Insider Interviews: Media and Marketing Pros

Yes, I’m just a tad passionate about that topic! Thanks to MCNY for giving me a pulpit.

I, frankly, was happy to share how I see podcasting and multi-channel content helping brands “be everywhere,” humanize executives, and build trust. Yes, you’ll get my career journey from journalism to ad sales marketing and (spoiler alert!) my current role as a senior writer on Nielsen’s global marketing team. But that background will hopefully help you understand why I believe  storytelling is more important than ever amid data, ROI pressures, and AI. I quoted my own byline about Forrester research that 94% of B2B buyers use generative AI. So, “listen and learn” what I thinks creates differentiators.

More spoiler alerts:

if your brand is keen on cause marketing, spotlight it!  But properly. Authenticity is more than a buzzword. It’s essential to walk your talk today.

Also I explain where I think social efforts should be focused, and why keeping humans in the loop with AI to preserve some “crackle” is key. Also, I quote past guests, like Lou Paskalis, who urges advertisers to support news media, and encourage students to learn all platforms, seek mentorship, and write well.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mossappeal

MORE of my POV: MossHysteria Substack

Host E.B. Moss shares a personal scoop, and a re-scoop: a favorite episode with Rishad Tobaccowala, futurist and author of Rethinking Work, whose ideas just got a fresh round of buzz via a new Fortune Magazine interview.

Rishad does everything big; he starts with two doppios (four espresso shots!) He also goes big in challenging the premise of everything we think we know about work. He's a voice of authority. named a top business leader by Business Week a top five marketing innovator by Time, and he's in the Advertising Hall of Fame. In "Rethinking Work" he's candid that companies are fixated on the wrong question ("How many days a week should people be in the office?") instead of the right one ("How do we rethink our strategy, our org design, and the difference between managing and leading?").

And that Bossing is bad. Influencing is good. Rishad breaks down how "bossing" needs to morph into mentoring, predicts the plus side of fractional employment, the rise of the "company of one," and why AI means more work but fewer traditional jobs. Yes, as he puts it, "Change sucks. But irrelevance is worse."

Also in this episode: why storytelling is the whole point of the data age (not a casualty of it) And E.B. shares her own scoop about her new role telling stories for Nielsen's Global Brand Marketing team.

Also mentioned in this episode: Rishad's Rethinking Work podcast, and his conversation with fellow Insider Interviews alum Lou Paskalis.

Insider Interviews delivers the insider's scoop on the business of media, marketing, and advertising.

Key Moments include:

Support this show at: buymeacoffee.com/mossappeal or find out more at mossappeal.com/podcasts.

Theme music by John Clayton.

Host E.B. Moss brought on the new GM of Alembic, Hitesh Wadhwani, during the POSSIBLE Conference in Miami, as part of a mini-series for "Insider Interviews" called “POV: Possible.” Because, as Wadhwani explains, with causal AI it's now possible for marketers to prove what actually drove business results.

Wadhwani arrived at Alembic from 12 years at Google, where he helped build measurement products including Google Meridian. He explains why having more marketing data does not necessarily create more confidence — and why traditional approaches still leave CMOs and CFOs asking the same question: what actually caused the outcome?

He shares a standout case study involving a major airline's Olympic campaign spend. Alembic's model identified, at moment-level granularity, that the placement of the brand's logo during the medal ceremony drove more flights to Paris than any other single moment in the campaign — the kind of insight that makes causal AI feel a lot less like a buzzword and a lot more like a business tool.

One of the biggest ideas in the episode is how causal AI can help close the gap between marketing and finance. Instead of separate teams using separate metrics, Alembic puts brand, performance, and measurement into one framework that gives CMOs and CFOs a shared language for decision-making. That includes getting better vision in to how to exactly measure creator and influencer marketing.

Learn how Alembic's model works, and what's next for the company with NVIDIA as a compute partner.

What if the biggest problem in digital advertising isn’t whether ads are working… but whether anyone seeing them is actually human?

Insider Interviews host E.B. Moss talks with Jay Benach, GM of Media Security at Human, about bots, fake traffic, AI crawlers, ad fraud, and the increasingly blurry line between human behavior and automated activity online.

