AdTech AdTalk

Adam and Gareth return to tackle the pollution of the media ecosystem, from AI-generated "slop" on LinkedIn to the strategy of flooding the zone with fake news. The guys dive deep into the philosophical roots of Palantir CEO Alex Karp, exploring how his studies in ontology under Jurgen Habermas in Germany led to the realization that AI training models desperately need human knowledge wor...

Adam and Gareth return from their post-Cannes Lions haze to break down a wild week of acquisitions, executive manifestos, and deleted LinkedIn posts. The guys kick off with a recap of the Cannes "boondoggle," where ad exchanges and platforms throw massive yacht parties and take over entire hotels to woo CMOs. Shifting to the tech stack, they discuss how AI is supercharging CRMs and custo...

Adam and Gareth return for an absolute blockbuster episode of Adtech Ad Talk, kicking off with the biggest breaking news in the industry: Publicis and The Trade Desk have officially buried the hatchet and are back in the room together. To celebrate the end of this fierce corporate feud, the guys debut an incredible, AI-generated southern rap track summarizing the high-stakes reconciliation. The du...

Adam and Gareth break down the mind-bending "Data Gravity Theory of Adtech" introduced by industry gadfly Tom Truscari. Using a literal physics equation, they litigate whether consolidating data sets actually drives better outcomes for marketers, or if it simply forces enterprise brands into a "platform average" that dilutes their private modeling advantages. Adam shares a hist...

Adam and Gareth dive into a philosophical and wide-ranging episode centered around the Pope's new encyclical on Artificial Intelligence. They unpack the Vatican's fears regarding humans becoming mere metrics, rising economic inequality, and the manipulation of truth. Gareth discusses the Pope's comparison of AI to the Tower of Babel—warning that a single homogenizing technology could eliminate hum...

Adam (broadcasting from a hotel in Tampa) and Gareth tackle a massive week in AdTech, leading with Publicis's shocking acquisition of LiveRamp. They unpack why LiveRamp's true value isn't just its identity graph, but its ubiquitous "plumbing" that connects enterprise CRM data to the entire ecosystem, and the strategic "implication" this has for non-Publicis clients. Next, they compare the impendin...

Adam and Gareth reunite to unpack an explosive Q2 in ad tech, kicking things off with the "triple hockey stick" growth driving Meta’s 33% revenue surge. The guys discuss how Meta’s ruthless AI shift and integration of massive server compute is crushing Google in the enterprise ad market, and why Google's strategy of over-servicing holding companies is backfiring. They also dive into the backlash a...

Adam and Gareth return to the virtual studio to debate the definition of Supply Path Optimization (SPO) and why the sell-side and buy-side can never seem to agree on what it actually means. They are joined by OpenX CEO Matt Sattel to discuss his transition from the agency world to the SSP side, and why OpenX made the expensive, grueling leap to cloud infrastructure back in 2019 to prepare for the...

It's an all-Adam episode this week! With Gareth out, Adam Heimlich is joined by stealth startup founder and product leader Adam Markey to discuss the reality of building an ad tech company from scratch in the AI era. The guys dive deep into the philosophy of AI adoption, contrasting Anthropic's enterprise-focused "Constitutional AI" against OpenAI's consumer-driven, entertainment-style models. Mar...

Adam and Gareth dive into a chaotic start to Q2 in ad tech, leading off with Meta's jaw-dropping "triple hockey stick" growth in revenue per employee. They discuss how Meta’s ruthless AI shift—including tracking employee keystrokes for training data—is driving massive margins, even as hands-on buyers complain about constant bugs and platform outages. The guys also cover the rise of "Index Cloud" a...

Adam and Gareth reunite in the virtual studio after a week apart, and they have a lot of philosophical ground to cover. Gareth shares a bizarre realization about startup growth—comparing a mature company to a "disembodied brain"—and how AI is acting as the ultimate force multiplier for lean teams. They debate the value of the "founder struggle," questioning if the current generation of entrepreneu...

With Adam out this week, Gareth flies solo to drop four massive predictions about the next five years of ad tech. Spoiler alert: The current system is unsustainable. Gareth argues that the traditional DSP/SSP paradigm is dying , crushed under the weight of Deal IDs and conflicting decisioning engines. He explains why the future of ad tech architecture lies in open, modular bidding frameworks (like...

