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Greg Kilstrom
hi, I'm Greg Kilstrom, host of
Podcast Host
the Agile Brand, and here's a question for you. In a world obsessed with optimizing the
Greg Kilstrom
ad tech supply chain, what if the
Podcast Host
focus on shorter paths is a complete
Greg Kilstrom
misdirection from building smarter ones to that
Podcast Host
actually align with brand value?
Greg Kilstrom
Agility requires brands to move beyond incremental optimization and fundamentally rethink their media operating models. It's about building a framework that's inherently resilient to platform shifts, privacy changes and evolving audience expectations. Today we're going to talk about the
Podcast Host
disconnect between the technical ad tech conversation
Greg Kilstrom
and the strategic needs of the brand. We're going to explore how leaders can
Podcast Host
bridge this gap by focusing on smarter media paths, curated inventory, and an operating
Greg Kilstrom
model built for long term value creation. Welcome to season eight of the Agile Brand Podcast. This season we're going all in on Expert Mode, MarTech, AI and Customer Experience, talking with the people and platforms behind the brands you know and love. Again, I'm your host Greg Kilstrom and I help Fortune 1000 companies make sense of MarTech, AI and marketing ops. Hit, subscribe or follow to make sure
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you always get the latest episodes.
Greg Kilstrom
And leave us a rating so others can find us as well. And make sure you check out our sponsor, Techsystems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world adoption. For more information, go to techsystems.com now let's dive in. Tell me discuss this topic.
Podcast Host
I'd like to welcome Bob, regular CEO at Infolinx Media. Bob, welcome to the show.
Bob Regular
Hey Greg, thank you for having me.
Podcast Host
Yeah, looking forward to the conversation here. Before we dive in though, why don't you give a little background on yourself and your role at Infolinx Media.
Bob Regular
Great, sure, happy to do that. So I'm CEO of Infolinx Media. I acquired the company with a couple of Partners in 2018. But the company has a very storied, wonderful history. It was born in 2007, which is, you know, basically 20 years ago now. Close to 20 years ago, which in digital media, as you know, is a long time.
Podcast Host
Right.
Bob Regular
So we're obviously doing something right. We pioneered back in 07 some really awesome movements. The first movement that we sort of pioneered in ad tech or digital media was the in text advertising movement. The idea, you know, when you go to your website and there'd be a highlighted text link on the words on the editorial page, could be the word mortgage or could be the word, you know, car loan or whatever it is. And when you'd roll over it, it would open a bubble or show an advertisement related to that. So we pioneered that back in the early 2000s and that sort of led the contextual movement, the concept of keywords on a page, sentiment on a page. And, and now we're, you know, we've evolved a lot now to sort of driving towards what we call the proprietary movement. The proprietary movement is, is a movement driven off sort of the maturing of the industry, which is most ad inventory is not very valuable. All inventory has some value, but most inventory is of mediocre value. And there is very specific placements and very specific inventory that has really high value. And that value is defined by things like engagement and attention and performance and specific outcomes. And so as the leader of the company, I'm moving the company in the direction of what I've sort of defined as a primary impression, which is the combination of proprietary media with proprietary data combined together to create a primary impression. And this primary impression is the best impression. You know, I think one of the biggest challenges, as you probably know, in building a company is finding your customer. And the customers we found are advertisers that need to get outcomes. They need solutions, they need to spend their money, and they need to spend it wisely. And they don't have time to just experiment and spend lots of money on what doesn't work. And so we spend so much time seeking what I define as this primary impression that we've sort of mapped a methodology now for several years of having this proprietary media that works, and it's gone really, really well for us. You know, me personally, I've been doing this now for over 30 years, which in some respects I'm super proud to say. In other respects, I'm just shocked, you know, like, I still remember saying that about old people. And I'm now an old person, so I'm not sure how that happened, but I've been doing this for 30 years in digital media, building essentially marketplaces. And they've been on the advertiser buy side for a long time, and they've been on the publisher sell side for a long time. And Infolinx is the mixture and bringing the two together to create a marketplace of the buy side and the sell side. And I love it. It's really great. It's challenging. This market changes every five minutes. And it's. I've grown up with it. You know, when I. When I started in it, I was evangelizing the concept that, that, you know, we know what we know as advertisers today, that they should have websites, you should have a website. It's very important. Let me tell you about that. I literally went company to company, company evangelizing that having a website was important and you should have one, and that if you had one, let me build it, and after you build it, let me advertise it. So that was the late 90s, and it sounds kind of crazy, but you literally had to convince people they should have a website and then you had to give it to them for free because they didn't think they even needed one.