Human, formerly known as "Bot or Not" then "White Ops" (which explains a lot of what they do) helps brands distinguish between real people, useful bots, and malicious automation impacting their business. Benach explains how the company evolved from identifying fraudulent browser sessions to helping marketers understand a much more complicated ecosystem of humans, AI agents, shopping bots, scrapers, and crawlers.

The conversation explores why “viewable” doesn’t necessarily mean “human,” how bots were engineered to satisfy traditional ad measurement standards, and why marketers now face a new challenge: determining not just whether traffic is automated, but who sent it and what it’s trying to accomplish.

Benach also discusses:

As Benach explains, the question is no longer simply “Is this a bot?” It’s “Who sent it, and what does it want?”

Key Moments:

Jason Wiese, EVP of Insights and Measurement at the VAB, might make you rethink your entire approach to media planning, buckle your seatbelt around AI, and race to embrace premium video.

BUT - the good news is real too. Premium video remains the industry's most transparent, brand-safe environment, and Wiese walks through the VAB's five-pillar definition to cut through how loosely the term gets used. On what separates a valuable impression from a wasted one: "A bad ad environment can devalue a brand. It's not even a flat-line thing. It devalues a brand."

He rounds it out with a clear-eyed take on AI in media planning, being useful if planners understand its inherent bias toward digital platforms before trusting any AI-generated allocation. And, if you want to see how good ad environments hold up in practice, the recent Insider Interviews episode with Atmosphere has some eye-opening eye-tracking data worth a look.

Share this with someone who's still flying blind on digital metrics. And subscribe so you don't miss the remaining POV: Possible episodes. Non-bot likes and comments are especially welcomed.

At the fourth annual POSSIBLE Conference in Miami I built a mini-series of four Insider Interviews episodes I’m calling “POV: Possible,” kicking off with Zack , the founder and CEO of The Cool Company. (Yes, that’s the actual name. BUT, COOL is actually an acronym — more on that in the episode.)

What is truly cool is that this company is based on four acquired ad tech companies, integrated into a single AI-powered platform: They build your ad creative, buy your media across every channel, and continuously optimize for business goals or outcomes. No siloes. One system, one goal, one cool company. And, Zack illustrates the how and why in my segment called, “Pitch Me. Pinch Me.”

Spoiler alert (unless you were at Possible and saw it from SalientMG’s Innovation Stage!): Zack sharesa a compelling case study from National Veterinary Associates where his team ran a head-to-head test against a human media trading team.  Same budget, same time period. The result?

289% more phone calls and appointments. The reason? While a skilled human team might make 70 campaign changes in a week, theri CoolAI made over 8,600 in two weeks.

As Zack put it:

“What human is gonna log in, take 20 minutes to make a change that improves something one one-thousandth of a percent? But micro-gains compound fast.”

More human side? You’ll learn about his dog, Barry (listen why he’s named that!), and Zack’s appreciation for Padel (pah-DEL?!)

But, we also got into the measurement mess that’s plaguing the human industry right now. Zack’s universal advice? Always ask how your attribution is actually being calculated, and sanity-check it against your own internal numbers. “Ultimately, at the end of the day, you should be looking at your own internal business metrics. If you’re a restaurant, it’s like, how many entrees did I sell?”

And when it comes to AI being overhyped? Zack, of course, doesn’t think so. But he does think we’re just now crossing from “faster and cheaper” into “actually better.” Proof point? He makes the case that the beauty of automation is its range: the same platform that optimizes campaigns for a national airline can do the same for a local car wash, with no ad expertise required.

The playing field is leveling, and the implications for marketers at every scale are hard to ignore.

Key Moments

0:01:25 — What the Cool Company actually does under one AI platform 

0:03:49 — What COOL stands for: More than a name; a philosophy.

