News, Trust, & Polarization: Vanessa Otero on the Fragmented Media Era

Ads in AI: Karsten Weide on Advertising, Agentic Commerce, and the Future of AI Monetization

What happens when the technology that powers advertising becomes the thing consumers interact with directly? In this episode of Signal & Noise, Rio Longacre and Brett House sit down with industry analyst Karsten Weide to explore one of the most important—and controversial—questions facing the digital economy: how AI will ultimately make money. From advertising inside chatbots to agentic commerce, autonomous media buying, and the future of the open web, Karsten shares why he believes AI will reshape advertising more profoundly than any technology shift he has witnessed in more than three decades covering media, technology, and digital advertising.  The conversation examines the rapid emergence of agentic AI across the advertising ecosystem, the growing role of automation in media planning and optimization, and why the traditional programmatic supply chain may be heading toward a fundamental transformation. Karsten explains how platforms, DSPs, SSPs, publishers, agencies, and brands are all racing to build their own agentic operating systems—and what that means for the future structure of the advertising market.  The discussion also tackles one of the industry's most debated topics: advertising inside AI products. Will OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and Perplexity eventually embrace advertising as a major revenue stream? What will AI-native ad formats actually look like? And can advertising coexist with the trust users expect from conversational interfaces?  The conversation then turns to agentic commerce—the emerging world where AI agents shop, compare products, negotiate prices, and make purchases on behalf of consumers. If agents become the primary buyers, what happens to search advertising, performance marketing, and the broader digital advertising ecosystem? Karsten offers a provocative perspective on why this future may create a surprising renaissance for brand advertising, display, video, audio, and out-of-home media.  Along the way, the group discusses: * Why AI adoption in advertising is still in its earliest stages * The rise of autonomous media buying and agentic workflows * How Amazon, Google, Meta, and emerging ad tech players are approaching AI-powered advertising * The future of SMB advertising and self-service media buying * The battle between open standards and proprietary AI ecosystems * Why the programmatic supply chain may look dramatically different in five years * The opportunities and risks of AI-driven creative production * Whether AGI is actually closer than most people think * How AI could reshape agency operating models and industry employment If you've been wondering how advertising, commerce, media buying, and consumer behavior evolve in a world increasingly shaped by AI agents, this episode provides one of the most thoughtful and grounded discussions available today. The future of advertising may not be humans buying from brands. It may be agents buying from agents. And the implications are enormous.

News, Trust, & Polarization: Vanessa Otero on the Fragmented Media Era

What happens when a society can no longer agree on basic facts? In this episode of Signal & Noise, Rio Longacre and Brett House sit down with Vanessa Otero, Founder and CEO of Ad Fontes Media and creator of the influential Media Bias Chart, to explore the growing crisis of trust, polarization, and information quality in the modern media landscape. Vanessa's Media Bias Chart began as a personal project during the 2016 election cycle and has since evolved into one of the most widely recognized frameworks for evaluating media bias and reliability. Today, Ad Fontes Media has analyzed tens of thousands of articles, podcasts, and news sources to help consumers, educators, advertisers, and publishers better understand the fragmented information ecosystem.  The conversation explores how the industry arrived at a moment where millions of people consume different versions of reality, why social media algorithms amplify outrage and identity over truth, and whether objective journalism is still possible in an era dominated by platforms, creators, and AI-generated content. Vanessa shares her perspective on the collapse of trust in institutions, the economics of journalism, and why the survival of high-quality reporting matters far beyond the news business itself.  The discussion also dives into the business challenges facing journalism. As local newspapers disappear, digital advertising consolidates around a handful of technology platforms, and AI reshapes content discovery, many news orgs are struggling to sustain the costly work of original reporting. Vanessa explains why journalism functions as critical societal infrastructure, how advertising incentives have unintentionally weakened the news ecosystem, and why she believes advertisers have a role to play in preserving high-quality information.  Rio and Brett challenge Vanessa on whether audiences actually want objective reporting, the role of algorithms in reinforcing worldviews, and whether we're witnessing a return to a more fragmented media environment reminiscent of the pre-broadcast era. Together they explore the tension between engagement and truth, the rise of podcasts and creator-driven media, and whether consumers are becoming more aware of the ways technology influences their perception of reality.  The episode also examines the future of advertising against news content. Vanessa discusses Ad Fontes Media's work helping advertisers identify high-quality news environments, the importance of context and trust in media buying, and why she believes many brands have made a mistake by avoiding news altogether. The conversation touches on CTV, media quality signals, brand safety, and the emerging role of AI in both improving and undermining the information ecosystem.  Whether you're a marketer, publisher, journalist, technologist, policymaker, or simply someone trying to make sense of today's media environment, this conversation offers a thoughtful and nuanced look at one of the most important challenges facing modern society. * The origin story of the Media Bias Chart * Why people increasingly live in separate realities * Trust, misinformation, and disinformation * The collapse of local journalism * Social media, algorithms, and outrage economics * Why advertisers stopped buying news * The business model crisis facing publishers * AI-generated content and the future of journalism * Podcasts, creators, and media fragmentation * News quality, media trust, and brand safety * CTV advertising and Ad Fontes Media's partnership with Viant * Whether objective journalism is still possible Vanessa Otero is the Founder and CEO of Ad Fontes Media, the company behind the Media Bias Chart. A former patent attorney, Vanessa launched the chart during the 2016 election cycle to help people better understand media bias and reliability. Today, Ad Fontes Media provides media quality ratings used by advertisers, publishers, educators, researchers, and consumers seeking greater transparency in the information ecosystem.