Sponsor Representative
Right.
Podcast Host
I remember those days. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy to think back, but. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, let's dive in then. And, you know, I start with talking about this from the media strategy standpoint. And one of the things that you've noted is that the industry conversation often focuses on shorter supply paths as the primary, or at least one of the primary goals. Why do you see this as a distraction and what's a smarter path?
Bob Regular
Sure. Well, our industry goes through a lot of advocacy movements that are very important. There's a lot of these movements that are a result of abuse or they're a result of improvements that do a better job of essentially making advertisers successful or publishers successful. So one of the movements for a couple, three years has been what's called the supply path optimization movement. Spo. We love acronyms in digital media. So there we go. Spo, the obligatory three letter acronym. And SPO is a very logical smart movement, right? Which is, you know, if you're going to buy media, can you buy it the most effectively that you should. And the sort of underlying theme there is the shorter path to get to the media should ultimately give you a better outcome. And I think that's very logical. You know, Adam Smith economics even, right. Like it's logical, but there's a lot of nuance into that. And so not always is the shortest path necessarily the best, highest performing outcome path. And a great analogy for that is Google Maps or Waze. You go on Google Maps and you say, I want to go to a destination and it'll give you three options. And the shortest option is not necessarily the best experience and it's not necessarily the best outcome. It may bring you through a neighborhood with a lot of traffic stops and a lot of stop signs and traffic lights and you don't like that, you'd prefer to take the highway. And it's a much better experience and a better outcome. So this is just a nice analogy to life. Right. But similar in media, the direct path is often the better path. But there are also other routes to go to that media that may have better data on it, it may have better engagement signals, it may have better pricing, it may have better formats, it may have proprietary placements. There are all kinds of explanations, but those explanations require sort of a more sophisticated buyer that cares to know, right? How am I getting the best outcomes? Am I going through a, just a direct path or am I going through the best path? And I think that's, that's something that I've learned going back to the concept of the proprietary placement. And the primary impression is, you know, the direct path. I'm often surprised it's not always what's driving the best outcomes for, for my advertisers.
Podcast Host
Yeah. Well, and I think that's a good segue to the next point, which is I think a lot of media buyers and you know, brand leaders are feeling perhaps disconnected because there is, there are several routes to take. For instance, they feel a bit disconnected from the technical execution of the, how the media buys are done and so something like shortest path probably makes a ton of sense because why, you know, again to your point, economics wise, it makes tons of sense. It seems, it seems smart. But you know, the devil's in the details, right? So how can a brand leader better effectively translate some of their business objectives into how this actually gets done rather than just kind of again, feeling that disconnect or just assuming a lot of things are happening the best way possible?
Bob Regular
Sure. Well, this movement of SPO has led a lot of media executives, sometimes even senior executives, just to say to their agencies or just to say their media execution, hands on keyboard, people only direct paths. Cut off all the indirect paths, just do that because it's a logical philosophy. I think we're swinging back the other direction now, which is sort of more moderation, more analysis on whether or not there are other pathways, other media types to successfully get the outcomes you want. And there's a lot more sophistication starting to come in. I won't say we're or like wildly sophisticated yet, but it's getting there.
Podcast Host
Yeah.
