Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.
00:11:30 · Ari Paparo, Chris Harihar
[00:11:30] S0: Although, I'd push back on that a little bit because like if you're if you're... Let's say, an agency tech person and you wanna run a a bunch of agentic stuff, all you really want from your PR strategy is to be the top name to call. Right? Sure. That's true. And I think they've been pretty successful to that extent. Probably they'd be in the top two or three if I wanted to do something agentically. [00:11:52] S2: 100%. I do think that we've seen, you know, constant drumbeat from them on on agentic, in a way that I don't know that we've seen from other players in the space. I do think that Agentic has been sort of a weird PR area for a number of companies where... And even AI where it's like, okay, like, we've done AI for years, so now we're just gonna say AI more in relation to the things that have always existed, which I understand. But like... And even agentic to some degree, think there's a lot of smoke and mirrors. There's a lot of performative agentic referencing on earnings calls, in press releases where it's all kind of gobbledygook at this point and you're trying to make sense of it. And I think that is also representative of like a lack of a big picture story. Like, don't have clarity or depth on what the overall vision is and you're just slapping AI or agent on the things that you might already do which creates sort of a murkiness for me which makes it difficult to understand what the, you know, what are we talking about here and is this real?
00:11:52 · Chris Harihar, Ari Paparo, Eric Franchi
[00:11:52] S2: 100%. I do think that we've seen, you know, constant drumbeat from them on on agentic, in a way that I don't know that we've seen from other players in the space. I do think that Agentic has been sort of a weird PR area for a number of companies where... And even AI where it's like, okay, like, we've done AI for years, so now we're just gonna say AI more in relation to the things that have always existed, which I understand. But like... And even agentic to some degree, think there's a lot of smoke and mirrors. There's a lot of performative agentic referencing on earnings calls, in press releases where it's all kind of gobbledygook at this point and you're trying to make sense of it. And I think that is also representative of like a lack of a big picture story. Like, don't have clarity or depth on what the overall vision is and you're just slapping AI or agent on the things that you might already do which creates sort of a murkiness for me which makes it difficult to understand what the, you know, what are we talking about here and is this real? [00:12:57] S0: Well, yeah. I think there's also a threat here, which is if you give too big a big picture, if if you say, well, you know, programmatic's going away and it will be agents talking to agents, people will say, oh, well, you're a public company and make 99% of your revenue on programmatic. That doesn't sound so good. You know? Okay. So where... How about missus? Let's call some people out who are, you know, off Yeah. [00:13:18] S1: Off target.
00:13:18 · Eric Franchi, Chris Harihar
[00:13:18] S1: Off target. [00:13:18] S2: What's a hot take on this? I do think that the, Moby and Time announcement was... It was interesting. I think it it drove a lot of PR coverage at launch, or they had some really good ad trade coverage at launch. So I think short term, immediate term, thought that was a smart PR play, but I think longer term, there were some challenges there. I don't know that, necessarily... I don't know that they necessarily thought through what were the implications of time saying that it was sort of covertly or discreetly presenting ads to agents, which then might influence what the agent does on the behalf of the consumer. That is a thorny, complicated, sensitive story. And I think when you go to ad trade sometimes and you tell a sensitive story and it surfaces, not an ad trade, but more consumer publications, it becomes complicated in ways that can drive regulatory pushback, can drive, you know, consumer technology coverage pushback where we saw a number of critical stories. It became a a very big story, but mostly I would say a negative for time, for example. And so I think it's really important you wanna be thoughtful, creative around the way that you tell stories, how you go to market, but at the same time it's good to... Like you want ad tech PR thinking in all of these decisions, but ad tech PR thinking becomes very insular and it's like, okay, we're gonna tell this one story to this one trade, but there's sensitivities that also often will tentacle out that you have to be prepared for.
00:14:46 · Ari Paparo
[00:14:46] S0: So Mobian Times... So Mobian announced that they were advertising two LLMs using... On... Two agents on time to influence what the agents thought. And and I think on the positive side, like, it was pretty breakthrough. I think they were the first ever ever do that. On the negative side, like, yeah, I I think you're right. It's kind of pointed out as a dystopian thing. Like, it's like, oh god. What's happening? So how would you... What would your advice be for them? Well, how would you have done it differently?
00:15:15 · Chris Harihar, Eric Franchi
[00:15:15] S2: You know, I think it's a... Don't be so narrow in the thinking. I mean, like, what's what's interesting about ad tech is that we're talking about a topic. People don't like advertising, generally speaking, I'll say a lot of people don't like it, know, and so we have to have to be sober to the reality of that. Like you look at a business like Apple, Apple has built an advertising business off saying that advertising to people is not privacy safe. I mean essentially they're continuing to build an advertising business by having a great brand while advertising in general does not have a great brand, right? And so I think it's it's important to be sober and not like drink your own Kool Aid on like your wares, like you have to be really thoughtful about like, okay, if we're talking about advertising to agents that are you know, that might influence a decision for a consumer, like what does the consumer think about that? So you have to do like, you know, really holistic thinking here, not just on the part that you own, but what are the implications of that and how might other people respond because no story lives in a silo at this point. And I think that's really I [00:16:24] S1: don't know because it's like... [00:16:25] S2: Hit the... Come on. [00:16:26] S1: Yeah. Yeah. [00:16:28] S2: And I'm I'm gonna
00:16:28 · Chris Harihar, Eric Franchi
[00:16:28] S2: And I'm I'm gonna [00:16:29] S1: take the other side. We've all been doing this for so long and have seen like, basically, like every breakthrough, whether that's, like, on the on the technology side or on the platform side. Right? Technology side, let's say programmatic. On the platform side, you know, let's say, like, new forms of advertising. They always go through this cycle that's, like, maybe the reverse. And maybe you're right. It's because the nature of it is advertising where rather than, like, getting tiered first, it gets, like, booed first. Maybe it's the nature of this stuff. And and you... I I can... I I think it was such a a technical breakthrough and could... And and, you know, opening up what could be a a a new market that, like, this stuff is gonna happen. And, you know, again, maybe it's just that the the nature of my job versus your job is to, you know, be like eternally optimistic. Yeah. [00:17:21] S2: I don't... I I... I'm not convinced. Really important to balance these things where it's [00:17:25] S1: like Yeah.