Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.
00:09:06 · Ari Paparo, Chris Harihar
[00:09:06] S0: a all Chinese food journalism meetup, and then That is right. Then each client will get their own fortune cookie. [00:09:12] S2: 100%. Just just stick the report in in the fortune cookie. Why not? The earnings report, just throw it in there. [00:09:18] S0: Throw it in there. Everyone wants to read it. Alright. That's right. Come on, hit us. What what the... Who who do we wanna throw flowers at? [00:09:24] S2: Yeah. You know, I will say that one of... I think one of the better launches on the year, and I'm a bit biased because they are a client. I do think that Yahoo DSP at the top of the year when they launched their vision for agents, they talked about the yours, mine, ours framework, which is meant to be this very interoperable collaborative vision, for an agentic network essentially. I thought that was one of the more thoughtful examples of going to market with, you know, agentic strat... With an agentic strategy that was bigger picture first versus tactical, and sort of in the weeds technical where you kinda had, you know, a framework that I could understand where any future launch that they might move forward with, they launched an agent network months later, all makes sense because I have a clear understanding of their philosophy and vision around agents. And was that [00:10:17] S0: because it's a cutting edge topic that a client needed to give a vision? Because if I did my vision for, I don't know, like third party data brokerages, I don't think I'd get a lot of pickup because it's an old topic.
00:10:17 · Ari Paparo, Chris Harihar
[00:10:17] S0: because it's a cutting edge topic that a client needed to give a vision? Because if I did my vision for, I don't know, like third party data brokerages, I don't think I'd get a lot of pickup because it's an old topic. [00:10:28] S2: I think it's a it's a hot topic, you know, from a news perspective. It's actually it's a meaningful topic when it comes to like how ad tech infrastructure is changing and evolving, And so I think you want to have this big picture story or a vision story that allows everything to sort of work from that. And a good example of sort of like the... Another company that I think has done a lot of good work around AgenTig is PubMatic, though they are very focused on the technical side, they've been in the weeds over the last year launching new capabilities and updates. I think that is good, at the same time I would criticize it to some degree in that I have a hard time making sense of all of the announcements. They're very technical, technical which is fine, I think it works for shareholders because you're trying to showcase that, you know, we are investing in AI, we have an understanding of the agentic roadmap and where it's going, but I do think that you over index sometimes in ad tech where it's like, okay, like we've announced eight technical products and capabilities and it's hard to ladder those up to some bigger picture vision.
00:10:28 · Chris Harihar, Ari Paparo
[00:10:28] S2: I think it's a it's a hot topic, you know, from a news perspective. It's actually it's a meaningful topic when it comes to like how ad tech infrastructure is changing and evolving, And so I think you want to have this big picture story or a vision story that allows everything to sort of work from that. And a good example of sort of like the... Another company that I think has done a lot of good work around AgenTig is PubMatic, though they are very focused on the technical side, they've been in the weeds over the last year launching new capabilities and updates. I think that is good, at the same time I would criticize it to some degree in that I have a hard time making sense of all of the announcements. They're very technical, technical which is fine, I think it works for shareholders because you're trying to showcase that, you know, we are investing in AI, we have an understanding of the agentic roadmap and where it's going, but I do think that you over index sometimes in ad tech where it's like, okay, like we've announced eight technical products and capabilities and it's hard to ladder those up to some bigger picture vision. [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.
00:11:30 · 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.