AdExchanger

Can connected TV really deliver performance – or is "performance TV" just a branding boost with extra data? Erin Firneno, SVP of business intelligence at Advertiser Perceptions, weighs in.

Perion CEO Tal Jacobson is done with AI buzzwords. Instead, he's betting big on agents, outcomes and letting machines handle the messy parts of media buying.

Mary Beech, chief growth officer at health-and-wellness brand Thorne, shares how she's turning marketing into a growth engine amid AI-driven discovery and chatbots that get loose with the facts.

Charlene Polite Corley, VP of Inclusive Insights at Nielsen who blends audience measurement with cultural analysis. She discusses why inclusive measurement uncovers missed growth, how data plus culture reveals trends, the importance of intersectional targeting, risks of AI without human oversight, and practical first steps brands can take to test and improve representation.

Ad verification used to be mostly about keeping brands away from the bad stuff. Now, verification providers have to prove that quality actually moves the needle, says Integral Ad Science CEO Lisa Utzschneider.

Kurt Donnell, CEO of Freestar — leader in publisher monetization networks — talks programmatic transparency, why clearer buy-sell practices help the open web, and how networks support smaller publishers. He covers the TID debate, auction transparency standards, AI search’s hit to referral traffic, and strategies publishers can use to retain audiences in an AI-driven future.

Ty Ahmad‑Taylor, Chief Product Officer at Kantar and former product lead at Meta and Snap, brings measurement and AI expertise. He tackles trust in automated measurement, walled gardens and attribution messes. He talks about speed‑first, AI‑driven insights, clean rooms and cross‑platform measurement realities.

Carrie Drinkwater, Chief Investment Officer at Carat US and the agency's first-ever CIO, champions a consumer- and content-first approach to media buying. She breaks down what holistic media really means. She discusses TV, CTV and content convergence. She talks CTV targeting limits, sports and alternative reach tactics, privacy and data trust, and how AI tools reshape media investment.

AI is reshaping how we shop, but agents won't take over our carts just yet. LiveRamp CEO Scott Howe explains why the change will be gradual – and how chatbot ads (not just on ChatGPT) will change the online shopping experience. NOTE: A Perplexity spokesperson reached out to AdExchanger to deny the existence of an official partnership between LiveRamp and Perplexity or the existence of an alpha program set to launch this quarter that will test combining its behavior data with CRM data from advertisers. "Although we do enjoy speaking with and listening to leaders in every industry, there is not currently any partnership between Perplexity and LiveRamp," according to Jesse Dwyer, Perplexity's chief communication officer.

True Religion CMO Kristen D'Arcy approaches marketing measurement the way you'd shop for jeans – by looking for the right fit. She's moved past last click, using real-time data to see what actually drives sales, and she isn't afraid to make fast changes when something isn't working.