Building Through Every Ad Tech Era: AI, Attribution, and What’s Next with Ionut Ciobotaru

What if the future of performance marketing wasn't about controlling every detail, but about measuring what matters and experimenting beyond the obvious channels? In this episode of How I Grew This, Amanda and Adam sit down with Ionut Ciobotaru, CEO and Co-founder of Hypd.ai, to explore why measurement is the foundation of marketing success, how AI agents are reshaping advertiser workflows, and the untapped channels that savvy marketers should be exploring next. From building PubNative into an ad tech powerhouse to launching a pretzel bakery in Berlin, Ionut shares hard-won lessons about pivoting, scaling, and knowing when to double down. Whether you're optimizing a single channel or managing complex multi-platform campaigns, this conversation is packed with strategic insights to help you allocate your budget smarter and stay ahead of the curve. Tune in to discover why your next competitive advantage might lie in channels you haven't considered yet.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to identify and capitalize on emerging technology waves
• Why pivoting your core product based on market realities is essential for survival
• The "international advantage" of digital-native businesses
• How to structure acquisitions and integrations for maximum value
• Why measurement and attribution must come before experimentation in performance marketing
• How AI agents will unlock access to fragmented, non-programmatic channels

About the Guest(s):

 

Ionut Ciobotaru is a serial entrepreneur and AI-driven performance marketing innovator, currently building Hypd.ai, an AI agent platform designed to streamline marketing operations across multiple advertising channels. With a distinguished career spanning mobile ad tech, programmatic advertising, and strategic business scaling, Ionut co-founded PubNative—a native mobile ad network that was acquired by MGI (now Verve Group)—where he served as Co-CEO overseeing significant M&A integration and product development. In this episode, Ionut shares hard-won insights on building successful ad tech ventures, navigating complex acquisitions, and leveraging AI to solve real-world challenges facing modern performance marketers. His deep expertise in channel innovation, measurement attribution, and emerging advertising platforms provides actionable strategies for entrepreneurs and marketers looking to stay ahead in an increasingly fragmented digital landscape. Whether discussing the evolution from mobile-first advertising to today's omnichannel environment, or the future of AI-powered marketing automation, Ionut's perspective offers invaluable guidance for those seeking to drive measurable business growth.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, rate, and review it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube Podcasts. Instructions on how to do this are here.

Episode Highlights:

[00:01:06] Recognize Technology Inflection Points Before the Market Saturates - 

Ionut's early career demonstrates the power of identifying emerging tech waves—he moved from web to mobile specifically because he recognized the iPhone represented a fundamental shift in how users would access digital experiences. Rather than starting his mobile venture in Romania where the infrastructure didn't support it, he strategically relocated to Berlin to position himself at the center of mobile innovation. This insight reveals that successful founders don't just follow trends; they **position themselves geographically and professionally where new technologies are being adopted first**. For performance marketers and entrepreneurs, this means **continuously scanning the horizon for the next wave** before it becomes obvious to everyone else. The timing advantage of being early allows you to build expertise, relationships, and credibility that compound over years. Ionut's entire career—from native ads to AI agents—reflects this principle of finding emerging channels before they become commoditized.

[00:05:11] Pivot Your Product When Market Forces Demand It, Not When Your Vision Says Otherwise - 

PubNative began as a native-only ad network designed to replace banner ads, yet by the time Ionut sold the company, it had pivoted to selling primarily banners and programmatic formats—the exact formats he originally opposed. Rather than viewing this as failure, Ionut explains that **sometimes you cannot push against the market itself as a single company**, and larger advertisers demanded standardization across channels. This teaches a crucial lesson: **your founding thesis matters less than your ability to serve what customers actually need**. Large brands wanted consistency, so PubNative adapted rather than die on principle. For performance marketers building products or services, this means **staying obsessed with solving real customer problems** rather than being married to your original feature set. The companies that survive are those flexible enough to follow customer demand while maintaining their core mission of creating value.

[00:06:33] Leverage the International Advantage of Digital-Native Businesses to Accelerate Growth - 

One of the most surprising insights from Ionut's mobile era was how fundamentally different digital distribution was from traditional media—a developer in Belarus could launch an app globally and compete with anyone, whereas traditional media (radio, TV, print) remained localized and gatekept. **This international scalability is unique to digital products** and represents a structural advantage that didn't exist in previous eras. Small publishers like Voodoo could launch a game from France and reach users worldwide instantly. For modern performance marketers and entrepreneurs, this principle remains vital: **your product's ability to reach a global audience from day one means you should think internationally from the start**. Rather than optimizing for one geography first, consider how your offering can serve multiple markets simultaneously, learning and iterating across regions. This fundamentally changes how you approach customer acquisition, product development, and fundraising—you're not building a local business that might go international; you're building an international business from inception.

[00:29:37] Master Measurement and Attribution Before Experimenting with New Channels - 

Ionut articulates a hierarchy of priorities for performance marketers that directly contradicts conventional startup wisdom: **small brands should focus obsessively on maximizing single channels before attempting to optimize across multiple channels**, while **large brands competing for the same keywords need sophisticated measurement and attribution to identify where to shift budget**. Small brands often haven't exhausted Google or Meta; they're leaving money on the table in known channels rather than needing new ones. This framework reveals that **the biggest mistake small brands make is channel proliferation before channel mastery**. For performance marketers at any stage, this means **building robust measurement infrastructure is prerequisite to intelligent experimentation**—without knowing which channels and segments actually drive value, any new channel you add is essentially a guess. Large brands report shifting their measurement cadence from annual to quarterly reviews, meaning they're now making reinvestment decisions every three months rather than annually. The implication: **measurement is no longer optional or low-priority; it's the operational heartbeat of modern performance marketing**.

[00:37:23] Use AI Agents to Access Fragmented, Non-Programmatic Channels That Were Previously Unscalable - 

The future opportunity Ionut identifies with AI agents isn't automating existing workflows (platforms like Meta and Google are already doing that)—it's **lowering the barrier to entry for retail media, out-of-home, CTV, and other channels that aren't easily traded on impressions**. Before AI agents, buying billboard space or shelf space required upfront commitments of tens of thousands of dollars; agents can simplify both buyer and seller operations enough to allow smaller budget commitments. **This unlocks a massive untapped inventory of advertising channels that were previously inaccessible to most brands**. For performance marketers, this represents the next frontier: **once you've optimized Google and Meta (which AI within those platforms will handle automatically), the competitive advantage shifts to discovering and scaling in emerging, less-optimized channels**. The workflow looks like: establish measurement, optimize existing channels, then systematically experiment with new channels using agentic automation. This represents a fundamental shift from "which ad formats perform best" to "which unexploited channels contain audiences we haven't reached yet."
 

Episode Resources:

• Ionut Ciobotaru on LinkedIn
• Hypd.ai on LinkedIn
• Hypd.ai Website
• Amanda Vandiver on LinkedIn
• Adam Landis on LinkedIn
• Branch on LinkedIn
• Branch Website
• How I Grew This on Apple Podcasts
• How I Grew This on Spotify
• How I Grew This on Simplecast