The Complete Feed

In Part 2 of our ad fraud series, Brett and Rio go deeper with Dr. Augustine Fou — and it gets uncomfortable. This isn't just about bots. It's about the system that profits from them: hidden take rates, spoofed supply, and "performance" that's often fabricated. Then: agentic AI. Because broken inputs don't get fixed by automation — they scale. Who's getting paid? And how much are they taking?

Careers in AdTech follow the market—not a straight path. In this Signal & Noise episode, Evgeny Popov shares a full-stack view across publishers, agencies, DSPs, and CTV. From acquisitions to ACR data and measurement challenges, we explore how TV is becoming a data-driven channel—and why those who understand the entire ecosystem are best positioned to win.

Who wins and who loses when media buying goes agentic? AdCP isn’t just a new protocol—it’s a shift in where media decisions happen. As allocation moves upstream from auctions to agent-driven negotiation, DSPs, SSPs, publishers, and agencies all face structural disruption. This isn’t about better automation. It’s about control—and a fundamental reshaping of how the market operates.

The current market is full of adjacent providers and short on anyone willing to own the full chain between product value and commercial execution. What fills that gap is not just strategy and not just execution. It is GTM Intelligence. By GTM Intelligence, I don't mean RevOps dashboards, sales intelligence, or pipeline inspection tools. I mean the decisioning layer that determines what matters, what deserves focus, what the market needs to hear, and where the commercial

In this episode of Signal & Noise, Tracer’s Leighton Welch and Sarah Martinez explore how enterprise stacks are shifting to data-first, with the semantic layer at the core. We unpack five key trends—from warehouse-native architecture to AI readiness—and why success depends on shared, trusted data. Key takeaway: AI doesn’t fix bad data—it exposes it.

The CDP isn’t dead—it’s just evolved. In this episode, Dale Renner breaks down how the category fragmented, why most CDPs failed to unify data, and how “everyone became a CDP.” The takeaway: without strong data and identity, personalization falls flat. The future isn’t platforms—it’s clean data, composable systems, and owned AI layers.

Mike Vincenzino shares the story behind building Kindora, a family operating system inspired by caring for his mother with dementia. This piece reframes caregiving as a systems problem—and argues that while we’ve built powerful tools for companies, families are still left managing chaos with fragmented, inadequate tech.

The old martech stack is not just messy. It is starting to get in the way. In this GTM Slop piece, Brett House breaks down Scott Brinker’s new report on the AI-era martech stack and explains why the shift from rigid stacks to composable systems matters for speed, integration, data, and growth. The real advantage will not come from buying more tools. It will come from building a growth system that moves faster, decides better, and executes with less friction.

UX isn’t being redesigned—it’s being replaced. As AI shifts systems from navigation to action, interfaces fade and design moves upstream. This piece explores the collapse of traditional UX, the rise of agentic systems, and why the future of design is about orchestrating outcomes—not building screens.

AdTech has powerful tech but weak marketing. In this Signal & Noise episode, Joe Zappa (Sharp Pen Media) explains why CEOs must lead messaging with clear beliefs—not jargon. Learn how to stand out in a crowded market, build strong narratives, avoid “AI slop,” and turn authenticity into a competitive advantage.

Lucas Longacre joins Signal & Noise and debuts with Zach Grumet to explore product management, leadership, and “structuring ambiguity.” They cover unclear problems, team friction, decision-making, and how AI is reshaping product development. Featuring insights from FinTech, HealthTech, and SaaS, this episode highlights why strong product leaders focus on clarity—not just shipping features—in an increasingly complex landscape.

What if your next biggest competitor is not another vendor, but Claude Code deciding your category does not need to be bought at all? This piece looks at how coding agents are starting to shape technical vendor selection, why that changes GTM, and what B2B software and AI companies need to do now to avoid getting bypassed before a salesperson ever gets involved.

The agency model is splitting. Some holdcos are evolving into integrated operating companies built on data, platforms, and AI. Others remain loosely connected portfolios of services. As media becomes automated and margins compress, the winners will be those who own the infrastructure behind marketing — not just the execution in front of it.

