're kind of screwed in a way. So you know, by them coming together, you could imagine some of this strategically is going to be okay. How do we become a player with local content on ctv? How do we empower our local sales teams to be profitable instead of just losing viewership and having to do make goods? Are educating local advertisers on, you know, new opportunities to be on streaming. It's not an easy path. Like the way FAST works, like local and fast haven't really come together and found a happy medium today.
Mike Shields
Yeah, it's a tricky spot. And all those, so many of those local companies are on fast services in different ways. The data you get is not great on fast to begin with, I feel like. And then on a local level it's gotta be very challenging to translate that to the local car dealer. I'm like, what does this mean to me when they're used to local ratings of being like pretty stable.
Emily Riley
And it could be that there ends up being a new platform to, to service this whole situation because right now it's kind of old school where you literally just get a share of some of the impressions from the fast stream and that's what you get and you don't know what you're targeting against. You don't know what they're going to watch. You're just like, okay, I get 20% of the impressions this month. That's not technical enough to help a local advertiser feel confident and buy that they're just going to go to YouTube.
Mike Shields
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's, it's that because it's, it's similar to just, you know, the why, why it's easy to buy meta and Google. You just log on and do it and they don't, you don't need a crazy great creative and that's how it's happening.
Emily Riley
Yeah, it's kind of nerve wracking for these guys. So yeah, you're right. It might not be a monopoly situation. Nobody's going to care. But at the same time, hopefully they figure it out because local content is still watched by a ton of people.
Mike Shields
It's an underexploited area by the broader digital media landscape.
Emily Riley
100%.
Mike Shields
What else happened this weekend? Anything else that you're is top of mind for you that it's like a Big topic that we should be kind of looking at. I'm. I'm. You know, people are all of a sudden, can is approaching. I keep hearing people questioning whether Possible is maybe taking some of the thunder from Cannes or. People are scrambling to put together plans now. It's gonna be a weird climate. What else is going on?
Emily Riley
Yeah, I mean, the main thing that came out of Possible is that was more senior this year, and those senior people tend to be the ones that go to Cannes, and there were more brands. So it is possible that Possible is taking some of that thunder at the same time. Everybody wants to go to France. It's pretty cool.
Mike Shields
So it's not the worst thing.
Emily Riley
Yeah, it's not the worst thing. So I think this year it's. You're at the halfway mark when you get to Cannes. It's kind of time to think about second half. The upfronts are over. You're looking at Holiday, you're looking at where do I put my money? CTV is not going to go away. I think this is the year of total ct CTV overload, exhaustion. Like, at the end of this year, I don't think I want to hear the word CTV again.
Mike Shields
I was at the Luma event earlier this week, and, you know, there's obviously a lot of exuberance for ctv, but there was also a little bit of. The pricing isn't what we thought. The things, the capabilities are not where we wanted them to be. There's a lot. There's like so much fast inventory now that it's not performing the way we maybe were hoping. There's. I'm not saying there was a negativity around it, but it was a little bit of an overload feeling.
Emily Riley
Yeah, for sure. I mean, and this is why you have two worlds colliding. So you have TV buyers that are like, honestly asking for a lot. They're like, okay, I used to get hardly anything other than I knew that my ad showed on a cool show next to a show or during a game on tv. And suddenly now I can target. I can get really specific measurement. I can try to buy programmatically so I can get better pricing. I can optimize. It's like the joke where you're. You're on the. The first plane you ever had where they had WI Fi and you're so fight it. And then the WI fi goes out and you're pissed immediately.
Mike Shields
Right. Like, I, like, like I can't believe where you're actually flying. Getting the Internet, which is pretty awesome, and you're like, this sucks.
Emily Riley
Yeah. It's like that's what CTV is going through right now. Everybody's like, look at all these amazing things you can now do with like tv. It's like becoming this cool new digital medium and everybody's already pissed that it's like not working the way they were.
Mike Shields
Right. It's not perfect in master.
Emily Riley
Less expensive, it's more flexible, you can target. But media companies are freaking out too because they're like, we used to be able to have all this stuff locked up at premium prices. People would buy it early in the year and they're trying to topple all of that. We will literally go out of business if we cannot sell for the right price.