The Negotiated Future: Ethan Settel on Newton Research, Agentic Media Buying, and the Reinvention of Media Operations

What happens when AI stops assisting media teams and starts acting on their behalf? In this episode of Signal & Noise, we sit down with Ethan Settel, Head of Sales & Accounts at Newton Research, to explore one of the most important developments in advertising today: the emergence of agentic media buying. While much of the industry remains focused on AI tools that summarize dashboards, generate briefs, or automate reporting, Newton Research is pursuing something far more ambitious. The company is building specialized AI agents that can connect data, execute advanced analytics, build forecasting models, recommend optimizations, and increasingly interact directly with media platforms to support planning, buying, and activation.  At the center of our conversation is a provocative thesis: the future of advertising may be negotiated by machines. Rather than relying on human teams to manually interpret reports, adjust budgets, and coordinate across dozens of disconnected systems, agentic platforms like Newton are creating teams of AI specialists that can work together to analyze campaign performance, simulate scenarios, and execute media decisions with unprecedented speed and precision. These agents can communicate with DSPs, publishers, clean rooms, and planning tools, transforming what has historically been a fragmented and labor-intensive process into an increasingly automated operating model.  We also discuss Newton’s groundbreaking work with NBCUniversal, FreeWheel, Yahoo, and Locality, where buy-side and sell-side AI agents collaborated to support premium video buying across linear television and streaming. The initiative offers a compelling glimpse into a future where software agents negotiate inventory directly with one another, potentially reshaping the role of DSPs, SSPs, and other intermediaries throughout the advertising ecosystem.  Along the way, Ethan explains why measurement and analytics are the foundation of any effective agentic system. Without trusted data, consistent models, and full transparency into how decisions are made, automation simply amplifies errors. Newton addresses this by combining its proprietary marketing science knowledge base with each client’s unique methodologies, creating a repeatable and highly customized intelligence layer that becomes more valuable over time.  We also explore some of the biggest questions facing the industry: * How AI agents differ from generic tools like OpenAI ChatGPT, Anthropic Claude, and Google Gemini * Why data normalization has historically consumed most of a data scientist’s time * How agentic systems can democratize advanced analytics for planners and buyers * The role of protocols such as MCP and AdCP in enabling agent-to-agent communication * Whether DSPs and SSPs become strategic platforms or simply “dumb pipes” * Where liability and accountability sit when AI begins making media decisions * Why human oversight remains essential, even as automation accelerates Ethan also shares his perspective on the organizational impact of agentic AI. Rather than replacing media professionals outright, he argues that the technology frees analysts, planners, and buyers from repetitive manual work, allowing them to focus on strategy, experimentation, and innovation. The result is not fewer insights, but potentially unlimited analytics applied to every campaign and every decision.  This conversation offers a rare and highly practical look at what applied AI actually looks like inside advertising. It moves beyond hype to examine how real systems are being deployed today to transform measurement, planning, and activation. If Ethan is right, the future of media will not be defined by faster reporting or prettier dashboards. It will be defined by intelligent agents negotiating with one another across the buy-side and sell-side, continuously optimizing outcomes in a market that becomes more automated, transparent, and data-driven than ever before. The negotiated future has already begun.