0:06:08 — The Proof Point: A case study that pit AI-driven campaign management against a human trading team

0:07:04 — Why micro-optimizations at AI scale compounds gains humans can’t replicate 

0:09:00 — Attribution truth talk  

0:10:19 — The Channel Budget Trap: Why siloing budgets by platform (TikTok, search, display) limits performance vs unified goal-setting

0:11:13— The Human Side: Meet Barry, Zack’s co-pilot, and the most Game of Thrones-named dog in ad tech

0:12:49 — Is AI Overhyped? Zack’s take on where AI is in its evolution 

0:15:06 — AI and Jobs…and what roles will matter most.

The Cool Company

Zack Dugow

SalientMG

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mossappeal

Ryan came up through Viacom and Turner, but his real origin story starts on a soccer pitch. (Yes, I asked him about going from the pitch to the TV pitch — and yes, he’s stealing that line.) But apropos to our conversation he walked away from established media for a startup bet on a simple but brilliant insight: nobody ever walked into a bar and asked them to put on a muted episode of Law & Order. Atmosphere was built to fix that.

We get into the full value proposition of “TV for your eyes, not for your ears” that’s made in three-minute, visually arresting loops across 30 channels.

He scored a win in my first “Pitch Me. Pinch Me.” segment, doing a great job explaining how they’re capturing 10 million viewers a night in their built for OFF-the-couch moments.

His “pitch” was backed up by Media Science that did an eye-tracking study to deliver proof points. I was intrigued enough by that to put them in an article I wrote recently for MediaVillage.

You’ll learn how their targeting capability can geo-fence an ad to within seven miles of a retail location, and why their timing. Hint: Ryan explains this era as The Great Reconnection, with people actively seeking out more in-person experiences after years of heads-down, hyper-personalized digital isolation.

Ryan also gives brands some real, practical advice on creative — what works, what works better, and why the bucket debate (is this CTV? is this OOH?) is the wrong conversation entirely.

It’s an upbeat 30-minutes that even explains Ryan’s appreciation for Turkish food. But another reason to listen? You might get the Insider’s scoop on their next strategic move. (Okay, it has to do with why Atmosphere is a natural fit within retail media networks since they’re reaching consumers who are already out and already deciding, not just browsing from the couch.)

00:00 – From the pitch to the TV pitch

00:27 – What is Atmosphere TV? CTV IRL explained

02:38 – 60,000 bars, restaurants, and gyms can’t be wrong

03:06 – Ryan’s origin story: from pro soccer to chasing a feeling

09:02 – Debut of the “Pitch Me. Pinch Me.” segment

10:06 – The founding insight: nobody asked a bar to show a muted Law & Order

12:00 – Geo-targeting within 7 miles of a retail location

12:57 – The Great Reconnection: why people are seeking out in-person experiences

15:00 – Channels built for off-the-couch environments

15:45 – Proof of concept: why distracted bar crowds are actually watching and MediaScience results

17:43 – Creative advice: what works and what works better

21:10 – Measurement: foot traffic, receipt data, ROAS and case studies

24:25 – The bucket debate: stop asking if it’s CTV or OOH

25:30 –Atmosphere’s next strategic move

29:29 – Best coaching advice for work or team work

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-spicer-8189b43/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/atmospheretv/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mossappeal

Beth Mach, Co-Founder & COO of Spacely Media, introduces the first transactional marketplace for premium media — giving print, out-of-home, and venue advertising the digital infrastructure it’s never had.

“Buying in those channels today still looks like it did 20 years ago — lots of PDFs, lots of phone calls. Spacely closes that gap.”  

Their platform replaces friction with functionality, and dashboards instead of PDFs. Like Neil Vogel, in my recent episode with the People, Inc. CEO, Mach is bullish on magazines and makes the case for why brands are coming back to these channels. She also explains why credibility wins the room when you’re raising money. It shouldn’t be different as a female founder. But… 

“Every founder meets skepticism. When you are female, it adds another layer — especially when the room has historically looked a little different.” — Beth Mach

Wendy Lund, Global CEO of Allison Worldwide and returning Insider Interviews guest (exactly one year later!), reflects on her path from women’s health advocacy to leading a global agency — and what she’s building now. Her path ran from a master’s in women’s history to nonprofit marketing, to running a global agency. With her move to Global CEO of Allison Worldwide and Vice Chair of health at parent company Stagwell, Wendy described her enthusiasm for Allison’s strengths, across campaigns, media/influencer, and experiential.

