Episodios

  • Adtech: Forget Identity -- Follow the Why -- Richard K Howe, Inuvo
    Jun 16 2025

    Richard K. Howe is not your average adtech CEO. He’s not selling AI that guesses which shampoo you bought last week or stuffing identity graphs with browser crumbs and bad intentions. No—he’s building something far more dangerous to the status quo: AI that actually thinks.

    In this episode of The ADOTAT Show, we sit down with the CEO of Inuvo, a structural engineer turned advertising insurgent, who’s throwing the entire surveillance-based ad model into the recycling bin (right next to your cookie policy pop-ups). Richard walks us through how his team built an AI platform that doesn’t care who you are—but why you do anything. It’s not about identity anymore. It’s about motivation. Psychology. Intent.


    We unpack:


    Why the “who” question that adtech has obsessed over for 30 years is officially useless


    How Inuvo’s AI can sniff out a sleepless dog owner in Iceland… and sell them Bose Sleepbuds


    Why retargeting is the AOL CD of marketing


    How the open web has become a junkyard of skipped impressions—simply because they lack a cookie


    And why most adtech vendors know they’re selling snake oil but keep doing it anyway


    Richard also drops wisdom on mergers and acquisitions, why integration fails most of the time, how AI projects are like building bridges, and yes—his inability to remember garbage day. Spoiler: his biggest rival in life might be the trash bin.


    Oh, and if you’re wondering how Karen Carpenter, Metallica, and short-nosed pugs all fit into the same episode… you’ll want to listen.


    Big thanks to our sponsors:

    💼 Troutman Amin LLP – The lawyers who actually understand this industry and aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty.

    📊 Incremental.com – The measurement company that’s finally putting a stake in the heart of vanity metrics. If you're tired of dashboards that lie to you, they’re the ones who’ll show you what’s actually working.


    This is adtech without the nonsense. Just sharp insights, broken myths, and a whole lot of pug snoring.


    🧠 Watch now.

    💣 Rethink everything.

    🎧 And stay bold, stay curious, and know more than you did yesterday.

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    33 m
  • 💥 Adam Potashnick Is El Presidente of Ad Tech—And He’s Got the Mug to Prove It
    Jun 12 2025

    What happens when you combine military-grade leadership, agency scars, a refusal to hire “ninjas,” and an unwavering belief that trust matters more than targeting? You get Adam Potashnick, North American CEO of Brainlabs—and possibly the only person in advertising who can talk about team culture, AI, and client relationships without sounding like a TED Talk on autopilot.

    In this episode of The ADOTAT Show, I sit down with Adam to unpack:


    Why building the right team means skipping the “rockstars” and hiring the socially gifted humans who actually collaborate


    How AI still isn’t smart enough to stop stalking you with weird banner ads


    What real partnerships look like (hint: they survive the hard conversations)


    And why celebrating the wins—big or small—isn’t just for Yankees fans


    We also take a wild detour into personal branding, the myth of measurement, desert island survival squads, and the absolute lie that everything in ad tech is optimized and working perfectly (spoiler: it’s not).


    🎯 This isn’t just another leadership interview—it’s a masterclass in not losing your soul while navigating Slack purgatory, client fire drills, and the endlessly shifting buzzword bingo of modern marketing.


    🙏 Huge thanks to Troutman Amin LLP, our sponsor and legal sherpa through this industry’s absurdity—especially Eric J. Troutman, partner, who fights the good fight and still has time to watch this show (probably while reviewing 300-page contracts).


    👇 Smash that play button. Then like, comment, subscribe, and go re-evaluate your hiring strategy.


    SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER HERE: https://new.adotat.com/subscribe


    #ADOTATShow #AdamPotashnick #AdTechLeadership #Brainlabs #ElPresidente #TroutmanAmin #EricJTroutman #MarketingTruths #WittyInterviews #AdTechUnplugged #StayBoldStayCurious

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    43 m
  • DEATH TO ROAS: WHY YOUR SHINY MARKETING METRICS ARE KILLING YOUR BRAND
    Jun 12 2025

    Welcome to another brutally honest episode of The ADOTAT Show, where we rip the vanity metrics out of your cold, dead dashboards and ask the uncomfortable question: does your marketing actually do anything?

    This time, Rabbi Pesach Lattin sits down with Bradley Keefer, the CRO of Keen Decision Systems and the man currently babysitting over $7.5 billion in marketing budgets—all while casually setting fire to industry sacred cows like ROAS, brand love, and that PowerPoint deck your agency spent three weeks justifying.

    In this episode, we talk about:

    Why ROAS is the participation trophy of marketing


    How most CMOs have the lifespan of a forgotten yogurt in the breakroom fridge


    What “headless MarTech” actually means (and why your agency’s tech stack is probably a crime scene)


    How AI agents are already making media plans better than your team—and don’t need sleep, snacks, or Slack


    And the impending death of Frankenstein’d holding companies held together by duct tape, panic, and legacy contracts


    Keefer doesn’t pull punches. He explains why Net Present Value (NPV) is the only metric CFOs trust, why AI forecasting will soon replace your “gut instincts,” and how indie agencies with five people and an API are beating global networks with 5,000. Also, someone says “six-fingered avatar” and we mean that literally.


