Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.

By Ari Paparo

The Marketecture Podcast is hosted by industry experts Ari Paparo and Eric Franchi. Every Friday they publish an interview with an important thinker in the advertising and marketing industries, and co... more

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FAQs about Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.:

How many episodes does Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast. have?

The podcast currently has 370 episodes available.

Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast. episodes:

January 09, 2026Episode 155: Ari Missed CES, but Eric and AI Were There. Plus, Mike Khristo Creates Marketing Plans from GitHub
In this conversation, Ari Paparo speaks with Mike Khristo, Founder of Layers, about the intersection of coding and marketing. Layers aims to automate marketing for developers who may not have the expertise or desire to market their products. They discuss the concept of “vibe coding,” where non-professional developers can create viable applications using AI tools. The conversation also covers marketing strategies, the importance of organic growth, and the future of app development in a rapidly evolving tech landscape.

Takeaways
Layers automates marketing for developers who lack marketing skills.

Vibe coding allows non-professionals to create viable apps.

AI tools are improving the quality of code produced by non-developers.

Organic growth is becoming increasingly important for app distribution.

App Store Optimization is crucial for visibility in app stores.

TikTok and Meta are key platforms for app marketing.

Non-technical individuals can successfully build and market apps.

The rise of niche apps is creating new opportunities in the market.

Developers can focus on building features rather than marketing.

The future of app development is empowering individuals to create without needing extensive technical backgrounds.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Layers and Their Purpose
03:00 The Role of Code in Marketing
06:04 Vibe Coding: The New Frontier
09:02 Marketing Strategies for Vibe Coders
12:02 Organic Growth and App Store Optimization
14:49 The Future of App Development and Marketing

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50min
January 06, 2026Inside Walmart Connect: From Retail Media to Full-Funnel Performance with Khurrum Malik
Walmart Connect has quickly evolved from a search-driven retail media platform into a full-funnel advertising powerhouse. In this episode, Ari Paparo sits down with Khurrum Malik, VP of Business and Product Marketing at Walmart Connect, to unpack how Walmart is combining on-site search, off-site media, CTV via Vizio, and closed-loop measurement to spark real sales impact.

Khurrum shares why he joined Walmart Connect, how “couch to cart” is becoming a reality, what performance TV means for emerging advertisers, and why incrementality is the new gold standard for retail media. The conversation also previews Walmart Connect’s CES announcements, including AI-driven ad tools, search incrementality GA, and new third-party benchmarks that position Walmart Connect against digital and social media.

Takeaways
Walmart Connect is a multi-billion-dollar retail media business growing 30%+ by focusing on sales impact, not just media delivery

Search and PLAs remain the core, but Walmart Connect is expanding aggressively into brand, video, CTV, and off-site media

Vizio enables true “couch to cart” activation by connecting CTV exposure directly to Walmart sales outcomes

Incrementality and IROAS are becoming the measurement bar for retail media, not just attribution

Walmart’s omni-channel footprint of 4,600+ stores and 150M weekly shoppers is a core competitive advantage

CES announcements highlight AI-powered tools, search incrementality GA, and third-party benchmarks that outperform digital and social media norms

Chapters
00:00 Welcome & Introduction
00:38 Why Khurrum Joined Walmart Connect
02:18 What Is Walmart Connect Today
03:57 Beyond PLAs and Search
05:03 Scale, Brand, and Performance
06:33 Measurement and Incrementality
06:47 Vizio and “Couch to Cart”
09:30 Performance TV for Emerging Advertisers
11:09 Third-Party Measurement & Trust
13:50 CES Preview
17:10 Lightning Round
19:31 Wrap-Up

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20min
December 29, 2025Playwire with Jayson Dubin: Human Intelligence vs Machine Learning in AdTech at Marketecture Live
On Marketecture Live, Jayson Dubin, CEO and Founder of Playwire, explains how publishers can grow revenue and improve performance by combining machine learning with human intelligence. He shares concrete results from AI-driven traffic shaping and price floor optimization, walks through Playwire’s Quality, Performance, Transparency (QPT) initiative, and discusses major ecosystem issues like supply chain opacity, malicious ads, and the shifting realities of AI-driven discovery. He also introduces RAMP, Playwire’s Revenue Amplification Management Platform, built to give enterprise publishers control, visibility, and optional AI automation.
Takeaways
AI is best for repetitive, rapid decisions; humans are best for contextual strategy and judgment in a gray, complex ad ecosystem.

AI traffic shaping drove a 21% lift in Revenue Per Session versus 9% without it.