Bob Regular
And I, and I think the underlying part of the advocacy needs to re embrace the core tenet of digital marketing or marketing in general, is what is the measurement and what is the outcome you're pursuing? And is the pathway right? Is the methodology and execution of the pathway delivering on that? If, for example, you have a clear outcome, that our KPI and outcome a clear measurement and you just cut off all the alternatives and only pick the direct, how will you know if the alternatives bring you value? Right? It's not, it's not very helpful if you have no benchmarking and no control groups. So being led only by philosophy right is not necessarily the right approach. You need to have a good mixture of testing and examination. So I would say first and foremost, do you have clear measurement? And are you experimenting with all your options? Right. Are you seeking that? And the last thing I would bring it back to is if everybody's doing the same thing, how are you getting an advantage as a media buyer executing the campaign? If everybody's doing SPO and cutting off every indirect option. Right. And getting lean and mean, then what exactly is your advantage against all the others doing this? Where are you going to get the best? All you're doing is bidding your prices higher, competing in a smaller funnel with lesser options. And so I encourage our advertisers because one of the things that Infolinx does is works directly with publishers. We work with thousands of direct publishers and we put our proprietary placements on those publishers. That, that makes us an indirect pathway to that publisher. But our, our thesis is that we're going to put the best impression on the publisher, we're going to put the best placement on the publisher. So our, our positions, our pathway actually finds a really, really great primary impression on that publisher that the advertiser will want to buy. If the interview, all if intermediaries or all other steps to get to the publisher are gone, they'll, they'll never know about it. So the execution is in the hands on keyboard. The philosophy is with management and I think management is starting to sort of swing back into a much more sophisticated point of view.
Podcast Host
Yeah, well, and I think that brings us to the execution part of this. And how do we build an agile operating model? It's Agile brand podcast. Got to bring in that word here. So how do we be more agile? And I mean to your point point, whenever I see a lot of concentration in one approach, there's got, there are gaps and there are opportunities to, for lack of a better term, exploit for advantage. Right. So how do you, you know, how does a brand certainly there's, there's lots of considerations, not only the SPO conversation that you talked about, but you know, things like cookie deprecation, continual platform changes to keep up with. How does, how does a brand keep up with all of this while also optimizing for the right things, not just kind of the idealistic philosophy type things as well. I know that's a big question, but.
Bob Regular
Yeah, it's a big question, but I can synthesize it down into some simple concepts that I think are useful. There's a tremendous amount of conversation around signal, right. Which is sort of interpreted as cookies or some sort of signal that lets you deterministically know if this is your audience. And that rolls back to a core philosophy is you're trying to reach your audience so that you don't waste your money reaching the wrong audience. Right. Which is, which is logical. The unfortunate thing is because of privacy laws, because of changes with the walled gardens, because of changes with browsers and frankly changes with users behavior patterns, right? They're using AI more, they're surfing the web a little less, they're spending more time on vertical video like patterns of users. Okay, you take all of that together, right? And signal is deprecating. That's what's happening. It is continually deprecating and as a result over time there will just be less deterministic signal. And frankly, and we are going to move and we're going to have to accept we're moving greatly towards a predictive signal environment. And the beauty now that we have AI sophistication coming into our analysis, it's important that advertisers start to embrace the fact that there's not enough deterministic signal, right? With absolute match. Whether it's absolute match a cookie or absolute match of an email address or absolute match of something else to really, really grow your marketing, there's just not enough and there's nothing going to be enough. So as a result, you have to embrace predictive signal. And contextuality is one of those predictive signals that are really, it's present, it's everywhere and it's valuable. And if you can bridge using contextual and contextual sentiment, that's another great way where you don't get completely hung up only on deterministic signal. So I think AI has entered now this era and we're leveraging it inside of Infolinx where it really helps you analyze information, right? The context of the information to get better sentiment and match it against the advertisers audiences. And it's not like the old days in the 2007, 2008 Infolinx was, you know, if you have a mortgage advertiser, the word mortgage has to be on the page 25 times, right? And if it's on the page 25 times, then absolutely this is about mortgages. And so you do the match, right? We've definitely evolved where you can see if the sentiment is related to the type of audience that you're looking for, whether or not the conversation on the page is related to what the audience is looking for. Is the mood, is the mood of what's on the page positive mood, negative mood? You know, all these things matter right to the match. And so going back to the essence of your question that this stuff is really complicated, I would say it just gets more and more complicated if you are hanging on only to the deterministic because the deterministic is falling away.
