What Happens In Adtech

The podcast returns! To kick off this season (do podcasts have seasons?) Erik and I went with a big name. Eric Franchi is an OG of Adtech. In 2001 he co-founded Undertone and for an encore went on to start an early-stage adtech VC (MathCapital). Erik and I try to pick Eric's brain and see into the future of Adtech. We also discuss Clubhouse and Eric's show The Click. Honestly, this feels like an episode that people are going to be able to look back at in 12 months and go "damn... how did he see that coming?".

This is far and away the most fascinating conversation we've had on this show. Keith Gooberman breaks down audience data and third party targeting from the buyer/DSP side of things. We talk about middlemen, the profit motive, shady sellers. It's a blast. From our rolling start all the way till the final moments this episode is jammed full of amazing insights and one-liners.

Dave Pond has a unique point of view. At Buzzfeed Dave has this position where he gets to sit in the middle of "what does our audience want today?", "what content does that mean we should make?", and "what does that mean for brands?" and frankly I'm a little jealous. In this week's episode, Dave walks Erik and I through this notion of publishers being data consultants for brands and what that means both from an organization POV but also how pubs need to think about data.

Our second boomerang! Chris Kane and I spoke on my old podcast a little over three years ago. Since then Jounce Media has grown from a little startup thing to the master of the supply path. They’re the reason bid caching became a hot topic. They put Google on blast for a half-assed sellers.json file. They put out the definitive guide to reselling. Oh and their blog is the single best source of SPO knowledge out there. So naturally, Erik and I try to peel the onion that is supply path and understand what Publishers need to know and how we can clean this whole mess up.

This week Erik and I get In. The. Weeds. with Paul Bannister (Chief Strategy Officer, CafeMedia). Paul walks us through WTF the W3C is and why publishers need to start caring, quickly. We get deep into how publishers need to get involved, the risks we run when we let adtech companies claim to speak for publishers, and whether anything will even get done.

This week Erik and I chat with Jay Glogovsky of the NYT. We dig into how in God's name the NYT is going to move to only first-party targeting in 2021. We also make some detours into Brand Safety and how it affects news publishers and finally Jay gives his most un-Jay like yield advice.

This week (actually a few weeks ago) Erik and I chat with Steph Layser, VP of Ad Tech & Operations at News Corp.  We really dig into prebid (org not wrapper), identity solutions, google (naturally), and what one metric every yield person should be paying attention to.

This week Erik and I dig into identity and what it looks like for publishers in a post-third-party cookie world with Kristy Schafer the VP, Americas at Permutive. This was one of my most fun/informative talks to date. Kristy mostly focuses on the buy-side which means she has a giant amount of knowledge not only on identity but how buyers are planning for it in the future.

This week Erik and I talk to Will Doherty the EVP of Global Marketplace Development at Index Exchange. He's also the author of the IX Marketplace Pulse newsletter, which was made to help publishers make sense of the marketplace trends in this covid-19 world. We talk about trends or details Will noticed that may not have made the newsletter and what publishers should be doing or thinking about in the coming months.

This week Erik and I chat with Scott Messer, SVP Media at Leaf Group. It feels like we talk about a little of everything but more specifically we talk about SPO and whether it's good for publishers.  We also dig into the yield strategies and how they might differ between short and long-tail publishers. Scott also shows off his extensive zoom background collection.

This week we talk with the media nut, Josh Sternberg (medianut.substack.com). We talk about the half-minded nature of "brand safety" keyword blocking. About layoffs in the media industry and what it's like to write about media during a media (and worldwide) apocalypse.

Erik and I finish our convo about coronavirus and it's effects on the media business and then we spend a good long time talking about the "post-cookie future".

What have we here?! Two industry vets attempting to discuss adtech in a non-PR and very unpolished way. We both know our stuff and will be bringing on a bunch of guests who really know their stuff. This week we introduce ourselves and discuss the only thing there is to talk about, the effects of coronavirus on the world.