AdTech AdTalk

Adam and Gareth

Buy Side Meets Sell Side. Live Q&A with CEOs telling the truth about where Ad Tech is headed.

  1. 1 DAY AGO

    User IDs and the Powers That Be

    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 garbageness" of the Connected TV (CTV) market. They explain how 12-hour ad caches create shady "dark pools" for arbitrage, and why premium publishers are fleeing biddable CTV for guaranteed deals. Adam revisits his classic pitch on why relying on Facebook’s algorithm forces DTC brands to subsidize their own competitors, and Gareth drops his spiciest take of 2026: Yield management no longer exists. Plus, a deep dive into how User IDs are artificially inflating programmatic auction prices, why SSPs are effectively becoming DSPs via the Agentic Realtime Framework (ARTF), and a hilarious look at a new AI app for couples founded by a former mobile ad network CEO.Key Topics:Founder Trauma: The emotional toll of bootstrapping, getting scammed, and surviving corporate acquisitions.The CTV Garbage Fire: Why Connected TV pricing is broken and how long cache windows enable arbitrage.The DTC Trap: How Meta captures the value of direct-to-consumer brands by giving away their audience data.The Death of Yield Management: Gareth argues that modern SSPs don't manage yield; they just manage prebid competition.The ID Illusion: Why bidding based on inventory signals is vastly cheaper than bidding on DSP audience IDs.00:29 Intro & Conference Exhaustion02:08 Repressing Founder Trauma06:01 Life After the Company Sale08:46 The CTV Garbage Fire11:44 CTV Arbitrage & Dark Pools13:45 How Facebook Eats DTC Brands16:18 The Unhinged Agency Hiring Process21:30 The Problem With User IDs28:33 Bid Decoration & ARTF30:14 Postmortem: Yield Management is Dead38:05 Why Open Path Isn't an SSP42:11 SSPs are the New DSPs48:49 AI vs Principal Trading52:32 Ad Tech Meets AI Sex Apps

    57 min

  2. 6 MAR

    Crime Don't Climb

    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 Trade Desk’s soft guidance, the market’s overreaction, and why everyone needs to stop freaking out about OpenAI having meetings with Jeff Green. Plus, they explore the wild theories behind AppLovin’s explosive stock growth, debate whether "performance" is still a moat in 2026, and roast the increasingly aggressive AI bots sliding into LinkedIn DMs.00:00 Intro: Conference Exhaustion & Beeler Basecamp03:03 The Ads.txt Bullying Problem05:46 The Knife Fight of Publisher Yield Management08:24 Publisher CPMs vs. Buy-Side Costs16:08 TTD Earnings & The Market Overreaction23:44 OpenAI Meets with The Trade Desk28:51 Will OpenAI Compete with Google Search?32:00 Anthropic vs. OpenAI: The Enterprise AI Race48:07 Postmortem: AppLovin's Google Playbook51:30 The "Street Thesis" on AppLovin's Growth58:43 StinkedIn: Aggressive AI Bots & "Negging"

    1h 6m

  3. 27 FEB

    The Juice is Dripping

    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 exposing the "Carnage" of Principal-Based Buying and the clandestine world of agency rebates. Are advertisers getting played by their own procurement departments? And why is the biggest player in the market conveniently avoiding the mud?Finally, they break down The Trade Desk’s soft earnings guidance. Is TTD in a death spiral, or just returning to earth after years of insane market froth? Adam and Gareth debate how TTD won the DSP wars of 2015 via "bid expressiveness" and whether performance alone is still a big enough moat in the modular, AI-driven landscape of 2026.00:00 Intro: Earnings Season is a Dumpster Fire01:57 The Mess of Supply Path Optimization (SPO)05:25 The History of ads.txt and "Resellers"12:23 News: The Whistleblower & Principal Buying18:02 How Rebates Warp Media Planning22:19 Defending Against Principal Buying25:21 The Bizarre Pricing Inefficiency of CTV30:55 The Logic of DSP Bidding & Valuation37:25 The "Two Markets" of Ad Tech41:50 TTD Earnings: Is The Trade Desk in a Death Spiral?47:28 How Trade Desk Won the Consolidation Wars53:35 Bid Expressiveness: The Original TTD Pitch58:24 Can Open Path Survive the Backlash?

    1h 1m

  4. 20 FEB

    Coverage of the Carnage

    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 Namibia. Then, they tackle the slow adoption of AI by CMOs, debating whether "Agentic AI" is actually driving innovation or just finding new ways to cut jobs.The drama heats up as they cover Jeffrey Epstein's strange (and brief) connection to programmatic futures, the controversy over ICE buying location data, and the explosive Digiday report about WPP and Dentsu pulling out of The Trade Desk's Open Path over hidden fees. Plus, Adam and Gareth weigh in on the ADCP vs. ARTF standards "showdown," Mark Zuckerberg's landmark child safety trial, and why LinkedIn's search bar remains the worst product on the internet.00:00 Intro: Cold Weather & Ad Tech Carnage02:34 Anthropic, The Pentagon & Woke AI06:04 Peter Thiel's Namibian Childhood09:44 CMOs & Slow AI Adoption11:53 The Day of the Yellow Square16:41 Sheep Dogging the Algorithm22:40 Agentic Buzzwords vs. Real AI27:18 Jeffrey Epstein's Ad Tech Connections30:42 ICE's RFP for Location Data36:56 Digiday Scoop: Agencies Exit Open Path46:01 Agency Rebates to the Cayman Islands49:22 Showdown: ADCP vs. ARTF Standards53:41 Zuckerberg Testifies on Child Safety58:24 Intent IQ's Cross-Device Patent Lawsuit01:01:00 StinkedIn: The Worst Search Bar Ever