Greg Kilstrom
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Podcast Host
Going back to the contextual signals then you know, certainly agree they're, they're, they're a critical part of this for the reasons you, you mentioned. How do brands best take advantage of that? I mean it, you know, it makes sense what you're saying as far as how they're, how they can be utilized. But how does a brand make the best use or set themselves up to be able to make the best use of those contextual signals?
Bob Regular
Yeah, so, so I think the first and foremost is brand really has to understand what the contextuality of its product, its message. You know, let's, let's say do a contextual analysis. What is this brand about? Let's use the mortgage advertiser as an example because it's a historical one. Is that a mortgage advertiser that's looking for people that are looking for higher end mortgages or distressed mortgages? Is that an advertiser that's looking for a massive legion funnel of applicants and they're going to filter them out at the end or they're looking for very distinct audiences that have super high credit score that are only looking to buy McMansions. And so who are they and what is the contextuality of their product, their message and what they consider to be success? Right. Like what is an outcome? A rocket mortgage is a very different product than a Wells Fargo mortgage. Right? Right. And even though they're called mortgages. Right. They're very contextually different. And so advertising with. I'll just do a shameless plug. But if an advertiser comes to Infolinx and says, I, I'm a mortgage company, I to contextually target, we're going to analyze what is the contextuality of the brand and the service and we're going to look against all the pages, all the apps, all all the inventory options that we have. We're going to find a contextual relationship match when that audience is on that type of contextuality. And we're going to bring the advertiser and the supply together at the same time. And so then you don't have the problem of only looking for a user that's 18 to 34 and lives in a very specific, you know, zip code. And these are valuable too. Right. But the contextuality gets you, gets you much further. And so that, that's how we address it. And I think this is also blessed by a lot of the capabilities of AI and that we're using is you can now read all this information and extrapolate a lot more learnings from it to help that advertiser. It doesn't become as binary as just is the word on the page at this time.
Podcast Host
Right, right. And so let's talk a little bit about measurement of this. And so, you know, maybe going back to the shortest path conversation or even just in general, you know, how do you work with marketing and media leaders to articulate, you know, some of these things to a CFO or a CEO. You know, things like smarter paths, curated inventory, all of this and tie it to those, those KPIs that they're looking at, you know, lifetime value, long term, you know, long term gains and stuff like that.
Sponsor Voice
Sure.
Bob Regular
Well, as a CEO, right. I empathize with the struggles of a CEO. As somebody who talks frequently to my cfo. Right. I empathize with the pressure I put on the CFO to deliver good financial results. So I relate to these people because I'm living the dream. And I think that CEOs and CFOs have a very clear KPI for them. Right. And we have a very clear is creating shareholder value and growth. That's what we're, we're hired to do. That's what we do in companies we own. We're trying to make them successful. And so when we look to our CMOs, when we look to our media professionals that then look to our agencies, what we're really looking for them is to ultimately deliver on building the brand, which is really genuinely a euphemism in a way for are you delivering on improving Shareholder growth. Right. Building business growth. You know, we get caught up in an awful lot of terminology. Right. Word salad.
Greg Kilstrom
Right.
