The Aperiam Podcast

Terry Kawaja, founder of LUMA Partners and ad tech dealmaker, offers sharp market reading. He breaks down the M&A rebound and why valuations favor high-growth capability plays over legacy open web assets. He explains U.S. dominance, why many European entrants struggle, the misplaced SaaS push, the agentic interface shift, CTV’s potential, and skepticism about AI hype in 2026.

Filippo Gramigna, Co-CEO of OneTag and programmatic veteran, outlines OneTag's journey from DSP to curated exchange. He discusses rebuilding infrastructure for profitability, the Aryel acquisition for immersive creative, and a pragmatic approach to AI. The conversation highlights blending curation, creative, and real-time optimization to create a value exchange focused on clear outcomes.

Jake Vachal, Managing Director at Raine focused on Adtech and merchant banking. He breaks down why M&A is heating up now and what buyers and sellers are prioritizing. He explains Raine’s hybrid advisor-investor model and the criteria that win representation. He also describes how AI suddenly accelerated market cycles and reshaped dealmaking timelines.

Todd Sawicki, founder and CEO of Gumshoe.ai, helps brands see how AI models perceive and recommend them. He explains why traditional ranking fails with LLMs. He compares AI to a digital salesperson that brands must train. He outlines measuring AI visibility, persona-driven testing, and building authoritative content to influence recommendations.

Raghu Kodige, CEO and co-founder of Anoki, builds an AI-driven contextual intelligence layer for connected TV. He discusses scene-level targeting and how content context can replace missing CTV data. Raghu explains real-time integration, AI transparency with verification tools, why news inventory is undervalued, and how generative AI speeds product development.

Andrew Covato, founder of Growth by Science and measurement practitioner with 15+ years across Google, Meta, Netflix, and Snap. He critiques attribution-first thinking and explains why asking what happens if you turn off ads reveals true incrementality. He breaks down foundations like clean data, bespoke models, and pragmatic AI, plus how measurement changes spend and scales across small and large brands.

Michael Richardson, VP of Product at Index Exchange and prebid.org co-founder, explains ARTF and why a new interoperability standard matters. He discusses containerization, Kubernetes, and how hosting partner logic inside publisher infrastructure works. Listeners hear who should explore ARTF first and how it relates to OpenRTB and emerging standards.

Joe Hirsch, founder and CEO of Swivel and co-creator of the Ad Context Protocol, works on AI automation and agentic advertising. He explains AdCP as a standard for AI agents to trade ads across platforms. The conversation covers why existing RTB falls short, how agentic buys reshape workflows and staffing, who benefits, and signals to watch for real adoption.

Ravi Patel, founder of SWYM and ad-tech veteran from AppNexus and IAS, explains why programmatic often wastes money. He walks through supply control vs. curation, auction mechanics, duplicated bids and cross-SSP noise. He also covers capital-efficient product building, easy marketer activation, and why normalized supply data is needed before agentic AI buying.

Gareth Glaser, founder and CEO of Gamera and ex-chair of Prebid.js, builds shared inventory identifiers to bring transparency to programmatic advertising. He discusses making page-level IDs practical, why the sell side felt like a Wild West, how curation eases adoption, and partnerships that turn on-page signals into reliable measurement.