    1h 7m

  5. 13 FEB

    Instead of Or, It's And

    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), debating if these new containerized solutions are just "smarter ad networks" without the grift. Adam defends the new MRC auction transparency standards (despite grumpy publishers), arguing that "Universal Price Floors" were meant to trap Google, not squeeze the open web.Plus, a roast of LinkedIn’s algorithm (Lou Paskalis’s legs vs. actual news), a Creative Corner on the Gen Z trend of "Friction Maxing," and Adam’s conspiracy theory that Elon Musk’s entire business roadmap is just the plot of the movie Total Recall.00:00 Intro: Manic Sales Energy03:41 Sell-Side Decisioning & ARTF Adoption07:09 Re-Imagining the Ad Tech Company11:00 Are These Just Smarter Ad Networks?16:10 TD7 Investments & The "Sandbox" Mentality21:46 StinkedIn: Lou's Legs vs. Industry News31:01 News: MRC Auction Standards Controversy38:18 Cross-Platform Measurement Hope43:42 Creative Corner: Friction Maxing52:15 Theory: Elon Musk is Re-enacting Total Recall53:49 Segment: Gateway to the Soul

    1 hr

  6. 6 FEB

    Container Explainer

    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), why the modern DSP should be treated like a Bento Box rather than a prix fixe meal, and how the history of Shipping Containers predicts who will actually get rich from the AI boom (hint: it’s probably not the AI companies).Featuring guest commentary from Index Exchange and OpenX, this episode cuts through the noise of "Agentic AI" to explain the actual plumbing, how 1-millisecond microservices are unbundling the stack and restoring yield to publishers.00:00 Intro: The "Container Explainer"01:08 Metaphor 1: High-Frequency Trading & Flash Boys04:46 Containerization vs. Colocation06:08 The Meditation (100ms vs. 1ms)08:50 Metaphor 2: The Bento Box (Unbundling the DSP)11:00 The Agentic Framework Architecture12:56 Metaphor 3: Shipping Containers & Value Capture16:09 Prebid’s Legacy: Moving Integration to the Edge19:10 The DSP Identity Crisis: Enterprise vs. SMB21:08 Intro to ACRONYM (Non-Profit)22:00 Index Exchange on Sell-Side Decisioning24:54 OpenX on Unbundling & Data Security26:00 Future Use Cases: Mutations & Bid Shading29:12 ARTF vs. ADCP: What’s the Difference?32:50 Closing Thoughts: Collaboration is Key

    37 min

  7. 30 JAN

    Ask an Expert (ft. Tylynn Pettrey, Chalice AI)

    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 data" isn't always better (the curse of dimensionality), why some algorithms break the bank on computing costs, and why AdTech is finally catching up to High-Frequency Trading. Plus, we answer audience questions on Quantum Computing, the death of the R programming language, and why Tylynn kept a mass spectrometer in her garage during the pandemic.00:00 Intro: The Data Science Takeover02:40 Linear Regression: Connecting the Dots05:37 Logistic Regression & The S-Curve09:12 Decision Trees: The Medical Diagnosis Logic10:56 K-Nearest Neighbors & Lookalikes13:13 Neural Networks: The Factory Assembly Line16:18 Back Propagation: Learning from Error18:32 Random Forests: Crowd-Sourced Math19:50 Support Vector Machines (SVM) & Big O Notation22:25 Skills for 2026: Python vs. R vs. Rust24:54 Deep Learning & Sparse Data28:40 Transformers & Attention Mechanisms33:18 The Imbalance Problem: Synthetic Data38:54 Scoring: AUC and Probability41:42 Q&A: Is Agentic AI Hype?43:10 Q&A: Quantum Computing in AdTech48:25 Q&A: Is R Dead?51:15 The Mass Spectrometer in the Garage53:20 Curate AI: Low Latency Scoring in Rust

    1h 1m

  8. 23 JAN

    Cynicsthesia (ft. Mike McNeeley, Index Exchange)

    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, and why the OpenRTB spec is long overdue for a rigid overhaul. Mike pulls back the curtain on how Index Exchange polices inventory quality and why "friction" is a necessary feature, not a bug.Later, the crew pivots to product management philosophy, debating how to build for "fragmolidation" without over-engineering. Plus, they break down the massive news that Amazon is adopting Prebid (a win for open standards?), and Gareth roasts the "robotic m-dash" plaguing everyone's LinkedIn feeds.00:00 Intro & The Ad Tech Oracle02:39 The Lying Field Problem 04:41 OpenRTB Specs 10107:32 The Stock Market Fraud Analogy 10:56 Who Is Accountable for Fraud? 12:44 Index Exchange’s Quality Gates 17:45 Fixing the OpenRTB Spec 22:25 Brand Safety Lag Kills News 26:14 Salience vs. Suitability 29:49 Scaling Product Teams 35:48 The "Loss URL" Rabbit Hole 43:00 Agentic Frameworks & Sidecars 46:11 WSJ: CEOs vs. Workers on AI 48:03 Stop Using AI for LinkedIn 53:45 The "Tinder for Networking" Idea 58:07 News: Amazon Adopts Prebid1:02:30 A Win for Open Standards 1:08:21 Rapper Wars & Snowfalls

    1h 11m
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About

Buy Side Meets Sell Side. Live Q&A with CEOs telling the truth about where Ad Tech is headed.

Information

  • Creator
    Adam and Gareth
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    41
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Adam and Gareth
  • Show Website
    AdTech AdTalk

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