Bob Regular
In the end, is, is this media buy? Right. Delivering on, building my brand, selling my product, delivering value. It's not that complicated when you think about it conceptually. And so when those folks that are actually hands on keyboard executing media and they're thinking about the nuts and bolts of SPO, which most CEOs are like, what the heck is SPO? Why am I even talking to me about this stuff? Yes, go direct. You know, so, so you know, when, when you, when you try to connect the dots, I go back to what I said earlier is ultimately, if you have clear KPIs and clear measurement to drive growth and shareholder value for the business, sell the product. Are you going through all the different pathways that can do that or are you restricting yourself to a media plan that is extremely limited and restrictive and may actually just be costing you more and not bringing the value? I'm not saying it is, but I'm saying you don't know if you've put yourself in a very limited situation. So I think ultimately it just comes down to that.
Podcast Host
Yeah, yeah. And so then let's talk a little bit about as much as possible future proofing all of this. And we talked a bit about agility in the operating model, but we know as careful as we are to build an operating model for today, we've also got to make it resilient and able to, to adapt over time. So you know what, having, having seen this for, you know, as, as you talked about your history in the industry and as a CEO, you know, as someone who's, who's scaled a business through multiple market cycles, what are the principles that brands need to have beyond, beyond the specifics of, of, of the day or the year even? What are some of those principles that they need to adopt to be able to anticipate or at least weather what's next?
Bob Regular
Sure. I'm really, really happy to sort of dig into them because I think if you are a business owner and your CEO, you feel, because I know I do, you feel that the industries you're in, the markets you're, you're living in, are constantly changing faster and faster than ever before. Whether it's things related to macroeconomic or tariffs or, or changes in how consumers are behaving, or it's just a rapid movement and everyone is seeking stability. And so how do you seek stability from utilizing your media in a way that, you know, delivers predictable or reasonably predictable outcomes and So I think there's some core things that every leader needs to think about and hold true. And number one is that your audience, your customers, are living in a mixture of these movements. So you have to clearly understand at any given time who your real audience and consumer, or whether that's B2B but who your real audience truly is. It changes frequently. Maybe going back to that mortgage example, maybe your audience, your customer, is more distressed than they were as a mortgage intender before, and maybe they can't qualify as much now as they could a year ago. So maybe as a result of that, you're targeting, your contextuality needs to adjust because it's not the same consumer or it's not the same circumstances. So the consumer are a mixture of movements and they're constantly moving their circumstance, and you need to stay very attached to those movements so that you can keep adjusting your media to accommodate the adjustments of your business and your audience. So I think that's a very core tenet. And I think the next thing is attention is continually declining, right? It is not going to get better. We are not going back to the days of broadcast television. We're going to further fragment, you know, and you, and you can, like I, I was close to the MySpace people, close to the Facebook people, knew the, you know, every evolution now, the TikTok people, it keeps getting shorter. And every cycle, every movement, right, thinks that this is the shortest it can get and then it gets shorter. So the attention span is getting shorter, which means you have more noise. And when you have more noise, you need to break out. It's very, very difficult to break out. So your message and your creative has to be memorable. When you have less time and less attention span, you have to do an extraordinary job with your message being crisp and clear and, and it be memorable. If you do not make it memorable, then you will not make an impression. And if you think about what you spend your marketing dollars on, you're buying impressions, right? It is the underlying word we use for our whole business is we're selling impressions. Well, I ask every CEO, cmo, cfo, and then their agency, have you made an impression today? Right. Are you really making a memorable impression? And if you are, then you're being effective to your audience. And if you're not, I'm going to tell you, you've made no impression. Not a little impression, no impression. And so I think those are some core tenants. If you can hold on to them and keep asking yourself quarter after quarter, you know, you'll stay on track. Yeah.
Greg Kilstrom
Love it.
Podcast Host
Well, Bob, thanks so much for, for joining today. Got a couple last questions as we wrap up here. First one, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
Bob Regular
You'll probably be talking to the Bob AI. Well, we're definitely going to be talking about AI and the transformations AI has made. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm sorry to sound very cliche. I've, I've witnessed many movements. I think AI is an extraordinary movement. It's a real movement. Unlike for example, blockchain, which did not disrupt a whole heck of a lot but was talked about endlessly. I do think that AI will transform digital media. I do think it'll transform digital marketing and I think it will, frankly, it already has, but will dramatically transform our time. And so I think when you take all those things together, you can expect that a year from now there will be changes and we'll be talking about those. Yeah.