AI price flooring delivered about a 20% uplift in RPM through multidimensional, per-request adjustments.

Cutting bid requests can increase performance and revenue while also improving page speed and traffic.

QPT shifted Playwire from quantity to quality, strengthening trust with buyers and partners.

Transparency remains uneven: publishers still struggle to identify buyers and stop malicious ads across the bidstream.

RAMP unifies traffic shaping, bid shaping, and flooring into a platform designed for enterprise publisher control and visibility.

Chapters
00:00 Intro Jayson Dubin and the core theme
00:55 What Playwire does and why automation matters at scale
01:23 The false choice: automation vs human involvement
01:38 Decision framework where AI wins vs where humans win
02:31 Traffic shaping explained feed DSPs and SSPs what they eat
03:15 Traffic shaping results 21% RPS lift and fewer bid requests
04:01 AI price flooring moving beyond GAM rule limits
05:23 Origin story industry feedback and the shift to quality
05:57 QPT Quality Performance Transparency
06:57 Two-year impact: fewer requests, higher CPM, higher revenue
09:37 Marketecture Live Q&A: What AI means for publishers now
18:56 Scale and leverage who gets to command better terms

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22min
December 23, 2025Episode 154: Marketecture Wrapped: Predictions, Year-in-Review, and Shout-Outs from Eric and Ari
In this episode, Ari Paparo and Eric Franchi reflect on the past year in ad tech and discuss their predictions from the previous year, the growth of Marketecture, and the biggest news stories in the industry. They highlight key CEOs and companies, explore current trends, and make predictions for the upcoming year, particularly focusing on the impact of AI and the evolving landscape of CTV advertising.

Takeaways
Our audience was up 200% year over year on Spotify.

This year was the year of strategic M&A in ad tech.

AI tools were rolled out by many companies this year.

TikTok didn't get banned, but it will be controlled by a US entity.

Live streaming continued to grow significantly this year.

Sundar Pichai of Google had an incredible turnaround year.

YouTube and Netflix are creating a duopoly in streaming.

Content marketplaces will become a big thing next year.

The in-app advertising space is heating up due to competition.

2026 will see a significant rise in M&A activity.

Chapters
00:00 Year-End Reflections and Predictions
03:04 Marketecture's Growth and Achievements
06:03 Evaluating Last Year's Predictions
11:55 Biggest News in Ad Tech
15:01 CEO Highlights and Trends
20:58 Current Trends in Ad Tech
22:31 The Streaming Duopoly: YouTube and Netflix
24:18 The Impact of CTV Consolidation on Advertising
25:44 The Rise of Agentic AI in Advertising
26:49 Spotlight on Hot Startups: Swivel and Branch Labs
29:28 Predictions for 2026: M&A and Market Dynamics
32:33 Learning from the Best: Key Podcast Insights
37:08 The Future of Google and CTV Advertising
41:13 The In-App Advertising Landscape: A New Era
43:21 The TikTok Election: Shaping Political Advertising

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47min
December 22, 2025PayPal Open Commerce with Dr. Mark Grether: Retail Media, Agentic Commerce at Marketecture Live
Dr. Mark Grether, SVP & General Manager, PayPal, unpacks how PayPal is reshaping commerce media by leveraging its transaction graph across 30 million merchants and 400 million consumers at Marketecture Live. From democratizing retail media for SMBs to monetizing Venmo’s social feed and enabling agentic commerce with trusted payments, this conversation explores why PayPal sits at the center of advertising, AI, and the future of buying online.
Takeaways
PayPal’s transaction graph spans 30 million merchants and 400 million consumers, giving it a horizontal view that powers audience targeting, market share insights, and closed-loop measurement.

The new SMB Ads Manager unifies demand and supply so smaller merchants can both buy previously unreachable audiences and monetize their own site traffic.

Venmo’s social feed and Gen Z heavy user base create high demand, upper funnel ad inventory tied to real spending behavior and cultural signals like emoji usage.

Honey contributes large-scale intent and catalog visibility, letting PayPal connect discovery to checkout and measure impact even for off-site channels like CTV.

In agentic commerce, PayPal aims to be the trust and payments layer that reduces friction while humans still make emotional final decisions.

