AdExchanger Guest Columnist, Author at Chief Marketer

The W3C Is Making A Critical Mistake About Measuring Advertising Effectiveness

The W3C’s proposed “Attribution Level 1” browser standard deserves far more scrutiny from the advertising and measurement community than it has so far received. The public comment period remains open through June 10. At a moment when advertisers face enormous pressure to justify spending and many publishers outside the largest platforms are struggling economically, industry […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

Digital Advertising Needs Guardrails For AI

The biggest AI risk in digital advertising is probably not the one most people are talking about. It’s not creative generation. It’s not job replacement. It’s not whether AI can optimize campaigns faster than humans. The real risk is what happens when autonomous systems begin making commercial decisions without clear ownership, governance or accountability. That […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

From Open Internet To Open Agent: The Architecture Buyers Were Promised Is Finally Here

You know the call. It happens every month, sometimes every week: The DSP number doesn’t match the SSP number. Nobody is sure whose pixel fired twice. The deal you activated three weeks ago is still not delivering. The brand safety report came back clean, but the placement was anything but. A meaningful percentage of your […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

Why Agentic Measurement Will Reprice The Ad Market

Every era of advertising is defined by what its reporting layer cannot see. In the 1960s, the industry was defined by the Nielsen diary. Households recorded their viewing on paper and mailed it back. Advertisers and broadcasters waited weeks for the data. Nielsen’s diary wasn’t replaced because it was wrong, but because it was slow. […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

Making Marketing More Modular: What Agentic AI Can Learn From The Shipping Container Revolution

Today’s explosion of AI service providers has everyone looking back at the dot-com bubble, revisiting the technological boom and bust at the turn of the millennia for historical precedent to help us separate real innovation from BS. History is a valuable teacher, but I look beyond the history of the ad tech industry for inspiration. […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

Brands Don’t Need Perfect Data To Use AI

There is a common refrain that AI requires high-quality data to deliver high-quality results. “Garbage in/garbage out” refers to the idea that any AI trained on less than perfect data will not be able to produce valuable outputs. Before I get accused of dismissing the importance of quality data, high-quality data does produce the best […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

The AI Chat Ad Frontier: What LLMs Change About Brand Safety And Control

ChatGPT ads are here, and brands are testing the waters. This marks the true start of LLMs as a new advertising channel, reshaping the customer journey and introducing a new surface for brand safety and suitability. It’s a real inflection point for advertising. Impressions, searches and even transactions that once traveled through websites will increasingly […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

On Neutral Ground: Why Content Licensing Needs Independent Settlement And Verifiable Payments

The content licensing economy has arrived faster than anyone expected. Microsoft and Amazon have both entered the marketplace business. Venture-backed startups like TollBit and ProRata have built infrastructure for publishers to license their content to LLMs. And, in 2025, AI companies committed an estimated $2.9 billion in licensing fees to a relatively small number of […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

A “Pay-For-Performance” Ad Industry? Brands And Agencies Will Need A Referee

The very concept of AI and its impact on select industries is enough to cause dramatic swings in stock market sectors and wild future-of-work predictions. But when the world’s largest ad agency talks about changing its revenue model – and trots out a real-world client example to back it up – people pay attention. In […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

Stop Scaling Mediocre Ads: How AI Can Actually Elevate Performance Marketing

In a largely creative industry like advertising, performance marketing can seem a bit soulless. Algorithms, tracking and optimization can help us reach targets quicker and more efficiently. But the creative used in performance campaigns can often look or feel … off. When there are metrics to hit and placements to fill, creative often takes a […]

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