Data-Driven Thinking Archives

The Fastest Path To Agentic AI In Advertising Isn’t Reinvention. It’s Using Existing Standards

We are on the brink of an exciting top-to-bottom structural transformation of our industry, with agentic AI reshaping everything from how media is discovered to how it’s planned, bought and measured. But this transformation won’t happen instantly and without effort. Agentic AI needs schemas and standards to work. They provide invaluable, referenceable context, so the […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

What Meta’s Andromeda Update Actually Changes – And What It Doesn’t

The recent Andromeda update, the fastest and most advanced iteration to date of Meta’s ad-retrieval system, has dramatically changed the rhythm of Meta Ads. Delivery cycles are faster, creative gets picked up and exhausted with remarkable speed, and optimization feels more dynamic than ever. But this increased velocity has also introduced confusion. Many advertisers assume […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

The AdCP Hype Problem: Why Standardized AI Workflows Don’t Equal Better Media Outcomes

If you are feeling pressure to “do something” about Ad Context Protocol, you are not alone. Since its launch a few months ago, AdCP has been framed as a foundational step toward an “agentic” future, one where AI systems plan, execute and optimize media buys without human hand-holding. It is a compelling vision, but one […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

Privacy Enforcement Crossed A Line In 2025 – And There’s No Going Back

For most of the last decade, privacy compliance lived in a gray zone. Companies could point to a cookie banner, update a policy and reasonably believe they were doing enough. In 2025, that gray zone disappeared. What changed was not the sudden arrival of a sweeping new law, but the scale and seriousness of enforcement. […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

Goodbye, Outcomes Era? Nah. In 2026, It’s Picking Up Steam

Since I coined the term “Outcomes Era” in November 2024, it’s drawn both fervent support and sharp criticism. Companies like Viant, tvScientific, Permutive and Chalice have adopted it. Industry figures such as Terry Kawaja have used it to frame the ad tech moment. Others, however, argue the Outcomes Era is already fading. But the evidence […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

Ad Tech Doesn’t Just Have A Transparency Problem. It Has A Courage Problem

What type of leadership and attitude do we need to innovate in digital advertising and ad tech? We work in a highly polarized industry where our methods of tackling fraud and providing transparency are shaped by conflicting and self-interested business models. And the industry leaders who loudly and publicly advocate for their interests seem to […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

Your ‘First Of Its Kind’ AI Platform Probably Isn’t The First – And You Don’t Have To Pretend It Is

Don’t ask whether any other company has created a similar product to yours; the answer is probably yes. But there are other ways to stand out.

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Data-Driven Thinking

When The Last Click Disappears: How AI Shopping Breaks Attribution And Rejuvenates Brand-Building

For the past three decades, most of digital advertising has revolved around one obsession: performance. Marketers leaned on channels that could prove conversions: search ads, programmatic retargeting and affiliate links. A purchase trackable to a click was gold. Multi-touch attribution (MTA) models thrived. Conversely, brand-building was often dismissed as harder to justify next to the […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

How To Tell If An AI Vendor Will Still Matter In Two Years

Remember the Cinnamon Challenge, when people filmed themselves trying to swallow a spoonful of ground cinnamon in under a minute? For a short window in the early 2010s, it was everywhere – until it was gone. Now, it’s mostly remembered as one of those “What were we doing?” internet moments. And don’t get me started […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

AI Is Bringing MFA To Social Media. Here’s How Advertisers Can Avoid It

AI has changed content creation overnight. What once required time, skill or a production budget can now be spun up in seconds. That’s led to an explosion of low-quality, made-for-advertising (MFA) content, not just across obscure websites but on social platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Meta. For years, MFA was a mostly web-based problem: cheap, […]

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