She reinforces the importance of listening, purpose-driven work, and addressing ongoing inequities in women’s health and mental health.

“My favorite value has always been belonging. Do your customers feel like they’re part of something? To me, that is so sticky.” 

Her advice for building brand love in a fragmented media world is deceptively simple: be real, and build belonging.

She’s also clear-eyed about the disconnect between how much we talk about innovation — and how much attention women’s health actually gets:

“AI is on the tip of everybody’s tongue — but at the end of the day, it’s also steeped in emotion. And we’re 51% of the population. That means we should get 51% of the attention.” — Wendy Lund

Molly DeMellier, Head of Communications at Sounds Profitable, gives an insider’s scoop on the organization helping shape podcasting’s growing presence at SXSW and beyond. She points to the combined strengths of the co-founders: Bryan Barletta’s (“terrifying”) encyclopedic industry brain and Tom Webster’s research engine, along with her own expanding role shaping panel strategy, supporting retainer clients, and helping partners amplify their stories. Molly describes Sounds Profitable place in podcasting as building community and connection through events, networking, research, and partner support, emphasizing that “Podcasting is really taking off and it’s the people that power it.”

But, noting the industry’s representation gap, takes her role seriously when working on events like Podcast Movement, pondering “who do I put on stage that’s going to inspire that next person” to know they can see themselves podcasting.

And she closes with something that sticks: her belief that women shouldn’t have to choose between a career and a family — and why she’s determined to make sure the next generation sees women in power.

“A big fear I have is that women will leave professions not by choice, but by force. And my biggest fear is what about the children who see their mom who didn’t have a choice?” — Molly DeMellier

Key Moments & Time Codes

00:00 — How Podcast Movement Evolutions made its first-ever appearance at SXSW

00:53 — Beth Mach explains why Spacely calls it premium media — and why that reframe matters for the industry

04:50 — Beth explains how buying a print ad in 2025 still works the way it did 20 years ago — and how Spacely is finally changing that

09:40 — Why print titles that shut down years ago are quietly relaunching — and what that signals for brands

14:55 — On fundraising as a female founder: the extra layer of skepticism, and how clarity of purpose cuts through it

16:30 — Wendy Lund returns one year later as Global CEO of Allison Worldwide — what changed, and why she missed agency life

22:21 — What Wendy learned going in-house at Organon: the difference between talking at women and actually listening to them

23:16 — Women’s health today: the innovations gaining ground and the conditions still being undertreated

27:35 — How Sounds Profitable brought the podcast industry to SXSW — and why community-building is at the core of everything they do

30:57 — What Sounds Profitable partners get: industry counsel, audience research expertise, and Molly’s evangelism that helps all boats rise!

34:59 — Closing thought as a woman in business: rising childcare costs are pushing women out of the workforce not by choice, but by force.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mossappeal

I believed in my good fortune, and belief systems turned out to be the focus of Nir’s work.

— Nir Eyal

What I captured in 20 minutes was a masterclass in consumer psychology from one of the most cited thinkers in behavioral design. And a lot of fun. Nir’s first book, “Hooked”, gave marketers and product builders a framework for engineering repeat engagement. Yup, he explains his four-step model that of why users keep returning to things like Facebook, Duolingo, Slack, and even my beloved Starbucks.

His follow-up, “Indistractable,” tackled the flip side: how to protect your own focus in a world engineered to steal it. And his new third book makes the case that advertising’s most powerful function isn’t awareness or recall. It’s actually shaping what using a product feels like. Or tastes like.

Nir backs this up citing a Stanford fMRI study where participants tasted the exact same wine twice — once labeled cheap, once labeled expensive. Of course they rated the “expensive” pour as tastier, and brain scans confirmed they were genuinely experiencing more pleasure. 

The implication for marketers is significant: brand belief doesn’t just influence what consumers say about a product — it rewires how they perceive it in real time. As Nir puts it, “we are creating the experience, just as we’re creating the coffee and the cup.”