    🔥 Brought to you with support from our chaos-sponsoring heroes at Troutman Amin, and the attribution truth-tellers over at Incremental—who will tell you if your media spend is working, even if it hurts your feelings.


    👇 Hit subscribe if you like brutal honesty, data-driven heresy, and guests who don’t sound like they were media-trained into a coma.

    Stay bold. Stay curious. And know more than you did yesterday.

    #AdTech #MarketingTruths #BradleyKeefer #KeenDS #CMODoomsday #ROASSucks #HeadlessMarTech #ADOTATShow #MediaPlanning #Incremental #TroutmanAmin #MarketingMetrics #AIinMarketing #pesachlattin

    https://new.adotat.com/subscribe



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    43 m
  • How to Catch a Scam (and Still Make Your Media Plan Work) | James McDonald, Audience Group
    Jun 12 2025

    Ever wonder what happens when a seasoned ad veteran starts pulling the thread on 30 years of marketing lies—and doesn’t stop?

    In this sharp, hilarious, and wildly informative episode of The ADOTAT Show, host Pesach Lattin sits down with James McDonald, Managing Director of Audience Group, to rip apart the industry’s most sacred assumptions and expose the real mechanics behind successful advertising. Spoiler: it’s not your CTR. And it’s definitely not your last-click attribution report from Google Ads.


    With the energy of a detective, the wit of a comic-book superhero (literally—check the thumbnail), and the experience of someone who’s seen every adtech hype cycle from dial-up to programmatic, James delivers insight after insight on what actually drives effectiveness in media and why most marketing dashboards are just dashboards of delusion.


    🔍 In this episode, we go full-on X-ray vision into:


    Why Cost Per Memory Day (CPMD) might be the only metric worth fighting for


    How to tell if your “attention” vendor is selling smoke and mirrors


    What went right with Slater & Gordon’s attention-optimized campaign


    Coca-Cola’s underrated playbook on brand salience and light buyers


    Why performance marketing without memory is like selling coupons in a blackout


    What “search as shelf space” really means—and why branded keyword spend might be your budget’s saddest line item


    And yes—we talk about the platform scam economy:

    💸 Google selling you the ad, grading the test, and sending the invoice

    💸 Meta promising viewability while hiding actual engagement

    💸 The rise of performance marketing addiction and what happens when you pull the plug


    👓 “If advertising’s job is to make decisions easier, why are we optimizing for things people forget in 3 seconds?”


    Whether you’re a media buyer trying to escape the CTR hamster wheel, a CMO who wants long-term brand equity without boring decks, or a performance marketer who suspects the spreadsheet is lying to you—this conversation is your sanity check.


    🧠 Plus:

    James unveils his Campaign Reality Check Worksheet—a practical tool to align your media, creative, and strategy teams around real metrics, not marketing cosplay.


    https://new.adotat.com/subscribe

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    38 m
  • The Open Web Is Flat—And Ad Tech Still Doesn’t Get It | The ADOTAT Show w/ Chris Kane
    Jun 12 2025

    Welcome to The ADOTAT Show, where your media plan gets roasted, your DSP gets unmasked, and the bidstream is finally called out for the digital junkyard it is. In this no-fluff, high-signal episode, host Pesach Lattin sits down with Chris Kane of Jounce Media—the guy who stares into the swirling mess of ad tech and actually sees patterns. Terrifying, right?

    📉 What’s on the table? Everything. MFA’s rapid collapse (it wasn’t a scandal, it was just bad math), QPS transparency (or lack thereof), and how publishers are caught in an economic Hunger Games where everyone’s optimizing themselves off a cliff. It’s not personal, it’s just arbitrage.


    📊 Chris breaks down:


    Why the open web is flatter than a La Croix left out in July.


    How DSPs are serving hot dogs instead of high-quality impressions.


    Why “signal trustworthiness” is the new FICO score of ad tech—and your DSP probably flunks.


    The brutal reality: Publishers aren’t villains—they’re just desperate and rational.


    Why every MFA grifter is already working on the CTV version of their scam—and you’re probably buying it.


    🧠 You'll also get a rare look into the personal philosophy that fuels Chris: being wrong (a lot), learning like a kid, and listening like a skeptic. Yes, there are dolphins. No, they don't buy your CTRs either.


    Oh, and yes—this ends with a dance-off. Sort of. You’ll just have to see it.


    💡 If you're still optimizing for CTR like it’s 2012 and trusting your DSP like it's your rabbi, this episode is your rude awakening.


    👉 Subscribe. Watch. Share. And for the love of your ROAS—think before you click.


    🧠 Stay Bold. Stay Curious. Know More Than You Did Yesterday.

    https://new.adotat.com/subscribe

    #AdTech #Programmatic #OpenWeb #DSP #CTV #MFA #ChrisKane #Jounce #ADOTATShow #PesachLattin #AdvertisingIndustry #MediaBuying #DigitalAdvertising #AdFraud #AttentionEconomy

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    1 h y 17 m
  • Your CPMs Are a Scam — Alexis Hochleutner Tells You Why
    May 12 2025

    Alexis Hochleutner has been behind the curtain at Google, Meta, Amazon, and more — not as a bystander, but as one of the few people actually trying to fix what most of the adtech world prefers to ignore.

