Conversations with MarTech

It’s an interesting time to be a CMO. Marketing spend is under scrutiny, as it so often is, buying habits are changing and AI is threatening to upend a number of aspects of sales and marketing we thought we knew.

All of that adds more complexity to a leadership role that already requires people skills, an analytical mind and a healthy dose of creativity.

In this episode of Conversations with MarTech, we’re talking to Steven Quach, CMO at Pipedrive, about his first few months as a CMO. 

Episode guide

1:11: Meet Steven Quach

2:20: What did Steven learn in his first two quarters as a CMO?

4:56: What was surprising about the CMO role?

7:09: How is Steven approaching the role of AI in the marketing organization?

13:20: How do Steven and his team use being a challenger brand to their advantage?

This podcast is produced by MarTech, a Third Door Media property.

There are more ways to reach consumers than ever before, and the retail media space is a great example. What started as ads on ecommerce sites to put brands in front of consumers at the point of purchase now includes financial services and even delivery services.

Today, the retail media space has a fragmentation problem, because marketers who want to buy media across the different channels and sites often find themselves working with each individual platform.

Retail media will also face a challenge from AI, as LLMs and AI agents begin to flatten the traditional purchase funnel.

In this episode of Conversations with MarTech, we’re talking to Tom Richards, SVP of global product at MiQ, about the current state of the future of retail media.

Episode guide

1:15: Meet Tom Richards
2:46: Where is the retail space right now, in terms of maturity and continued growth? 
5:53: How does fragmentation impact marketers’ ability to actually understand performance?
8:23: What will the retail media landscape look like over the next 12 months and beyond? 
11:35: What impact will retail media see as AI helps flatten the purchase funnel?

This podcast is produced by MarTech, a Third Door Media property.

Adtech vendors were among the early adopters of machine learning, using it to help optimize campaign performance over the past decade. Social media platforms use AI to help build creative units.

But there are a number of use cases for AI and agents in the advertising ecosystem, including audience research and insights,which are flying under the radar but hold tremendous potential for both advertisers and publishers. 

In this episode of Conversations with MarTech, we’re talking to Karim Rayes, chief product officer at programmatic advertising platform Nexxen, about how the ad ecosystem uses AI now and how it will use it in the future.

Episode guide

Meet Karim Rayes

What do we mean by the term “agentic web?”

Where are companies capitalizing on AI in the advertising ecosystem?

What’s an under-the-radar use of AI in advertising?

Will we see more complete AI ecosystems in advertising moving forward?

This podcast is produced by MarTech, a Third Door Media property.

You don’t need billions of data points to tell you that the digital experience has changed significantly in the past few years, but when you have them, they tell quite a story.

Just a few years ago, many digital experiences started with what we now call “traditional search.” But as traditional search gave way to AI-powered search, it created a shockwave across the digital landscape.

Organic traffic is down. Discovery is more fragmented. LLM visitors behave differently from search visitors and time on websites is decreasing. 

All of these data points impact how marketers attract, retain and delight customers on their digital journeys. 

In today’s episode, we’re talking to Jean-Christophe Pitié, chief marketing and partnerships officer at Contentsquare about the digital experience data his company collects. 

Episode guide

1:14: Meet Jean-Christophe Pitié

3:00: What do billions of data points tell us about organic traffic and digital discovery today?

6:29: Discovery is more fragmented than ever before

6:54: How does traffic from LLMs differ from traditional search traffic?

10:07: Why has time spent on websites decreased?

11:06: What was most surprising about the latest digital experience data?

This podcast is produced by MarTech, a Third Door Media property.

AI is making its way into online retail for both consumers and sellers.

Consumers are increasingly using AI tools for product discovery, while retailers are deploying AI-powered agents to help with the customer experience.

But true AI shopping agents are still rare to find, at least for now.

In this episode we’re talking to Grant Deken, director of product at Klaviyo, about how consumers use AI in their shopping; what stands between AI-assisted shopping experiences and AI agents that do the shopping for us; and how brands are keeping pace with consumers’ AI use and advances in the technology itself. 

Episode guide

0:36: Meet Grant Deken
0:50: How are shoppers using AI and how do they feel about the experience?
3:15: How does the way shoppers use AI for research differ from the way they used traditional search?
7:50: What has to happen for agentic commerce to become a reality?
11:01: What do brands have to do to keep pace with consumer AI usage?

This podcast is produced by MarTech, a Third Door Media property.

Consumers jumped on the AI search bandwagon soon after ChatGPT launched. More than half of shoppers use AI as a research supplement, and nearly 20% are moving to AI-powered LLMs for all or most of their search needs.

