Dan Nathan interviews Michael Nathanson, co-founder of MoffettNathanson, on the RiskReversal Podcast about his 28-year analyst career and pivot from linear media to digital advertising and Big Tech. Nathanson explains why Google and Meta became a hedge against cord-cutting-driven declines in cable networks, noting their strong growth, performance-ad monetization advantages, and durable distribution. He reflects on mistakes (notably underestimating Netflix) and lessons about backing secular winners while monitoring capital formation and competitive narrative shifts. The discussion focuses on AI’s impact: Nathanson defends Alphabet’s willingness to innovate, infrastructure advantages, first-party data, and TPU strategy, while questioning Meta’s heavy AI and metaverse spending without a clear long-term plan or returns framework. He also describes MoffettNathanson’s industry-first, supply-demand research process and independence from investment banking conflicts.

After the break, Dan hosts Adam Singolda, CEO and founder of Taboola, on the Risk Reversal Podcast to discuss Taboola’s role in the open web advertising market outside Google and Meta. Singolda explains Taboola’s performance ad platform serves thousands of advertisers and pays partners about $1.5B annually, helping publishers, apps, and OEMs monetize and drive engagement. They discuss publisher pressure from LLM-driven “Google Zero” traffic declines, and Taboola’s “Deeper Dive” answer engine that sits on publisher pages to enable conversational engagement; Taboola data shows users who ask questions generate 3+ times more revenue and 2–3 times more engagement than traditional ads. Singolda also announces a Claude skill that lets users launch and optimize Taboola campaigns agent-to-agent based on performance goals, argues OpenAI will struggle to build an ad business while Google’s Gemini will likely succeed, and outlines how companies must adopt AI aggressively to accelerate growth and profitability.

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