The Sell-Side Strikes Back: Joe Root on AI, the Outcomes Era, and Rebuilding the Ad Stack from the Publisher Up

Cannes-Lions 2026 | Days 1 & 2: Agentic Media, AI-Native Agencies, Self-Service TV, and the Reinvention of Creativity

With Rio Longacre, Krish Raja & Brett House Signal & Noise is on the ground at Cannes-Lions 2026. This year marks the first time Rio Longacre, Krish Raja, and Brett House have attended Cannes together as a team under the Signal & Noise banner. While each of us has been to Cannes in previous years, experiencing it together—and recording conversations live from Hearst House—made this year’s festival something special. And what a year to do it. Cannes Lions 2026 felt bigger, busier, and more energized than ever. The familiar faces from advertising, media, and publishing were all here, but what stood out most was the influx of AI founders, product leaders, engineers, and technologists who are increasingly shaping the future of our industry. This special compilation brings together our Day 1 opening conversation along with every interview recorded during Days 1 and 2 at Hearst House. Across these sessions, we explored some of the biggest themes emerging from Cannes: • Agentic media buying and autonomous analytics • The transformation of agencies into AI-native operating models • Self-service television and the future of premium video advertising • AI-powered measurement, causal modeling, and MMM • The reinvention of creative workflows • Healthcare marketing, discoverability, and the changing physician experience • The role of creators, influencers, and culture in modern brand building 🎙 John Hoctor — CEO & Co-Founder, Newton Research; Founder of Data Plus Math John discusses analytics agents, causal modeling, MMM, and how Newton is helping agencies such as Horizon Media and Dentsu build toward an agentic future for planning, measurement, and buying. 🎙 Robyn Freye — President, Court Avenue Robyn shares her perspective on enterprise AI transformation, organizational redesign, and what it means to build an AI-native agency designed for the intelligence economy. 🎙 Daniel Druger — VP Product, Comcast Advertising / Universal Ads Daniel walks through Universal Ads, Comcast’s effort to bring self-service buying to premium television, making TV advertising accessible to millions of businesses that historically couldn’t participate. 🎙 Brian Vaughan — Executive Creative Director, Shadow Brian explores how creativity is evolving in the age of AI, why culture-first campaigns still matter, and how PR, creators, celebrity partnerships, and social storytelling can work together to create moments that break through the noise. 🎙 Andrea Palmer — CEO, PHM (Publicis Health Media) Andrea discusses healthcare marketing’s evolution from compliance-driven communications to discoverability, influence, and helping physicians and patients navigate an increasingly complex information ecosystem. This compilation episode is available in full on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, while each individual conversation will also be released separately here on YouTube. And we’re only halfway through the week. Days 3 and 4 are coming soon, featuring even more founders, product leaders, agency executives, publishers, and technologists helping define what comes next for media, marketing, AI, and advertising. Stay tuned. 🎧 Full compilation available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify 📺 Individual interviews dropping soon on YouTube Featured Guests 📰 More Cannes coverage, articles, and episodes at SignalAndNoise.ai

SIGNAL BREAK: Tejas Manohar, Co-CEO of HighTouch Talks LiveRamp Data Purchase Proposition (from Publicis)

For weeks, reports that Publicis was exploring a relationship with Hightouch following its acquisition of LiveRamp circulated as an industry scoop. Until now, no one involved had publicly confirmed it. In this special Signal & Noise Signal Break, we sit down with Hightouch co-founder and CEO Tejas Manohar, who confirms that Hightouch has in fact been in discussions with Publicis. That confirmation adds an important new dimension to one of the biggest stories in adtech this year. What would a partnership between Publicis, LiveRamp, and Hightouch mean for identity, activation, clean rooms, and the future architecture of customer data? Rio Longacre, Brett House, and Tejas unpack the implications in a fast-moving, high-energy conversation between three practitioners deeply involved in modern marketing infrastructure. We discuss composable CDPs, warehouse-native activation, agentic workflows, and why the industry's center of gravity may be shifting yet again. To be clear, Hightouch is a sponsor of Signal & Noise, but sponsorship played no role in our interest in covering this story or inviting Tejas to join us. This discussion was driven entirely by the significance of the news and our belief that it deserves broader industry attention. This isn't the long-form Tejas episode we originally planned. That's still coming. Consider this an early dispatch—a Signal Break—to share an important confirmation with the market while it's still unfolding. Topics discussed: • Tejas confirms Hightouch has spoken with Publicis • What a Publicis–LiveRamp–Hightouch relationship could look like • Why composable architectures continue gaining momentum • How identity, activation, and measurement may evolve post-acquisition • The growing role of AI and agentic systems in marketing operations If you're trying to understand where the future marketing operating system is headed, this is one conversation you won't want to miss.