Mike Shields
That makes our business work. That ability to. And the paying for all the mega deals and the waste was sort of like part of the model and now it's being broken up very quickly.
Emily Riley
The democratization of content and publishing on digital created a whole bunch of crappy content. We did a bad job. All the best content now is totally compromised. And so TV is going through the same growing pains. And it's kind of sad, but it doesn't seem like anybody's learning their lesson. You know, the benefit that we have are these mega companies like a Netflix or an Amazon or Disney produce good content no matter what and be profitable. But you will see, I think some medium sized TV companies that just can't make it through.
Mike Shields
Yeah, the middle is not a good place to be. The one last thing I want to bring up is this was this warmed my heart a little bit. And maybe this is only me, but the. I would not have bet that advertisers would show more courage than like the biggest law firms in the world. And I know it's not the same thing, but you saw the big advertisers who were, who were getting sued by Twitter or Elon Musk going back at him and, and with it, with her, with their own filing, which I thought, I thought that was. I, I did not expect that. I expected everyone to cave on that one. But they basically came back out. Ping came back with them. Like, we're not. There's no conspiracy, there's no collusion here. You sabotage your own thing here. There's a lot of advertisers to bail, not just us. And I thought that was actually surprising to me.
Emily Riley
I wonder how much of it is that his star is fading in dc.
Mike Shields
Yeah, that's a good point. Like maybe he's more vulnerable then or less feared.
Emily Riley
Well, if they were worried that all of the executive branch would come after them. Yeah, that's different story than, like, one semi bonkers genius inventor guy who now.
Mike Shields
A lot of Americans no longer like, which was that. That. That. Yeah, that. That might be just a factor of timing, but yeah, even so, I'm happy to see somebody fighting back about that ridiculousness.
Emily Riley
Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, there's a give and take, the, you know, the separation of church and state with content. It's like advertisers are allowed to decide for themselves where they advertise, and there's nothing you can do about it. Dude.
Mike Shields
Yeah, yeah, that's. This is their budget. This is capitalism.
Emily Riley
Right.
Mike Shields
But anyway, on that note, thanks again, Emily. Great conversation. Let's chat soon.
Emily Riley
Awesome. Thanks, Mike.
Next in Media: Episode Summary Release Date: May 19, 2025
Host Mike Shields and his regular guest, ad industry consultant Emily Riley, delve deep into the shifting landscape of media, marketing, and advertising in this episode. Titled "Mike and Emily do a post upfront breakdown, mourning Xandr while debating whether Amazon is out ad teching Google," the conversation navigates through significant industry changes influenced by technology and data advancements.
The episode opens with Mike expressing frustration over Microsoft's decision to discontinue Xandr, a major player in the ad tech space.
Mike Shields [00:40]:
“Microsoft is once again making a huge acquisition and then backing off it in ad tech. I wonder about their commitment to advertising.”
Emily Riley [01:38]:
“There are some really big DSPs and SSPs out there that apparently don't seem like they need to exist anymore for programmatic to keep going.”
Discussion Highlights:
Strategic Missteps: Mike questions whether Microsoft's exit from ad tech signals a lack of commitment or a strategic pivot towards AI-driven advertising.
Market Dynamics: Emily suggests that the shutdown indicates consolidation and curation trends within the industry, reducing the need for multiple DSPs (Demand-Side Platforms) and SSPs (Supply-Side Platforms).
Legacy of AppNexus: Mike reflects on the lingering impact and minimal presence of AppNexus, previously acquired by Microsoft, suggesting a failure to capitalize on the investment.
AI's role in transforming advertising technology is a central theme, with both hosts contemplating its long-term effects.
Mike Shields [03:41]:
“I wonder if the push towards AI-driven advertising is a role or what we need, will that further limit the need for all these DSPs or not?”
Emily Riley [04:07]:
“AI decision making has to be connected to some kind of platform still. And whichever company does that the best, they're going to be the one to pull in the agencies.”
