Corey Ferengul and Joe Zawadzki sit down with Terry Kawaja, founder of LUMA Partners and one of ad tech's most respected dealmakers and prognosticators, and discuss where the market stands in early 2026. They break down the M&A landscape — from the post-tariff chill to why late 2025 started to show signs of life — and explains why valuations are split sharply between high-growth capability plays and legacy open web businesses. They hit on what European ad tech companies get wrong about entering the US market, why the SaaS obsession in ad tech was largely misguided, and how the agentic era could either save the open web or consolidate it into a handful of massive platforms. Terence also shares his long-held CTV predictions, why FAST adoption genuinely surprised him, and why 2026 is the year the industry needs to stop talking about AI and start showing results.