Can DSPs Save Publishers? Keith Petri and Rich Hyden on Viant Publisher Solutions, Identity, and the Future of Monetization

Signal & Noise Exclusive Publishers create the content. Publishers build the audiences. Publishers bear the costs. Yet somehow, after two decades of digital advertising innovation, many publishers capture only a fraction of the value they create. In this Signal & Noise exclusive, Rio Longacre and Brett House sit down with Keith Petri, SVP of Data, Identity & Supply at Viant, and Rich Hyden, SVP of Publisher Solutions at Viant, for a deep discussion on one of the most important questions facing the open internet: Can publishers reclaim their economic future—or are the economics of digital media fundamentally broken? This conversation coincides with Viant's major announcement of Viant Publisher Solutions, a new suite of capabilities designed to improve transparency, signal quality, monetization, identity activation, and supply-path efficiency for publishers while simultaneously improving advertiser outcomes. It represents one of the most significant publisher-focused initiatives launched by a major DSP in recent years. But this episode goes far beyond a product launch. Together, Keith and Rich unpack the realities of modern publisher monetization, the hidden inefficiencies inside today's programmatic supply chain, why signal quality increasingly determines revenue, and how identity has become one of the most valuable assets publishers possess. The discussion explores how technologies such as SupplyIQ, Direct Access, Household ID, and IRIS_ID aim to create a more direct relationship between buyers and sellers while reducing friction, duplication, and information loss throughout the advertising ecosystem. Along the way, the conversation tackles some of the biggest debates in advertising today: * Why premium publishers continue to struggle despite creating enormous value * Whether supply-path optimization helps publishers—or hurts them * The role of identity in driving publisher revenue * Why signal quality may be the new currency of digital advertising * How CTV is reshaping publisher economics * The growing power of walled gardens versus the open internet * Why contextual intelligence is becoming increasingly important * How AI and agentic media buying may transform programmatic advertising * Whether DSPs can play a meaningful role in helping publishers thrive * What the future of publisher monetization looks like over the next decade Keith and Rich also share a fascinating perspective from inside one of the industry's most innovative DSPs, explaining why better advertiser outcomes and healthier publisher economics may no longer be competing objectives. For anyone working in digital media, ad tech, publishing, identity, programmatic advertising, retail media, CTV, measurement, or AI-powered marketing, this is a conversation packed with practical insights and big-picture thinking. The future of the open internet may depend on whether buyers and sellers can become more aligned. This episode explores what that future could look like. Guests * Keith Petri, SVP Data, Identity & Supply, Viant * Rich Hyden, SVP Publisher Solutions, Viant Hosted By * Rio Longacre * Brett House Topics Covered Publisher Monetization • Programmatic Advertising • Supply Path Optimization (SPO) • CTV • Identity Resolution • First-Party Data • Household ID • Contextual Targeting • Publisher Data Strategy • AI Advertising • Agentic Media Buying • Open Internet Economics • Ad Tech Infrastructure • Signal Quality • Media Quality • Digital Advertising #SignalAndNoise #AdTech #ProgrammaticAdvertising #Viant #PublisherMonetization #CTV #IdentityResolution #DigitalAdvertising #RetailMedia #AIAdvertising #OpenInternet #MarketingTechnology Enjoy!

Life After AdTech: What Happens When You Stop Optimizing Clicks and Start Building Aircraft?

What happens when an early Amazon engineer who helped pioneer automated advertising leaves AdTech behind to build the world's fastest commercial airliner? In this episode of Signal & Noise, Brett House and Rio Longacre sit down with Blake Scholl, Founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic [https://boomsupersonic.com/?utm_source=chatgpt.com], for a wide-ranging conversation about innovation, entrepreneurship, aviation, AI, and why some of the world's biggest opportunities are hiding in plain sight. Before launching Boom, Blake helped shape early internet advertising at Amazon, worked through the hypergrowth years at Groupon, and experienced firsthand the rise of AdTech, recommendation engines, and large-scale customer acquisition systems. Then he made an unlikely leap: leaving software behind to tackle one of the hardest problems in engineering—bringing commercial supersonic flight back from the dead.  The discussion explores what Blake learned from Amazon, why he believes Groupon missed a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and how short-term thinking can destroy even the most promising companies. Along the way, he shares stories about crashing Google AdWords, building the world's largest spam operation at Groupon, and getting some of his toughest lessons directly from Jeff Bezos.  The conversation then shifts to Boom Supersonic's mission, the history of the Concorde, the regulatory decisions that stalled aviation innovation for decades, and Blake's controversial view that technological progress didn't slow because the problems became harder—it slowed because society stopped pursuing them.  Blake also reveals the behind-the-scenes story of Boom's near-collapse, the seven-year pursuit of a partnership with Rolls-Royce, and how a failed engine deal ultimately led to one of the company's biggest breakthroughs: building its own propulsion technology and creating a new turbine business that may help fund the future of supersonic travel.  The episode closes with Blake's thoughts on AI, entrepreneurship, and why the biggest impact of AI may not be job replacement—but the creation of millions of new builders capable of turning ideas into reality.  * Blake Scholl's journey from Amazon and Groupon to Boom Supersonic * Early AdTech, automated advertising, and internet growth stories * Lessons from Jeff Bezos and Amazon's long-term thinking culture * Groupon's rise, fall, and missed platform opportunity * Why innovation in aviation stalled after Concorde * Regulatory capture and the history of supersonic flight * Building Boom Supersonic from scratch * The failed Rolls-Royce partnership and Boom's engine strategy * Turbine power generation, AI infrastructure, and data centers * The future of commercial supersonic travel * Why AI may create more entrepreneurs than ever before * Long-term thinking, risk-taking, and building hard-tech companies Whether you're interested in aviation, startups, AI, AdTech, or the future of innovation itself, this is a fascinating conversation about what happens when someone decides to stop optimizing digital systems and start building physical ones. #SignalAndNoise #BoomSupersonic #BlakeScholl #Aviation #SupersonicFlight #AI #Entrepreneurship #Innovation #Amazon #Groupon #AdTech #MarTech #HardTech #Technology #FutureOfWork #CommercialAviation #ArtificialIntelligence #StartupLeadership #Engineering #DigitalTransformation

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.