Brands, on the other hand, are focusing on AI to power chat and customer experiences. That creates a gap between consumers and brands when it comes to how they’re adopting AI.

While the use of AI agents to do your holiday shopping for you is still quite a ways off for many people, AI will still create significant disruption in the online retail space.

In this episode of Conversations with MarTech, we’re talking to Doug Straton, CMO of Bazaarvoice, about how consumers and brands are using AI for visibility, discovery, research and — ultimately – purchasing.


Episode guide

0:44: Meet Doug Straton
1:22: How consumers use AI in commerce
4:55: How large is the gap between consumer use of AI and brands’ use of AI?
8:05: Are brands using GEO or following “Good SEO is AEO?”
12:20: How well do marketers understand the shifts in product discovery yet to come?
15:39: Insights on ChatGPT ads

This podcast is produced by MarTech, a Third Door Media property.

Did you know technical debt costs global enterprises approximately $400 million annually?

It’s a staggering amount of money, and that debt arises from — among other things —  a cultural resistance to change or budgetary limitations, which lead organizations to add new applications rather than replacing outdated systems.

Technical debt can accumulate practically anywhere in an organization, and the martech stack is no exception.

In this episode, we’re talking with Tara DeZao, senior product marketing director at Pegasystems, about technical debt, whether AI can help solve the problem and how all of this plays into customer data and customer experience.

Episode guide

0:36: Meet Tara DeZao
0:57: How does technical debt accumulate to such levels?
2:48: What role does AI play in helping address technical debt?
4:38: How will agentic AI help with legacy systems and technical debt?
6:50: Do legacy systems stay in place because organizations trust them?
9:50: How do marketing teams feel about AI in their organizations?
14:07: What will happen with technical debt and AI adoption in the coming year?

This podcast is produced by MarTech, a Third Door Media property.

Marketers who are building campaigns and thinking about the customer experience probably don’t often think about the data layer of their martech applications.

But the data layer is the key to customer relationships, and according to Mike Anderson, co-founder and CTO at Tealium, we’re now in the fifth era of the data layer.

Anderson says the data layer’s evolution goes back to early web analytics data, and it’s continued to evolve to real-time data and now an AI-powered data layer that helps deliver real-time conversations to customers.

In this episode of Conversations with MarTech, Anderson discusses the data layer as the foundation to customer experience, what it takes to succeed in a data and AI-driven world and more.

Episode guide

0:35: Meet Mike Anderson
1:49: What do we mean when we discuss “the data layer?”
2:40: What is the “fifth era” of the data layer and how did we get here?
7:05: The importance of context in the data layer
9:15: What separates the company that will win with data and AI from those who will struggle?
11:24: Why it’s easier to lose a customer than ever before
12:01: What will be the dominant data themes in the year ahead?
14:04: “The world has moved to conversations.”

This podcast is produced by MarTech, a Third Door Media property.

Measurement poses a challenge for many marketers thanks to the explosion in marketing channels, the overwhelming amount of data in marketing today and the complicated relationships between marketing leaders and other C-suite executives.

But how do marketers feel about their measurement?

Research says many marketers are happy with their measurement, but that there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

In this episode of Conversations with MarTech, we’re talking to Matt Spiegel, EVP of growth for TransUnion’s TruAudience business, about the state of marketing measurement, the role of AI and what’s ahead.

Episode guide

0:34: Meet Jason Ing
1:10: What are marketing are excited and frustrated with AI
3:41: What can AI do for campaign creation workflows?
6:45: How will Typeface differentiate its AI capabilities from competitors?
9:20: What will be the hot topics around AI one year from now?

This podcast is produced by MarTech, a Third Door Media property.

We’ve all dealt with data silos and organizational silos, but as organizations struggle to develop an AI strategy and centralize around AI tools, we’re now at risk for AI silos as well.

The real benefit of AI is integrating it in your workflows, where it can help ease the manual tasks associated with campaign creation, for example, and act like a partner for human marketers.

On this episode of Conversations with MarTech, we’re talking to Jason Ing, CMO of Typeface, about integrating AI into workflows, managing hybrid teams of humans and AI agents and more.

Episode guide

0:34: Meet Jason Ing
1:10: What are marketing are excited and frustrated with AI
3:41: What can AI do for campaign creation workflows?
6:45: How will Typeface differentiate its AI capabilities from competitors?
9:20: What will be the hot topics around AI one year from now?

This podcast is produced by MarTech, a Third Door Media property.