    In this no-holds-barred conversation, Alexis unpacks a career spent inside the engine room of digital advertising — putting out fires caused by brand safety meltdowns, battling fraud rings operating in plain sight, and navigating the ethical black holes of platforms more interested in revenue than responsibility.


    She’s seen how verification vendors quietly normalized fraud. She’s watched premium inventory get outbid by garbage traffic. And she’s done being quiet about it.


    This episode isn’t about theories. It’s about what actually happens when your ad shows up next to extremist content, when your DSP bundles 40 MFA sites under one line item, and when your brand safety strategy depends on a spreadsheet that can’t update fast enough to keep up with reality.


    What you’ll learn:

    📉 Why MFA sites still dominate even after being “blocked”

    🧾 Why fraud isn’t a bug — it’s a business model

    🌴 What adtech would look like if you rebuilt it on a desert island (spoiler: no dashboards)

    🤖 Why AI is mostly theater, not strategy

    🧠 Why real change starts with people who actually give a damn


    If you work in advertising, adtech, media buying, or just wonder why your CPMs keep rising while your results get worse — this is essential viewing.


    Subscribe. Watch. Share it with someone still measuring success by CTR.


    🧠 Stay Bold. Stay Curious. And Know More Than You Did Yesterday.

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    57 m
  • Still Not a DSP, Dammit: The Index Exchange Episode
    May 5 2025

    🔥 Welcome to Season Four of The ADOTAT Show – where we ask the questions that make PR teams sweat through their Patagonia vests.

    In this episode, Andrew Casale, CEO of Index Exchange and reformed Canadian maple syrup trafficker (allegedly), sits down with Pesach Lattin to talk about:


    🧠 Why SSPs are finally getting respect—or at least better acronyms

    💸 Whether take rates will ever be as transparent as a glass of LaCroix

    📺 Why CTV is the high-maintenance teen of ad tech (with trust issues)

    🧵 And how burst traffic is basically a DDoS attack in yoga pants


    Oh, and Andrew reveals he has no hobbies, loves ad logs, and voluntarily moved to NYC, so clearly he’s committed to pain.


    💼 Sponsored by our truth-telling trio:


    Troutman Amin LLP – Legal warriors keeping us out of jail (so far)


    Incremental – The future of retail media, minus the guesswork


    👀 Hit play, grab your artisanal oat milk, and buckle—wait, don't buckle up. Just watch it.


    📌 Stay Bold. Stay Curious. And Know More than You Did Yesterday.


    #AdTech #CTV #ProgrammaticTruths #IndexExchange #ADOTATShow #PesachLattin #staycurious


    📲 Follow ADOTAT Everywhere

    📩 Newsletter: https://new.adotat.com/subscribe

    💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pesach-lattin/

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    48 m
  • WILDLY INCONVENIENT: Brian O’Kelley on AI, Ad Tech, and Burning Brand Safety to the Ground
    Apr 24 2025

    🎙️ The ADOTAT Show – Hosted by Pesach Lattin

    Welcome to the episode that brand safety tools wish never existed.


    In this chaotic, hilarious, and dangerously insightful installment of The ADOTAT Show, host Pesach Lattin sits down with Brian O’Kelley — the legendary co-founder of AppNexus, the original architect of modern programmatic, and the only person alive who has both crashed CNN.com and reimagined how we think about suitability, AI, and the ad tech status quo.


    Together, they unpack the uncomfortable truths of digital advertising, including:


    🔥 Why traditional brand safety tools are medieval nonsense

    🧠 How AI can actually understand context (and why that terrifies some vendors)

    👀 What happens when bots unionize and demand PTO

    📉 Why most point solutions in ad tech are either obsolete or about to be

    🧩 How Brian’s building toward a world where every brand has its own AI agent

    😱 And yes, the time he crashed a fifth of the internet from a basketball court


    This is NOT a sanitized fireside chat. This is a full-blown tech therapy session meets startup roast meets future-of-advertising manifesto, where nothing is off limits and no acronym is safe.


    💡 Sponsored By:


    Troutman Amin – The legal team you call when you accidentally disrupt an entire industry. Smart, surgical, and ready to keep you compliant without killing your momentum.


    Incremental – The measurement platform that tells the truth, not just what your media buyer wants to hear. Real lift, real outcomes, no smoke, no mirrors.


    📌 Subscribe to stay ahead of the industry curve.

    📢 Drop a comment if you’ve ever been flagged as unsafe by a keyword blocklist for saying “funeral.”

    👁️‍🗨️ Stay bold. Stay curious. Know more than you did yesterday.


    #ADOTATShow #BrianOKelley #AdTech #AI #ProgrammaticAdvertising #BrandSafety #Suitability #Incremental #TroutmanAmin #AdvertisingInnovation #Scope3 #PesachLattin

    Más Menos
    34 m
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