Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.

Alicia Richardson, co-founder and managing partner of CrowdAxis, a measurement-focused experiential marketing operator. She breaks down how brands choose live activations. She explains why measurement is inconsistent, presents CrowdAxis’s standardization approach and Experiential Power Index, and debates whether big festivals like Cannes justify the spend.

Terence Kawaja, founder and CEO of LUMA Partners and veteran ad-tech investor, lays out 10 bold predictions on AI and advertising. He discusses how ads may power LLMs and the move from CPM to performance and intent-based models. He highlights a growing LLM ad ecosystem, AI-driven transparency, creative as a performance lever, consolidation, agility, and new entrants reshaping ad tech.

Melissa Burdick, co-founder and president of Pacvue, a commerce media operating system. She discusses how commerce media extends beyond retail into discovery and AI-driven experiences. Fragmentation across retailer platforms remains a top challenge. AI is changing search from keywords to prompts and spawning early agentic commerce possibilities.

Jeff Green, CEO of The Trade Desk and ad-tech veteran, discusses his large insider stock purchase and what it signals. He explores ads inside AI chat platforms, how programmatic pairs with agentic AI, OpenPath’s supply-chain efficiency goals, the future of retail media and Ventura’s CTV strategy. Short, forward-looking takes on open vs closed ecosystems and AI-driven campaign tools.

Brian Wieser, advertising analyst and founder of Madison & Wall, breaks down why digital ads are outpacing the economy. He discusses retail media’s rapid rise, DSP competition and The Trade Desk’s position, streaming and CTV economics, and how Amazon and OpenAI are shaping new ad surfaces. Short takes on AI’s effect on agencies and ad tech investment decisions.

Eric Seufert, writer and analyst behind Mobile Dev Memo who studies mobile ecosystems and adtech strategy, joins to debate AI agents vs apps. They tackle the “SaaS-pocalypse,” Apple’s tightening AI rules and Private Cloud Compute, Meta’s Manus move toward ad automation, AppLovin’s social ambitions, and whether independent ad tech can survive in a Meta/Google world.

Nate Elliott, principal analyst at eMarketer who studies AI, marketing, and consumer behavior, breaks down real AI adoption vs hype. He covers how few consumers actively use AI weekly, why AI mostly influences shopping through research not chat purchases, the Wild West of GEO/AEO, CMOs’ focus on internal productivity, and the content-licensing stakes for the open web.

Matthew Egol, founder of JourneySpark Consulting and leader of agenticadvertising.org, explains the push for an industry association to set standards, certification, and governance for agentic advertising. He covers AdCP’s pilot stage, Prebid collaboration, IAB alignment, AI’s Super Bowl moment, and how LLMs and agentic systems are changing planning, creative, and measurement.

Bob Lord, President of Horizon Media and veteran digital/media exec, talks fast-moving indie agencies and Horizon OS’s open partner ecosystem. He discusses Blu ID and first-party data, how performance-based pricing aligns incentives, and practical AI wins like reconciliation and workflow automation. Conversation also touches on the LLM ad debate and industry moves from IAB ALM to publisher marketplaces.

Discussion centers on why measurable outcomes are now the defining metric in digital advertising. They explore how AI, experimentation, and advanced modeling are reshaping measurement as cookies fade. The rise of closed-loop platforms and agentic buying is changing how scale and identity drive performance. The decline of the open web and potential antitrust shifts create both challenges and new opportunities for publishers and ad tech.