Nearly everyone building AI for advertising is solving for the audience. The models keep getting better at identifying the right customer. Fewer people are asking what happens to that prediction once a buyer tries to act on it.
TV is where that question gets uncomfortable. Roughly $17–18 billion of the $90 billion US TV market is purchasable through a Demand-Side Platform (DSP). The rest moves through upfronts, direct insertion orders, and relationships that never touch a bidstream. An advertiser can hold a genuinely predictive model and still be locked out of most of its inventory.
Two Questions This Session Will Take On:
How does a buyer tell the difference between software that learns from outcomes and software that just follows rules someone wrote, when both are sold as AI?
If most TV is still bought through upfronts and direct deals taht never pass through a DSP, what is programmatic AI actually leaerning from, and what is it missing?
Join us for a closer look at where AI-driven advertising meets the realities of TV buying, and what it takes to turn better predictions into more reachable audiences.
Michael Beebe is the CEO of Dstillery. Since he joined the company in 2017, Michael has led Dstillery’s transformation from a DSP to an Audience Data company, fueling accelerated growth. Dstillery’s Custom AI Audiences and ID-free targeting are powered by patented machine learning & data science developed over 12 years.
Michael developed his conviction that high-quality data enhances outcomes of high-stakes decisions over a 20+ year career as an investor, analyst and portfolio manager. He has invested for Goldman Sachs, Soros Fund Management, Viking Global Investors and his own fund, Mojave Capital, across a number of sectors globally. Michael has deep expertise in the consumer, media, technology, fintech and asset management industries. With a focus on value creation in the financial, strategic, and operating dimensions of management, Michael is a data-driven problem-solver, activator, and unifier. He is a CFA charterholder and graduate of James Madison University.
Rich Greenfield is a Partner and Media and Technology Analyst at LightShed Partners, General Partner at LightShed Ventures and co-host of The LightShed Podcast. Prior to LightShed, Rich was a Managing Director and TMT Analyst at BTIG and the co-creator of the BTIG Research blog. Prior to joining BTIG in 2010, Rich was a managing director, media analyst, covering media and cable/satellite industries at Pali Capital for four years. Prior to that, he spent two years at Fulcrum Global Partners as a media analyst. Rich started his career at Goldman Sachs & Co. in 1995, where he spent eight years covering entertainment, cable system and leisure industries. Rich is an active angel investor focused on the convergence of media, communications and commerce. He loves meeting new start-ups, demo’ing new technologies and trying to figure out the future. Rich has been a New Yorker his entire life, with a stop in Boston to attend Brandeis.
Philip Inghelbrecht is the CEO and Co-Founder of Tatari, a data & analytics company focused on buying and measuring ads across linear and streaming TV. Philip is also known as a co-founder of Shazam, one of the most widely-used music apps in the world.
Prior to Tatari, Philip was also a founding employee and former president of TrueCar (NSDQ:TRUE). In addition, he previously ran business development at Rockmelt (acquired by Yahoo) and led sports and entertainment partnerships for Google/YouTube. Philip is also an active investor and advisor.
Matt Shapo is Director of Digital Audio and Video in IAB Media Center where he works to advance the interests of the digital marketing community by driving industrywide education, supporting technological innovation, and promoting collaboration and strategic partnerships between the buyers and sellers of ad supported media.
Matt’s primary responsibilities include leadership of industry conversations about important trends, business practices, and research across multiple disciplines ranging from brand safety and suitability, programmatic advertising, and creative best practices, to privacy-compliant audience targeting, measurement and attribution, and omnichannel media planning.
With over 20 years of marketing and editorial experience in the radio and record industries, one of Matt’s key areas of focus at IAB is education and evangelism regarding the efficacy of digital audio advertising and its increasingly important role on brand and agency media plans.
