The ADOTAT Show

🚨 tvScientific Taps Spencer Weinman as CRO, Proving There’s Still Hope for CTV After All tvScientific, the #CTV performance shop with a name that sounds like it came from a whiteboard during a caffeine-fueled strategy offsite, just hired Spencer Weinman as Chief Revenue Officer. And honestly? It might be the smartest thing they’ve done since figuring out how to make ads on Roku actually do something useful. Spencer isn’t just some garden-variety adtech bro. He’s the guy who’s been behind the curtain of every major adtech house party for the past 20 years — part rainmaker, part magician, part guy who could convince a room of marketers that they do need a seventh dashboard. OpenX? He practically built their sales hustle from scratch. Yieldmo? Turned it into a $100 million juggernaut like it was just another Tuesday. QuickFrame? Led them through an MNTN acquisition without breaking a sweat. The guy has navigated more buy-side headaches and supply-side shenanigans than most of us can stomach after two bad coffees at Programmatic I/O. “He’s like the Swiss Army knife of adtech leadership,” said Jason Fairchild, CEO of tvScientific. “Spencer could probably sell performance TV to a goldfish and still upsell it attribution reporting.” Spencer, never one to break character, delivered a perfectly polished CRO soundbite about the power of TV + digital precision + transparency. Which, translation: “We’re going to show you actual results, not just vanity metrics to impress your CFO.” But let’s be real — Weinman is the guy you call when you actually want to scale, not just slap together a shiny pitch deck. He’s built teams, closed monster deals, and made brands believe in platforms that were, frankly, still duct-taped together in beta. If you’re trying to turn “performance TV” into more than a LinkedIn hashtag, Spencer’s the guy you want in the war room. With him steering revenue and tvScientific freshly padded with $25.5 million in VC cash, they’re poised to help advertisers finally treat CTV as more than a digital swamp full of remnant CPMs and awkwardly placed pharma spots. If anyone can actually drag CTV into the light — where performance means more than “did someone maybe see this between bathroom breaks?” — it’s Spencer Weinman. Stay Bold, Stay Curious, and Know More than You Did Yesterday.

Season THREE of The ADOTAT Show? Done and dusted—like a banner ad in 2003, it came in hot, made noise, and left a trail of chaos (and insight) behind. Massive thanks to every brilliant troublemaker, disrupter, and straight-shooter who graced the mic. You made it sharp, you made it weird, and you made it matter. But hold onto your ergonomic chairs, because Season FOUR is already locked and loaded for April. And it’s not just any lineup—it’s a murderers’ row of adland’s finest: Andrew Eifler, of TripleLift. Alexis Hochleutner Jay Friedman, President of Goodway Group, turning programmatic media into something even your bubbe could understand. Dan Callahan, SVP at Spectrum Reach, using data to make sure your CTV ad doesn’t end up next to a cooking show rerun from 1997. Fred Godfrey, CEO of Origin, proving you can make CTV cool and effective at the same time. Bradley Keefer, CRO of Keen Decision Systems, because someone has to make marketing decisions less gut-feel and more math. Adam Potashnick, now running North America as CEO of Brainlabs, where nerds and creatives share the same Slack channels. Season FOUR is about to make your LinkedIn feed nervous. Stay bold, stay curious, and know more than you did yesterday. --- Also, a big, loud, slightly inappropriate thank you to Incremental for stepping up and sponsoring The ADOTAT Show for an entire year. That’s right—12 months of helping us keep the lights on, the questions sharp, and the sarcasm flowing. Couldn’t have asked for a better partner to bankroll the madness. Season FOUR is coming in April, caffeinated and fully funded. Stay bold, stay curious, and know more than you did yesterday.

Thank you Pesach Lattin ➡️ adotat! We’re making it happen with true automation, true AI, and significant efficiency and outcomes 🚀🚀🚀 #FlightControl #AI #CoPilot #Automation #Omnichannel

Oz Etzioni of Clinch used to fly missions for the Israeli Air Force—now he’s on a mission to rescue ad tech from itself. We sat down to talk about why most "automation" in this industry is about as real as a Hollywood explosion. Spoiler: it’s mostly interns pulling levers behind the scenes, not AI. Oz calls out the façade, breaks down the real future of automation, and explains why omnichannel is still more fantasy than fact for most brands. One thing you’ll actually learn? Why your “AI-powered” ad tech stack is probably just a glorified decision tree. Read it. It’ll sting—in a good way. #AdTech #Automation #GenAI #Marketing #Leadership #AI #Programmatic #Advertising #ADOTATShow #AdTechTruths https://lnkd.in/g7wWqrHa

Ad tech loves to throw around the word “automation” like it’s confetti at a mediocre wedding. Then there’s Oz Etzioni of Clinch, who actually knows how to automate without turning your team into sleep-deprived task rabbits. We talked about how his time in the Israeli Air Force shaped his no-nonsense approach to fixing what’s broken in our industry. Here’s one thing you’ll learn: most of the “AI” in ad campaigns today? It’s as manual as your grandma’s fax machine. Come for the blunt truth, stay for the story about desert islands, chocolate, and broken #omnichannel dreams. #AdTech #Automation #AI #AdFraud #Marketing #Leadership #Programmatic #RetailMedia #ADOTATShow #IndustryInsights https://lnkd.in/g38KCqG9

Asked who his business-world Yoda is, Dan Rua basically says, “I collect mentors like some people collect sneakers.” No single #Jedi Master guiding him through the swamps of venture capital and adtech—just a rotating cast. His current go-to sages? The very entrepreneurs he once backed who cashed out with exits big enough to make a Wall Street banker blush. And if we roll back the tape to his investor days? He drops the name Tim Draper—yes, that Tim Draper—as his early-days mentor, the guy behind his first couple of funds. Rua’s got a knack for flipping the mentor-mentee script; turns out, sometimes the student becomes the funder, and then the student turns into the mentor. Classic startup plot twist.