What if dashboards are dying—and analytics is becoming more human? In this episode of Signal & Noise, Brett House and Rio Longacre talk with Adam Greco about “Vibe Analytics,” a future where AI, natural language, and warehouse-native stacks replace rigid dashboards. They explore how this shift could democratize analytics, impact tools like Adobe and Amplitude, and reshape how marketers, analysts, and data teams measure and use data.

Most B2B software and AI product launches fail due to weak go-to-market execution—not product quality. Companies struggle to translate value into a clear story, target audience, and proof, creating “GTM slop.” Success requires strong narrative, alignment across teams, focused ICP, and real market readiness—not just campaigns, content, or hype.

Customer Data Platforms are entering a new phase — not convergence, but fragmentation. This article explores four emerging futures for the CDP: the Agentic Control Plane, the Intelligent Marketing Platform, the Unified Experience Stack, and the AI-Ready Data Layer. Each reflects a different vision for how AI, data, and marketing operations will evolve—and what role the CDP may play in the years ahead.

What if dashboards are dying—and analytics is becoming more human? In this episode of Signal & Noise, Brett House and Rio Longacre talk with Adam Greco about “Vibe Analytics,” a future where AI, natural language, and warehouse-native stacks replace rigid dashboards. They explore how this shift could democratize analytics, impact tools like Adobe and Amplitude, and reshape how marketers, analysts, and data teams measure and use data.

At RampUp in San Francisco, hosted by LiveRamp, industry leaders gathered to discuss the future of identity, data collaboration, retail media, and AI in advertising. In this Signal & Noise episode, hosts recap the event and share insights from top AdTech voices on how privacy, data, and AI are reshaping modern marketing.

For fifteen years, advertising has revolved around real-time auctions. But as agentic AI and protocols like AdCP emerge, machines can now reason, remember, and negotiate—not just bid. This shift could move value upstream into continuously negotiated, agent-to-agent deals, relegating open exchanges to clearing remnant supply. The result: a market defined less by speed and auctions, and more by automated, machine-executed negotiation.

The Shift: The most valuable skill in 2026 isn’t writing code — it’s describing what you want clearly enough that AI can build it for you. The Proof: MIT named “generative coding” one of its 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2026. AI now writes 30% of Microsoft’s code and over 25% of Google’s. The Catch: The “just vibe it” takes are dangerously incomplete. The real skill behind AI-assisted building is something nobody’s talking about — and it’s something you can learn.

In this episode of Signal & Noise, hosts Rio and Brett sit down with Crystal Santos Wallace for a candid conversation about what AI is actually doing inside modern agencies. Drawing on her experience across global holdcos and at Omnicom Group and Acxiom, Crystal explains why AI doesn’t fix broken data — it amplifies it. They explore the shift from monolithic platforms to agent-orchestrated systems, why governance is becoming mission-critical, and how synthetic audiences and

The marketing industry spends more than $4,000 per U.S. household every year. Analysts estimate that 20–30% of that spend may be lost to waste, inefficiency, and outright fraud — tens of billions of dollars annually. So here’s the uncomfortable question: If everyone knows the plumbing is broken… Why does the system keep running? In this episode of Signal & Noise, Rio Longacre and Brett House sit down with ⁠Sarah Caputo⁠ & ⁠David Nyurenberg⁠ to unpack what rarely gets said out

After a blockbuster Q4 2025, AppLovin has cemented itself as AdTech’s most valuable — and polarizing — company. Explosive ad growth and margin expansion suggest its AI engine is working. But success brings scrutiny. With Meta looming over in-game and performance budgets, the real question is whether an independent optimization layer can keep scaling inside a world dominated by walled gardens.

Part 2 of this series. If you haven’t watched Part 1, start there for the core framework on aligning GTM and CX as one operating system. In this episode, we look at real-world examples of companies that either connect—or fracture—GTM and customer experience. We reference operator-driven clarity at DoubleVerify, premium ecosystem consistency at Apple, channel fragmentation in Auto, mature orchestration at Flywheel, and competitive GTM tempo from OpenAI. We also touch on Servic