Sponsor Voice
Yeah.
Podcast Host
Love it. And last question for you.
Greg Kilstrom
What do you do to stay agile
Podcast Host
in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
Bob Regular
I listen to your podcast. I mean, thank you. Let's be clear, get that first priority done, right? And then, you know, I consume information like crazy. I'm listening to podcasts all the time. I'm, I'm paying attention to industry and non industry trades. You know, I'm reading economic news, I'm reading, you know, philosophical stuff. I'm reading current event. I personally, I'm a very curious person. Right. But I find that you, you have to consume information all the time, not just to be informed. Being informed is nice, but it's better because it gives you the critical thinking skills to really understand how to adapt to all of these options and react to them. So I love it. I love consuming information. I suggest anybody that has the patience to do it and enjoys it, it's a better hobby than flipping through TikTok at a million miles an hour.
Podcast Host
Agreed. Agreed. Love it. Well, again I'd like to thank Bob, regular CEO at Infolinx Media for joining the show. You can learn more about Bob and
Greg Kilstrom
Infolink's media by following the links in the show notes. This episode is brought to you by Tech Systems. They're leaders in full stack tech services, talent solutions and helping companies put it all in action. You can learn more@techsystems.com that's teksystems.com and thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand podcast. If you like the episode, hit subscribe and drop a rating so others can
Podcast Host
find the show too.
Greg Kilstrom
And if you're interested in consulting, advisory work, or if you need a speaker for your next event, feel free to reach out. Just visit GregKilstrom.com that's G R E G K I H L S t r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.
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Episode: Infolinks CEO Bob Regular on getting ad tech to work better for brands
Date: July 24, 2026
Guest: Bob Regular, CEO at Infolinks Media
Host: Greg Kihlström
This episode explores how brands can move beyond the prevailing industry focus on "shorter" ad tech supply paths, challenging the assumption that fewer intermediaries always equate to better outcomes. Instead, Bob Regular advocates for building “smarter,” more strategic media supply paths and leveraging proprietary placements. The discussion covers the evolution of ad tech, balancing technical optimization with brand strategy, embracing contextual and predictive data, adapting to the future of audience targeting, and the foundational principles to keep marketing agile and future-proof.
Supply Path Optimization Critique:
“Not always is the shortest path necessarily the best, highest performing outcome path.” – Bob Regular (08:48)
On Differentiation in Media Buying:
“If everybody’s doing SPO and cutting off every indirect option...what exactly is your advantage...?” – Bob Regular (13:11)
On Contextual Targeting:
“What is the contextuality of their product, their message, and what they consider to be success?...We’re going to find a contextual relationship match when that audience is on that type of contextuality.” – Bob Regular (21:09)
Core Question for Brand Leaders:
“In the end, is this media buy...delivering on building my brand, selling my product, delivering value...?” – Bob Regular (24:05)
Attention & Messaging:
“Attention is continually declining…your message and your creative has to be memorable...If you do not make it memorable, then you will not make an impression.” – Bob Regular (27:53)
On Future Trends:
“I think AI is an extraordinary movement...will dramatically transform our time.” – Bob Regular (29:49)
Leadership Agility:
“I consume information like crazy...Being informed is nice, but it’s better because it gives you the critical thinking skills to really understand how to adapt to all of these options and react to them.” – Bob Regular (31:00)
Bob Regular’s insights offer a nuanced approach to modern ad tech, encouraging brands to move beyond simple optimization metrics and to develop more holistic, resilient, and context-aware media strategies. By blending proprietary placements, contextual and predictive data, constant testing, and AI-driven analysis—and always keeping the brand’s real-world business objectives front and center—brands can continue to deliver value in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.