Manu Mathew was the founder and CEO of Visual IQ, a digital multi-touch attribution company that rose with the programmatic tide and was acquired by Nielsen in 2017. However the MTA segment suffered a huge blow when Google stopped allowing its DoubleClick ID to be linked to ad server log files. 

Amazon had a big 2020 - and 2021 is Primed (get it?!) to be even bigger. Listen in to learn how Amazon Advertising is thinking about combining new types of signals, how it's thinking about its diverse range of inventory and how it hopes to tighten brands' relationships with customers.

What does media look like in the post-Trump era? Axios CEO and co-founder Jim VandeHei is betting that newer companies like Axios will have an easier time bridging the divide between the two “bubbles” of media that have emerged. With four years under its belt, the upstart media publication is applying its formula to local news in 2021. A lean editorial staff will write up the news in Axios’ signature, bullet-point style in five cities, including Tampa Bay and the Twin Cities. VandeHei also gives his take on trends like “corporate social responsibility” advertising, revenue diversification and AI in journalism.

AdFin developed a marketer dashboard that drew on log-level data to offer clients a holistic view of their supply chain, but the company went under in 2019. Former AdFin product leader Ravi Patel speaks to the vision, why it failed at AdFin and how he's carrying on the work at PwC. 

LiveRamp CEO Scott Howe has a unique view of the advertising industry’s crossroads. The company is one of the key tech firms zeroing in on the reinvention of online identity, and how it will impact advertisers and publishers. Moreover, a lot of this innovation is happening at a time when publishers are hyper-aware of the ways their data is used. And with numerous legislative efforts worldwide designed to regulate data use, the tides are constantly shifting. Speaking to AdExchanger shortly after the US Capitol riots, Howe talks about the future of identity, the opportunity for publishers and the responsibility platforms have around the messaging they allow.

Bob Lord is the SVP of cognitive applications at IBM. In this episode he discusses emerging applications for AI across industries during this period of rapidly scaling data. “AI can help you make sense of massive data and protect consumer privacy at the same time. We need to learn how to make large amounts of data accessible, useful and productive in a post-cookie world.”

The term “artificial intelligence” means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, which can make it hard to know what’s legit, what’s froth and what has the potential to, well, transform marketing and change the world. David Jones, CEO and founder of You & Mr Jones, explains the difference.

MediaMath has completed the first phase of its SOURCE initiative, which CEO Joe Zawadzki describes in this episode as the industry’s first fully-transparent supply chain. “You can look at everyone that’s involved in the transaction. You know the price that they’re charging. You know the value they’re creating. That hasn’t existed in my 25-year career. That foundation of trust in the supply chain… you can build all sorts of wonderful things on top of it.”

TikTok has many imitators, but what makes TikTok, well, TikTok? It’s the content, says Matty Lin, TikTok’s managing director of monetization and partnerships. Because TikTok isn’t based on a social graph, it’s able to stay laser focused on keeping the content experience authentic. Lin shares more on that, plus TikTok’s priorities for 2021, including a major investment in ecommerce.

In the second episode of AdExchanger’s Industry Preview series, Sheri Bachstein describes the high stakes for advertisers as they rush to adopt privacy-friendly data strategies. She says AI is in a sweet spot to address the challenge. Bachstein is global head of IBM Watson Advertising, overseeing the company’s two media brands, The Weather Channel and Weather Underground, as well as its B2B data unit. 

Publishers are in a strong position going into 2021, but only if they can break their long-running dependency on big tech companies. This week's guest, Somer Simpson, has worked on challenges faced by media companies since the late 90s. In this episode, she describes the high stakes these companies face as they take on challenges like privacy compliance, data ownership and user experience. 

In the kickoff episode of AdExchanger’s Industry Preview audio series, we talk with Sebastian Tomich, global head of advertising and marketing solutions at The New York Times. He says, "It’s pretty clear that in the future of media, we’re heading to a direct-to-consumer model that is going to be winner take most.”