We're here to scrap

Adam Heimlich and Gareth Glaser kick things off with a nostalgic Crazy Bruce's Liquors commercial before diving into the aftermath of Advertising Week. They introduce the concept of "fragmalidation"—the simultaneous fragmentation and consolidation of the ad tech industry as enterprise advertisers build private, disjointed stacks that rely on a few hyperscaled centralized cloud providers. The hosts discuss Amazon's major move to combine Amazon Ads and Amazon DSP into a single agentic interface on AWS Bedrock, arguing that cloud giants are effectively turning AI models like OpenAI and Anthropic into mere suppliers.

The conversation then shifts to Zeta's massive Ad Week event featuring Palantir's Alex Karp, sparking a debate on Zeta's $8.5 billion market cap and how service-heavy operators like MIQ successfully scale global managed services. Adam introduces the concept of "invisible asymptotes" (citing Amazon Prime and T-Mobile), explaining how enterprise brands are realizing their internal data science investments are capped by the limitations of pooled DSPs. He details how Chalice is pitching direct-to-market data modeling using common embedding spaces and GPU infrastructure.

In the Postmortem segment, the hosts dissect a chart from Nexon CMO Ben Kaplan projecting ad spend growth, noting that traditional media dollars shifting to digital often masquerade as the death of the open web. Next, they analyze James Doherty's eye-opening CTV pricing chart, which reveals Netflix CPMs hitting $37. Adam shares a fascinating calculation that, when adjusted for screen coverage and attention, Facebook's $8.50 CPM is actually more expensive than a Super Bowl ad. They wrap up by reviewing Paul Banister's prediction that Apple might attempt to monetize Safari by mediating ads directly, similar to Apple News.

00:00 Crazy Bruce's Liquors Ad & Show Intro01:21 Advertising Week Recap & Private Enterprise Stacks03:10 Fragmalidation: The Convergence of Fragmentation and Consolidation05:43 Amazon Ads & DSP Get an Agentic Rebrand08:30 How Amazon AWS Will Lock DSPs into 5-Year Cloud Deals11:56 AWS Bedrock Turns OpenAI & Anthropic into Suppliers14:09 Chalice & The Application Layer Battle20:45 Zeta's Ad Week Event with Alex Karp & $8.5B Market Cap24:19 Why Service-Heavy Operators Like MIQ Win Global Business27:46 Bach's Article & Going Vertical in the Agentic World31:26 Invisible Asymptotes: T-Mobile, Amazon Prime, & Ad Tech34:39 Bespoke Suits vs. Off-The-Rack DSP Algorithms37:48 Pitching Data Sellers on GPU Embedding Stores45:01 Postmortem: Ben Kaplan's Chart & The Death of the Open Web47:46 James Doherty's CTV Pricing Chart (Netflix $37 vs. Disney $25)49:10 Why Facebook Ads Cost More Than the Super Bowl53:32 Selling CTV on Feelings vs. ROI57:26 Paul Banister: Will Apple Monetize Safari Like Apple News?01:00:12 Yahoo Scrolling & Outro