The Godfather of MarTech on the Great Convergence: Scott Brinker on Al, First-Party Data, and the Future of MadTech

The MarTech landscape exploded from a few hundred tools to more than 15,000. But according to Scott Brinker, the real story isn’t software sprawl — it’s the collapse of the silos between marketing, advertising, data, AI, and enterprise operations.... In this episode, we sit down with the “Godfather of MarTech” to unpack one of the biggest shifts happening in modern business: the convergence of MarTech and AdTech into a new AI-driven operating model for marketing. We explore why the old world of disconnected systems, fragmented customer journeys, and rigid SaaS categories is breaking apart — and what replaces it. From first-party data and composable architecture to agentic AI and context engineering, Scott lays out a vision for a future where marketing systems become less about interfaces and workflows… and more about intelligence, orchestration, and decision-making. We also dig into: * Why the SaaS business model is under pressure * The rise of the “hyper-tail” of custom AI-built software * Why analytics may be the first MarTech category fully disrupted by AI * The hidden organizational problem behind poor data strategy * Why “context” may become the most important concept in enterprise software * How AI is changing the relationship between platforms, APIs, services, and custom development * Why brands need to rethink the divide between owned media and paid media * The future of composable MarTech stacks and semantic data layers * Why the next generation of marketers will need radically different skills Scott also shares his perspective on: * The evolution from suites → ecosystems → composable AI systems * Why traditional UI-driven software may be headed toward a major transformation * The role of first-party data in connecting customer experience across channels * Why most organizations still aren’t prepared for the operational realities of AI * And why the companies that bridge MarTech and AdTech most effectively may have a major competitive advantage in the years ahead This conversation goes deep into the infrastructure layer of modern marketing — but ultimately it’s about something bigger: how organizations make decisions in an AI-native world. If you care about: AI + marketing Composable architecture Customer data strategy Enterprise software Agentic workflows The future of SaaS Or the convergence of MarTech, AdTech, and DataTech… …this is a must-listen episode.

The Accuracy Crisis in Advertising: Scott McKinley on Bad Data and the Hidden Tax on CTV

What if nearly half of every dollar spent on Connected TV is being wasted before an ad is ever served to the right person? In this episode of Signal & Noise, Brett House and Rio Longacre sit down with Scott McKinley, one of the advertising industry’s most outspoken voices on data quality and identity. As founder and CEO of Truthset, Scott has spent years exposing a problem that sits at the heart of modern advertising: the vast majority of audience data flowing through digital and CTV ecosystems is far less accurate than marketers assume. Drawing on decades of experience spanning Nielsen, Exelate, and his own entrepreneurial ventures, Scott explains why advertising markets ultimately run on one thing: trust. When buyers and sellers lack confidence in audience quality, the result is friction, inefficiency, and billions of dollars in wasted media spend. The conversation takes a deep dive into Connected TV, where Scott argues that a hidden “accuracy tax” is undermining the promise of precision advertising. Much of today’s CTV targeting relies on probabilistic links between IP addresses and consumer identities—connections that, according to Truthset’s research, are often wrong the majority of the time. The result is a system where advertisers believe they are buying highly targeted audiences, while in reality they are frequently reaching the wrong households altogether.   Scott also shares a provocative thesis about the future of media: publishers, broadcasters, and streaming platforms must embrace authentication if they hope to compete with the walled gardens. Companies like Google, Meta Platforms, Amazon, and Netflix command premium advertising economics not simply because they have scale, but because they know exactly who their users are. Without authenticated audiences, much of the open internet risks becoming an increasingly commoditized marketplace of low-quality impressions and collapsing CPMs. Along the way, Scott and the hosts explore: * Why trust is the foundational currency of advertising markets * How bad identity linkages create massive inefficiencies in CTV * The historical role Nielsen played in establishing confidence in television advertising * Why many marketing measurement systems reward cheap reach over true effectiveness * The economic case for authenticated audiences across the open web * How publishers can dramatically increase yield by prioritizing data quality over scale * Why CPMs for truly verified audiences are likely to rise significantly in the years ahead * The need for independent standards and governance to restore confidence in digital advertising This episode is a powerful reminder that sophisticated algorithms, AI, and attribution systems are only as good as the data beneath them. If the underlying audience signals are wrong, every optimization built on top of them becomes suspect. For marketers, publishers, and technology providers alike, Scott makes the case that the future of advertising belongs to those who can prove that their data is accurate—and earn the trust that makes markets work.