Chapters
00:00 PayPal Today: Scale, Brands, and the Transaction Graph
01:09 Retail Media Fragmentation and the SMB Challenge
01:53 PayPal Ads: On-Site, Off-Site, and Storefront Ads
03:57 Ads Manager: Unifying Demand and Monetizing SMB Eyeballs
06:37 Open Commerce: Relevance and Brand Safety at Scale
08:24 Venmo Ads: Social, Gen Z, and Upper-Funnel Moments
10:36 Honey: Intent Signals, Catalog Data, and Targeting
12:15 Closed-Loop Measurement and CTV Attribution
16:14 Agentic Commerce: Trust, Payments, and In-Flow Checkout
24:04 Five-Year Outlook: What Changes and What Doesn’t

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28min
December 19, 2025Episode 153: Scott Spencer invented RTB, now he’s taking on cookie banners
Scott Spencer, co-founder of Rewarded Interest and former DoubleClick and Google product leader, explains why cookie banners failed, how consumer privacy still feels broken, and what it takes to give users real control without hurting publishers or advertisers.

Takeaways
RTB wasn’t invented in a single moment. It emerged organically as multiple teams solved latency, bidding, and scale problems in parallel.

Cookie banners fail both consumers and regulators by creating friction without real control or understanding.

Rewarded Interest aims to replace site-by-site consent with centralized, programmatic privacy preferences across devices.

Privacy control likely belongs above the browser level, especially as agentic browsing and AI assistants become mainstream.

Changes proposed to GDPR may reduce protections around pseudonymous identifiers, increasing the need for user-centric control tools.

The industry risks pushing users toward ad blocking if it can’t offer meaningful, trusted privacy solutions.

Scott’s biggest regret from the RTB era isn’t technical. It’s not taking time to appreciate the magnitude of the transformation and the people behind it.

Chapters
00:00 Intro: Scott Spencer’s DoubleClick and Google legacy
01:29 Year-end notes: Marketecture Wrapped and MadDB.ai
03:35 Why Scott founded Rewarded Interest
05:00 Coalition for Better Ads and reducing ad blocking
06:20 Why cookie banners are broken
07:55 Centralized privacy control across the web
08:52 Browsers, OS-level identity, and agentic browsing
10:54 Minor mode and protecting children from tracking
12:10 Do consumers want granular control? Rewards and defaults
13:43 GDPR, Digital Omnibus, and Europe’s direction
18:21 Aligning incentives for users, publishers, and ad tech
21:56 22 years at DoubleClick and Google
22:12 Did Scott invent RTB? Network proxy bidding explained.
31:00 The Refresh: Google, Meta scams, and agentic ads
54:15 Wrap-up: YouTube vs Netflix and the Oscars move

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57min
December 15, 2025Programmatic Innovation in Live Sports with Andrew Casale and Megan Pagliuca at Marketecture Live
Andrew Casale, CEO, Index Exchange, and Megan Pagliuca, Chief Product Officer, Omnicom Media Group, unpack how live sports and streaming are becoming more addressable through programmatic, why new standards are fixing real-time “spike” problems, and how sell-side decisioning and AI-driven curation could reshape efficiency and fees across the open internet.

Takeaways
Live sports are becoming truly addressable through programmatic.

Targeting is shifting to moment-level signals, not broad demos.

Standards like podding and advanced ad requests reduce live break spikes.

Pre-fetching and smarter pacing keep delivery stable.

Sell-side decisioning now happens earlier and faster.

That speed opens new optimization before bids reach DSPs.

The supply chain may be split into modular parts to cut fees.

AI is already boosting inclusion lists, safety, and creative workflows.

Chapter
00:10 Intro to live sports and programmatic.
00:45 Megan on addressable “magic moments” in live sports.
03:12 Andrew on podding standards for live streams.
04:23 How advanced ad requests prevent break spikes.
06:36 What sell-side decisioning is and why it’s faster now.
09:50 Two futures: bundled platforms or unbundled chain.
15:07 Megan on SPO and tighter partner sets.
17:45 Practical AI wins in lists, safety, and creativity.
23:20 Rapid-fire predictions for 2026.

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27min
December 12, 2025Episode 152: Jim Payne is back! His new SDK lets you control monetization with AI
Ari Paparo and Eric Franchi sit down with MoPub and MAX founder Jim Payne to unpack his new company CloudX, how “monetization as code” lets mobile publishers manage their entire ad stack in files that AI can edit, why he teamed up with Meta on a secure auction using trusted execution environments, and what all of this means for SDK complexity, mobile vs desktop, AppLovin, performance TV, retail media, and the next wave of ad tech.

Takeaways
CloudX lets mobile publishers manage their ad stack as code.

Jim built CloudX with Meta to power a more secure mobile auction.

Line items and targeting live in files instead of spreadsheets.

Trusted execution environments keep bidder data locked down.

AI agents can now traffic ads and tweak setups automatically.