Discussion Highlights:
Integration of AI: Emily emphasizes that AI must be integrated into robust platforms to manage inventory and buyer connections effectively.
Agency Dependence: The success of AI-driven advertising relies on platforms that offer transparency, control, and comprehensive data to agency teams for servicing brands.
Data Quality: Both Mike and Emily highlight the necessity of high-quality data to train AI systems, making platforms with extensive business activities more valuable.
Mike and Emily provide a critical analysis of the recent upfront season, focusing on the performance and strategies of major players like Disney, YouTube, and Amazon.
Mike Shields [06:01]:
“It's kind of wild, the show of force that some of the big players are still determined to do at this time of year.”
Emily Riley [10:15]:
“Emarketer is showing a decline in the amount of money that's being committed each year. This year was particularly kind of murky because of all the political monkeying with the economy.”
Discussion Highlights:
Celebrity-Centric Events: Mike critiques the upfront events for their outdated formats, likening them to old Bob Hope specials, emphasizing the over-reliance on star power rather than substantive content.
Divergent Strategies:
CTV Overload: Both hosts express fatigue over the pervasive push for Connected TV (CTV), noting that recent events and pricing models have led to an exhaustion of CTV narratives without delivering the expected capabilities.
The conversation shifts to the recent merger between Charter and Cox, exploring its strategic significance in the evolving media landscape.
Mike Shields [12:13]:
“But at the same time, hopefully they figure it out because local content is still watched by a ton of people.”
Emily Riley [13:19]:
“Local news, local sports, radio, all that kind of stuff that unfortunately has just not caught up with digital programmatic, CTV.”
Discussion Highlights:
Strategic Objectives: The merger aims to bolster local content offerings on CTV platforms, addressing declining viewership in local broadcasts and enhancing ad sales mechanisms.
Challenges in Transition: Traditional local ad sales teams struggle to adapt to digital programmatic and CTV, facing difficulties in translating local viewership data into effective digital advertising strategies.
Potential Solutions: The hosts speculate on the emergence of new platforms tailored to service local advertisers, offering better targeting and measurable outcomes compared to existing Fast App Streaming (FAST) services.
Toward the end of the episode, Mike shares his surprise at advertisers collectively standing up against Elon Musk's management of Twitter.
Mike Shields [18:01]:
“I would not have bet that advertisers would show more courage than like the biggest law firms in the world.”
Emily Riley [19:12]:
“Advertisers are allowed to decide for themselves where they advertise, and there's nothing you can do about it.”
Discussion Highlights:
Unexpected Resistance: Contrary to Mike’s expectations, major advertisers are pushing back against perceived instability and changing policies under Musk’s leadership at Twitter.
Brand Autonomy: Emily underscores the principle that advertisers have the autonomy to choose their advertising platforms, reinforcing the separation of business decisions from content management.
Market Dynamics: The declining influence and fading star power of Musk within professional circles contribute to advertisers feeling more empowered to withdraw support without significant repercussions.
Wrapping up, the hosts reflect on the broader implications of their discussions.
Mike Shields [15:26]:
“It's an underexploited area by the broader digital media landscape.”
Emily Riley [18:32]:
“The democratization of content and publishing on digital created a whole bunch of crappy content. We did a bad job.”
Summary Insights:
Content Quality: The proliferation of digital content has led to a saturation of low-quality offerings, challenging platforms and advertisers to identify and invest in genuinely engaging content.
Industry Consolidation: Mergers like Charter and Cox, along with Microsoft's exit from Xandr, indicate a trend towards consolidation, aiming to streamline operations and enhance adaptability in a rapidly changing market.
Future of CTV: While CTV remains a critical area of growth, the current challenges around pricing, inventory performance, and integration with traditional media models suggest a need for innovation and more refined strategies to realize its full potential.
Conclusion: Mike Shields and Emily Riley provide a comprehensive examination of the current state of the media and advertising industries, highlighting significant shifts driven by technological advancements and strategic realignments among major players. From Microsoft's strategic withdrawal to the complexities of CTV and the unexpected unity among advertisers in defending their platform choices, the episode offers valuable insights for industry stakeholders navigating an era of constant change.