We also get into distraction and focus ( — territory that’s directly relevant to anyone managing teams, creative output, or their own attention. Nir draws a clean line between traction (any action that moves you toward what you planned to do) and distraction (anything that doesn’t) — and gave me a HUGE a-ha understanding about the common assumption that multitasking is counterproductive. You’re going to want to learn about the distinction between single-channel and multi-channel multitasking.  It’s how high performers and even distracted performers like me, can structure their time.  (Nir shares his personal system for consuming long-form reading; it’s a practical tactic worth stealing.)

Key Moments:

00:00 How a serendipitous ride to the airport turns into an impromptu bonus episode with author Nir Eyal
01:34 Nir’s background: behavioral designer, Stanford lecturer, and author of three books on habits, distraction, and belief
02:16 The Hooked framework: the four-step model behind every habit-forming product — and how to apply it
03:45 Beyond Belief: why advertising’s real job is shaping experience, not just building awareness
06:07 The Stanford fMRI wine study: proof that brand belief changes consumer perception at a neurological level
07:50 What marketers consistently underestimate: the experience loop of belief, anticipation, and confirmation
08:15 Facts vs. beliefs: a distinction with major implications for messaging and brand strategy
09:08 The one condition a product must meet before habit formation is even possible
12:45 Traction vs. distraction: a framework for reclaiming focus — and why the difference isn’t the behavior
14:11 Why planned downtime isn’t distraction — and how to stop moralizing screen time
15:37 The multitasking reframe: single-channel vs. multi-channel, and when doing two things at once actually works
17:04 Nir’s read-at-the-gym system: a practical productivity hack for high-volume information consumers
18:38 How beliefs shape attitudes and perception — what we’re able to see
19:33 Persuasion vs. coercion: the ethical and commercial case for “good” behavioral design

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mossappeal

Blake, who just welcomed baby #2, returned to work to help introduce Premion’s baby #4 — that latest CTV survey done with Advertiser Perceptions. And no one’s crying about this one: only 1% of respondents said they expect to decrease their CTV budgets.  With a rare perspective from being hands on across the buy side and sell side, from agency life at RPA to roles at Hulu and SpotX/Magnite, Blake now has a front-row seat to what’s coming from publishers and platforms. He shares those insights back with internal teams and advertisers to make the CTV landscape easier to navigate. And with us in this conversation.

What advertisers are learning, and what Blake explains particularly well, is that success in CTV isn’t just about shifting dollars into streaming. It’s about understanding how consumers actually watch content today. He was spot on:

So, advertisers have to be spot on everywhere, too, which is exactly why marketers are increasingly planning around “total TV” or converged video strategies instead of separating traditional television and streaming into different buckets.

Of course, this new world can feel like a maze. Fragmentation, walled gardens, and measurement challenges are still very real issues. Blake walks us through how platforms like Premion try to simplify that complexity by aggregating inventory across multiple streaming partners and layering in data that helps advertisers reach audiences efficiently. They’re especially focused on supporting local and mid-market advertisers who can now enjoy similar strategies and tactics as the big holding company agencies.

Another takeaway is about targeting. In digital advertising, the instinct is often to target audiences down to the smallest possible segment. But Blake makes the case that hyper-targeting can sometimes backfire, or just lose some efficiency, especially in smaller geographic markets.

His advice? Balance precision with scale. If you pile on too many audience filters, you may end up shrinking your available audience more than you intended.

We also spend time talking about a topic that seems unavoidable in every media conversation right now: AI. Blake’s view is pragmatic and optimistic, particularly for local advertisers who may not have access to large creative or analytics teams. So, he says:

In fact, he sees #AI helping smaller businesses build creative, optimize campaigns, and generate insights in ways that used to require a lot more resources. But, like taking on CTV, the world has changed!

We also touch on a few trends that may shape the next phase of CTV advertising, like the growing importance of live sports in streaming environments to new opportunities emerging around gaming and smart TV engagement.

The good news for me? Blake called in from his hometown of Austin, which is the home of SXSW. 

Pair that with his work as president of the local Austin chapter of the American Advertising Federation and I may be very well connected for the GSD&M party and more! I know people who know people. And now we all know a little more about CTV.

Download the Advertiser Perceptions 2026 Survey

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mossappeal