Jim looks back on Mopub, Max and big outcomes for early teams.

The crew also breaks down Pinterest TV Scientific and other ad tech news.

Chapters
00:00 Intro and why Jim finally joins.
02:10 Jim’s path through Mopub, Max and Meta.
06:00 What monetization as code actually means.
11:30 How AI agents can traffic ads.
15:00 Secure auctions and why Meta cares.
20:30 Why messy mobile stacks need flexibility.
27:00 Jim on AppLovin and mobile versus desktop.
33:30 Jim Payne legends and big career bets.
44:00 Pinterest buys tvScientific news reaction.
52:00 DSP fees, CTV buying and meta layers.

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56min
December 08, 2025Meta Advantage+ & Incrementality: Findings From 640 Tests with Olivia Kory at Marketecture Live
Olivia Kory, Chief Strategy Officer from Haus, walks through an 18-month review of 640 incrementality tests run by Haus to compare Meta’s Advantage+ campaigns with manual setups. She explains the shift from hands-on targeting to AI-led buying, why incrementality matters more than platform-reported conversions, and how Geolift holdouts estimate true lift without user-level data. The results show a strong overall impact from Meta, but mixed performance from Advantage+ versus manual, along with signs that mid-funnel optimization can change outcomes. She ends with practical cautions on interpreting automation results and the need to test by brand.

Takeaways
Incrementality testing helps separate real lift from conversions that would have happened anyway.

Meta tends to deliver measurable lift quickly, though attribution settings change what you see.

Advantage+ performs inconsistently against manual campaigns and can skew toward low funnel intent.

Mid-funnel signal engineering may broaden reach and improve omnichannel effects, but needs validation.
Chapters
00:00 Overview of the research question on AI buying and outcomes. 03:10 How Meta buying moved from manual controls to automated setups.
06:05 Why incrementality matters more than reported conversions.
09:00 Geolift holdout method and cross-channel measurement.
12:10 What the wider Meta test set shows about lift and timing.
16:05 Advantage+ versus manual results and efficiency gaps.
19:20 Possible reasons for the Advantage+ pattern and open questions.
21:10 Signal engineering and mid-funnel optimization approach.
24:20 Final cautions and how to apply testing to your own brand.

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27min
December 05, 2025Episode 151: How Publishers Can Get Paid for AI, with Matthew Goldstein
Matthew Goldstein joins Ari Paparo and Eric Franchi to break down how AI is reshaping publishing, why traffic declines are less scary than content theft, and what it will take for publishers to get paid in an agentic future. They dig into licensing deals, bot blocking, Microsoft’s content marketplace, and the idea of a real-time exchange for fresh, metadata-rich articles. The conversation also hits Google’s growing advantage, OpenAI’s code-red moment, and what all of this means for ads, agencies, and where digital media revenue goes next.
Takeaways
Publishers are more focused on getting compensated for AI training and retrieval than on raw traffic drops.

Bot blocking is rising, but without a shared, reliable block list, it stays messy and uneven.

Content marketplaces only work if buyers show up, and right now sellers massively outnumber demand.

A split web is coming: humans browse homepages, while agents pull content at scale from trusted sources.

Google’s integrated ecosystem gives it a structural edge over everyone in search plus AI.
Chapters
00:09 Welcome and setup for AI and content licensing discussion with MSG
02:10 What happened to MSG’s newsletter and why LinkedIn feels better for feedback
05:11 Birthdays, Spotify Wrapped, and shout outs to the pod’s biggest fans
08:18 State of publishers right now: traffic concerns vs AI taking content
10:26 Upfront licensing deals: why the headlines cooled off and what renewals mean
13:12 Blocking AI bots: Cloudflare rollout, inconsistency, and need for a shared list
15:20 Human web vs agentic web and why the publisher business model must change
18:20 Content marketplaces: how many exist, the demand problem, and Microsoft’s approach
20:36 Marketplace mechanics explained through a finance app example
24:00 Real time per article payments and RAG style usage as the likely model
28:21 What marketplaces imply for publisher ads and MSG’s timeline prediction
31:30 News: BroadSign acquires Place Exchange, and why out of home is heating up
35:17 News: Omnicom IPG deal closes and what it means for agencies
38:41 News: OpenAI code red and the rapid rise of Google Gemini
44:52 Rumors of ads in AI search and in ChatGPT
47:19 LLM referral traffic to retail rises over Black Friday weekend
48:40 Trade Desk talent moves and pricing pressure

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53min

FAQs about Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.:

How many episodes does Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast. have?

The podcast currently has 370 episodes available.

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