Some call him the Godfather of #Adtech. Others? Just the curious guy who accidentally taught the internet how to auction itself off 300 billion times a day. Brian O'Kelley is many things: CEO and co-founder of Scope3, inventor of programmatic advertising, serial builder, category creator, and the rare tech exec who actually wants to clean up the mess he helped make. Brian’s career reads like a highlight reel of adtech’s greatest (and messiest) hits. He co-founded and led AppNexus to a $1.6 billion sale to AT&T, after helping Right Media exit to Yahoo as CTO. Along the way, he’s racked up patents like trading cards, landed on Crain's New York Business 40 Under 40 and ADWEEK 50, and got crowned an E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year before most of the industry finished figuring out what a #DSP was. But don’t let the success story fool you—Brian’s not here to coast. He’s here to torch the old playbook. Because after spending two decades watching adtech devolve into a bloated Frankenstein’s monster of inefficiency, Brian did something unexpected: he pivoted from monetizing the internet to decarbonizing it. Enter Scope3, his latest moonshot. While the industry drowns in buzzwords and blocklists, Brian’s turning adtech into a force for good—or at least, a force that doesn’t set the planet on fire. Scope3 is slashing carbon emissions from media supply chains and putting a spotlight on the inefficiencies no one else wants to talk about. He’s not just tinkering on the sidelines either. Brian’s now openly calling out the biggest players in verification—DoubleVerify and IAS—for selling yesterday’s brand safety snake oil. His move? Scope3’s Agentic Media Platform: AI-powered agents that dynamically assess context, customize brand suitability to your actual values, and cut campaign emissions along the way. “We refuse to serve ads on content until we’ve fully classified it,” Brian recently said, a not-so-subtle jab at competitors who prefer to scan and scramble mid-flight. Translation: while DV and IAS are still cosplaying as digital TSA agents—blocking Pulitzer-level journalism over a stray mention of ‘war’—Brian’s out here building adtech that actually thinks. And just like that, O’Kelley’s flipped the script. Again. He’s been here before: pushing for change when no one else would. Remember when AppNexus was one of the first companies to ban Breitbart News for violating hate speech policies? That was Brian. “I had to be able to look in the mirror,” he said. Now, he’s applying that same philosophy to an industry still too comfortable slapping “brand safe” stickers on junk. He’s an early supporter of movements like Girls Who Code and Moms First. He’s also an executive producer of Wonderstruck, because of course he is. When not dismantling the frakenstructure, he can be found in Brooklyn with his wife, two daughters, and two cats, probably explaining why header bidding still keeps him up at night.

🚨 New Episode on Spotify Alert: Carl Fremont is here to ruin your day (in the best way possible). If you’re ready to cut through the industry’s favorite bedtime stories—ROAS worship, “synergy,” and that omnichannel fairy tale—then do yourself a favor: Watch or Listen Now on Spotify. 🎙️ Carl Fremont Is Here to Call BS on the Ad Industry’s Worst Habits | The ADOTAT Show Carl, CEO of Quigley-Simpson and battle-scarred veteran of this circus we call marketing, joins me to drag the industry’s dirtiest laundry into the daylight: 🔥 Why ROAS is the Twinkie of KPIs (cheap sugar high, zero nutrition) 🔥 How marketers themselves murdered brand loyalty (and are still poking the corpse) 🔥 What real leadership actually looks like (spoiler: it involves bagels, not buzzwords) 🔥 Why chasing short-term wins is like duct-taping your sinking ship (it might float today… but good luck tomorrow) Watch on YouTube. Listen on Spotify. Then question your life choices—or at least your next media buy. Stay Bold, Stay Curious, and Know More than You Did Yesterday. https://lnkd.in/gxnnP3Yu

When you sit down to chat with Pesach Lattin ➡️ adotat you know it'll be fun. We explored how the Internet is shifting from an adtech paradigm to a visitor relationship-centered martech paradigm for media #publishers and much more. We talked about tackling big problems -- like platform dependence, AI and saving the free Internet -- and smaller hobbies, including skateboard collecting and streak running! We went deep on visitor relationship management, plus #visitorcopilot and more. As usual, Pesach had some zingers, including his observation that "some publishers seem to be paying adblockers to lose revenue...is this some form of masochism?" Give it a listen on your next run, commute or WFH and LMK your thoughts. #stopthemadness #relationshipsmatter

How to fix the Performance Marketing Industry with Pesach Lattin ➡️ adotat. Too many brands, agencies, and networks are playing a game of smoke and mirrors—hiding behind misleading metrics, fake compliance, and “trust us” handshakes. But here’s the truth: The future belongs to those who embrace truth, trust, and transparency. That’s exactly what I sat down to discuss on Pecash Lattin’s podcast—and we didn’t hold back. From exposing the dark side of lead generation to sharing what it actually takes to build long-term, sustainable partnerships, we covered it all. If you’re in performance marketing, you NEED to listen to this conversation.