Adam and Gareth are joined in the virtual studio by Laura Manning, SVP of Data and Measurement at SINT. They break down the fundamentals of Brand Lift 101, explaining how SINT acts as the infrastructure matching survey-takers across the internet with relevant ad exposure data. Gareth details exactly why traditional attribution models fail massive enterprise brands like Procter & Gamble. The trio a...

Gareth powers through a blown-out back to join Adam for a loaded episode exploring the true value of data and the hidden mechanics of media buying. They kick things off by breaking down Gamera's new viewability segments in the Index Exchange marketplace, exposing how antiquated, manual ad slot labeling in Google Ad Manager is suppressing publisher yield, and how AI is fixing it. The duo dives...

Adam and Gareth log in to the virtual studio to unpack a week of industry backstabbing, gossip, and the true meaning of "transparency." While the industry argues over who is to blame for the lack of clarity in programmatic, the duo highlights a quote from Hershey's Vinnie Rinaldi, arguing that it's ultimately up to advertisers to demand proof of value rather than just hunting for low CPMs. The guy...

Adam and Gareth return from the spring conference circuit (RampUp and Beeler Basecamp) feeling reflective. Adam unpacks the repressed trauma of the startup grind, while Gareth shares a brutal story of getting stiffed for $350k by an industry "partner" and why selling your company doesn't automatically mean a happy ending. On the industry front, the duo tears into the "weird garb...

Adam and Gareth return from their respective conferences (RampUp and Beeler Basecamp) to unpack a massive news week in the ad tech world. The duo dives straight into the "knife fight" of sell-side monetization, unpacking why publishers are getting bullied over ads.txt files and why managing prebid auctions is a brutal, low-margin business. Then, they pivot to the biggest stories of the week: The T...

It’s earnings season in AdTech, and the juice is definitely dripping! Adam and Gareth tackle a jam-packed news cycle, starting with the mess that is Supply Path Optimization (SPO) and why the industry’s "transparency" efforts, like sellers.json and ads.txt, are causing buyers to blindly block legitimate publisher agents. Then, the duo dives into the explosive Digiday whistleblower report...

Adam and Gareth are back to sort through the noise in an episode packed wall-to-wall with industry drama. From the Pentagon to the Cayman Islands, it’s a pure news day on AdTech AdTalk, and the theme is "Carnage."First up, the guys unpack Anthropic's "woke AI" feud with the Pentagon and Palantir, complete with a bizarre Gen-X fun fact about Peter Thiel's childhood in Na...

Gareth is in "manic sales mode" as Gamera and Chalice both celebrate investments from The Trade Desk’s venture arm (TD7). The duo breaks down why the future of ad tech isn't about blocking competitors, but playing in the same "sandbox"—moving from a philosophy of "Or" to "And."They dive deep into the IAB Tech Lab's Agentic Realtime Framework (ARTF),...

In this special episode, Adam and Gareth present a deep dive into the industry's most complex new standard: The IAB Tech Lab’s Agentic Realtime Framework (ARTF).The duo uses three distinct metaphors to break down how "Containerization" is moving the ad auction to the edge. They explain how High-Frequency Trading (HFT) infrastructure revolutionized finance (and why ad tech is next), w...

Gareth is out, and the "most interesting person on the planet" is in. Adam is joined by Chalice AI’s SVP of Data Science, Tylynn Pettrey, for a high-speed masterclass on the history of predictive modeling, from 19th-century planetary orbits to the transformer architectures powering 2026’s agentic workflows. Tylynn breaks down complex math into plain English, explaining why "more dat...

Things are getting spicy on AdTech AdTalk. Adam (Buy Side) and Gareth (Sell Side) are joined by the industry’s unofficial oracle, Mike McNeeley (SVP of Product, Index Exchange), to tackle the erosion of trust in the programmatic supply chain. The trio dives deep into the controversy of "publisher-declared fields", why letting sellers grade their own homework is leading to ID spoofing, an...

In this episode, Adam and Gareth embrace the chaos of 2026. Adam recounts a hilarious (and almost illegal) run-in with the NYPD at a "massage parlor," while Gareth laments the inflation of a $75 midtown haircut. The duo announces the formation of ACRONYM (The Ad Tech Coalition to Restore Openness and Normalize Yield Markets) and declares "Working Media" the buzzword of the year...

It is officially 2026, and Ad Tech Ad Talk is back from CES with a massive announcement. In this episode, Gareth Glaser finally unveils Gamera, his new inventory quality company that has officially moved out of stealth and into the funded startup phase. Gareth delivers his "investor spiel," breaking down why Facebook generates $130B with only 25% of the internet's traffic, while the...